Countdown to Eurovision (At Home) 2020!

It's Eurovision season once again! Although this year it won't be the same since the 65th Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled due to the coronavirus. I was sad (although not surprised) to hear about the cancellation in March. However the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) has been showing home concerts on YouTube and they are now going to have Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light, a show that will be held on place of the Grand Final on 16th May.

Europe: Shine A Light will spotlight the 41 songs from this year contest, as well as feature performances from past contestants. There will also be a performance of the song Love Shine A Light by Katrina and the Waves, (which won for the UK in 1997) by this year's artists. The show would have taken place in Rotterdam after Duncan Laurence won for the Netherlands last year with Arcade, but obviously due to various lockdowns/quarantines around the world, the artists will be in different locations.

I'm looking forward to the show. Apparently the BBC weren't going to broadcast Europe Shine A Light and instead have their own show Europe: Come Together, relegating the main one to BBC iPlayer?! But they have since come to their senses and will now be showing it on BBC One. (Which I'm glad about because some of us don't have BBC iPlayer and we want to watch it on TV anyway! lol). Come Together will be shown directly before. There will also be 20 special shows as part of called Eurovision Song Celebration which will be shown on the official Eurovision YouTube channels. These will be in place of the Semi-Finals which would have been shown on 12th and 14th May. Read more about it here: https://eurovision.tv/story/eurovision-song-celebration

James Newman was the UK's entry this year with My Last Breath. I wasn't that impressed with the song again but it's decent. :)

I normally do two Euroision themed posts, so here's the first one! Today I'm featuring a round-up of previous posts and some past contestants (similar to last year), and next week I'll feature some of this year's songs.

In 2017 I did a round-up of previous Eurovision posts up to 2016. You can read that here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/05/eurovision-round-up.html

And here are the posts since then:

Eurovision- Current Faves and Past Contestant Updates (2017): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/05/eurovision-faves-and-past-contestant.html

Countdown to Eurovision! (2018): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/countdown-to-eurovision.html

Selection of Eurovision Songs: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/selection-of-eurovision-songs.html

Countdown to Eurovision 2019!: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2019.html

Eurovision 2019 Favourites: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/05/eurovision-2019-favourites.html

Now onto the past contestant updates! :)

Kristian Kostov (2017 Bulgarian entry)

Bulgarian Russian singer Kristian Kostov was one of my favourite entries in 2017. He has a Kazakh mum and Bulgarian dad, and represented Bulgaria with the song Beautiful Mess, one of  the youngest contestants that year at only 17. He came 2nd in the Grand Final. (The winner was Salvador Sabral for Portugal with Amar pelos dois). Visit this post to watch his performance: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/selection-of-eurovision-songs.html

Since then Kristian has released English singles The One and Burning Bridges, Russian singles Глубина ("Depth" in English) and Ты Мой Огонь (You Are My Fire), two EPs Shower Thoughts (2018) and Prologue (2019), and the singles Get It and Honest (from Shower Thoughts). He also collaborated with Chinese singer Tifa Chen on the song Live It Up. His latest single is Better.

Here is the video for Глубина ( Depth), Kristian's Russian language single which was released in October 2017. It's a lyric video and if you click "Subtitles/closed captions" while watching on YouTube, you can see an English translation of the lyrics. It was my first time hearing it today and I really like it! :)

Here is the music video for Get It: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2020/03/weekly-music-video_11.html

And the Honest video: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2020/03/weekly-music-video_11.html

And finally here's Better, Kristian's latest single which was released on 5th May. It's in English and this is the official lyric video.

Follow Kris at these links:

Official FB: https://www.facebook.com/kristian.kostov.official

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4BZzsKR92caJ9qgmq8gM-w

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristian_kostov_official/

Eleni Foureira (2018 Cyprus entry)

Greek singer Eleni Foureira's song Fuego (Spanish for "Fire") was my favourite entry in 2018, and the one I voted for! Eleni was born in Albania but moved to Greece as a child and entered the contest for Cyprus. She came 2nd, with the winner being Israel's Netta with Toy. Visit this post to see the music video for Fuego: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/countdown-to-eurovision.html

You can watch Eleni's performance in the Grand Final here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/selection-of-eurovision-songs.html

And here is the Spanish version of Fuego: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/05/weekly-music-video_30.html

Since Eurovision Eleni has released the singles Caramela (Greek and English versions), the Spanish language ''Tόmame (Take Me)  and El Ritmo Psicodelico (The Psycohedelic Rhythm), and Loquita (Crazy Little Girl) with Claydee, and the English ones Sirens with Turkish rapper KAAN and American rapper Snoop Dogg, and her latest Yayo. Her last album was 2017's Vasilissa, but she brought out the EP Gypsy Woman in May 2019.

This is Caramela,  a Greek language song which was released in August 2018, and is on the soundtrack for the 2018 Greek film Aigaio SOS.

 
With the new Blogger I can't directly post the music video on here (they've changed how you upload/link to videos) but you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGtPNZw0FxY

The English version was the follow up to Fuego. Here's a teaser which is all I can post directly on here:

The full song has just been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkqHcpWKa6U

Here is Loquita, the single which Eleni released with Greek Albanian music artist Claydee last July. It's a Spanish language song (the title translates as  something like "Crazy little girl" in English. I think the chorus basically translates in English as, "You are my crazy little girl, dance, dance, mami".

Again I couldn't post the video directly on the blog but you can watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imkj5BKsNgM

Watch the video for Eleni's latest single Yayo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBYs8g-Grn4

Follow Eleni at these links:

Official site: http://elenifoureira.gr

Official FB: https://www.facebook.com/EleniFoureiraOfficialPage/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foureira/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuxSBNJZLvBvkTgYlr_0Ulw

To keep up to date with Eurovision news visit these links:

Official site: https://eurovision.tv/

Official YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRpjHHu8ivVWs73uxHlWwFA

Hope you liked the post! Stay tuned for more Eurovision next week. :) What's your favourite Eurovision song?

Eurovision Song Celebration will premiere worldwide on the ESC YouTube channel on Tuesday 12th and Thursday 14th May at 8pm UK time/9pm CEST (Central European Standard Time). Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light will air in place of the Grand Final on TV at 8pm BST/9pm CEST. In the UK it will be shown on BBC One.