As regular readers will know, I have been live-blogging the ESC since 2011, and in 2020 undertook a larger-scale song analysis for Netflix, where we looked at the meta-characteristics of 259 finalists 2010-2019.

To get you in the zone (I’m typing this on Thursday night from the USA), here’s a playlist of the just-announced running order for the grand final.

Ukraine will almost certainly win, so I’m listening out for 2nd and 3rd place contenders. Italy, Sweden, and Spain have some really strong songs, and… could it be… that the UK has a chance this year? ‘Space Man’ is our finest showing in many a year IMO, and if that high vocal holds up on the night, it could do really well.