Last night Cyprus and Greece celebrated qualifying through to this Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest final. This year’s Eurovision will be held in Kyiv, Ukraine, at the International Exhibition Centre IEC.
Demy (representing Greece) and Hovig (representing Cyprus) made it to the Top 10 qualifying songs after enduring a very competitive semi-final phase. The semi-final rankings will not be announced publicly until after this weekend’s Eurovision final, which maximises fans’ suspense.
It is a result which spelt the Greek’s return to the contest’s final after last year’s very early exit. It’s a solid come-back, for this country who’s always qualified except that minor-blip, which we can now begin to erase from our memories.
Demy looked absolutely stunning in her pale outfit as she performed her song ‘This is love’. It’s a progressively up-tempo track which is catchy and radio-friendly. The track was composed by Eurovision veteran Dimitris Kontopoulos, with creative staging by Fokas Evangelinos, the Greek’s dynamic Eurovision team.
Demy secures Greek’s place in the final…
The 25-year-old Greek pop singer seemed to enjoy her time on the stage, joined by her dancers Iasonas Mandilas and Paris Paraskevadis-Planets. She was also accompanied by off-stage backing-vocalists Erasmia Markidi, Evgenia Liakou, and Marcus Giakoumoglou. For those who missed it, we can confirm it was a very slick and well rehearsed performance.
Cypriot singer Hovig also celebrated a successful night. His performance involved an excellent staging concept which complimented his song greatly. He performed a modern radio-friendly track with electronic beats, written by Thomas G:Son, a well-known Swedish composer and producer in Eurovision circles.
Hovig pulls out all the stops for his gravity song…
28-years-old Hovig, a Cypriot artist of Armenian heritage, shows he was proud to have this chance to fly the Cypriot flag. The Cypriot broadcaster internally selected Hovig and G:son for this year’s Cypriot song.
Hovig was vocally very solid and interacted well with his dancers Marios Charalambous and Pavlos Lazarou Kertepene. The artist seemed relaxed and sung his cool song, mastering the stage’s full width to tell us his story, about gravity.
The Cypriot artistic director Charis Savva put much effort in to make sure he nailed the performance, and clearly it worked extremely well. The Cypriot’s have pulled out all the stops to be noticed and they were.
Greece and Cyprus confirmed they will be performing second-half draw for the final, with 26 countries competing. Demy and Hovig have to wait till Thursday to find out the other qualifiers. What we know for certain is that they have earned their place next to the big 5 automatic placers: the UK, Spain, France, Germany and Italy in the final this weekend.
The Eurovision Song Contest Final airs this Saturday at 8 pm UK time; you can follow it live on BBC 1.
For those who missed the first semi final, you can catch the Top 10 qualifiers being revealed, here:
