Semi-final 1: an overview

Predictions are a bugger of a thing to make at the best of times when it comes to Eurovision, let alone when you've listened to each of the songs individually about a hundred times in an effort to be objective about each of them and can therefore no longer see the wood for the trees. Making them on the basis of the studio versions alone is even more foolhardy - however good the songs themselves might be, it's the performances that count. You can't even tell from rehearsals really how something is going to do; it all comes down to those three brief and often brutal minutes. You can gain a general idea of whether something's going to work, of course, but in a contest where rewarding quality is not necessarily very high on people's agendas, nothing is ever for certain. Nor should it be. And not that it should or indeed could stop us from making our predictions, however pointless.

Examining the songs in the Tuesday semi-final one at a time has shored up some of my convictions and made me waver in terms of others. Lining them up in order though and giving them one proper listen has produced its own surprises.

For a start, one of the earliest songs to stand out stylistically is the Moldovan entry A Century Of Love, which could have a broader appeal a la Hungary 07 and do better than people think (i.e. gaining more than just automatic points from the likes of Romania). There is also something about San Marino's Complice that suggests a big, in-your-face visual presentation could see it achieving greater sucess than I expected it to as well. If it does, I suspect the Belgian ditty may get completely overlooked, especially with Azerbaijan on its tail.

The second third of the semi-final is where I feel the viewers at home will probably start to find more to keep them interested. Both the Norwegian and Polish entries come across well in context, complementing rather than working against one another. Irelande Douze Pointe has a more positive impact than at first seemed likely, while Bosnia & Herzegovina's Pokušaj towers over the entries that bookend it without looking down its nose at them.

Despite earlier sections not being without them, it is the tail end of the semi-final that seems to have the greatest concentration of songs that sound the way you expect successful Eurovision entries too. Coming after Armenia, The Netherlands' Your Heart Belongs To Me appears more inventive and inviting than it perhaps is, which could stand it in better stead than I would have given it credit for. But apart from that anomaly, I still feel the draw has done each of the last four songs the biggest favour.

For what it's worth then, the following are the countries whose names I predict will be in the ten envelopes at the end of the night. Personal preference doesn't come into it; it's based on the assumption that all 19 performances are equally good and equally attractive in their own right; I make no distinction between the nine that qualify through televoting and the jury wildcard; and they're in alphabetical order rather than any anticipated ranking.

- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Finland
- Greece
- Ireland
- Israel
- Norway
- Romania
- Russia

Publish and be damned I say, although I reckon I'm on fairly safe ground with about half of them. My own qualifiers would be slightly different, with Moldova and perhaps The Netherlands fitting in somewhere, although to be honest finding any more than a handful of personal favourites is a struggle. There's something polarising about the field this year, which is what makes it so open - none of the songs have nothing going for them, but that doesn't necessarily make them likeable. (Not that that's any different from any other year, I suppose.) Can't wait to see how the performances on the night change things.