Semi 2: overview

Listening to each of the songs in the 2nd semi-final individually a hundred times over and once more all through hasn't seen me waver much in my convictions of who will qualify and who won't. Based on the assumptions that none of the performances are wonky (and that's a big assumption to make with some of them!), the obvious qualifiers still seem as obvious. It's once you get past them that it starts getting interesting.

Of the nine songs in Act One, I can't see any more than four qualifying, and only two of them are no-brainers: neighbours Norway and Denmark. Of the remainder, only Latvia and Serbia show any signs of having what it takes (i.e. an appropriate audience in a sufficient number of countries), but if they do get through I wouldn't expect either of them to do so terribly convincingly. Despite their [very different] appeal, I can't see either Croatia or Ireland making enough of an impact.

The interval act, Slovenia, will only qualify if the majority of Thursday night televoters have very bad taste.

Act Two is almost certain to give us the bulk of our qualifiers. Despite most of the last nine songs being in direct competition with one another in terms of how upbeat most of them are, they may just about all get through. The obvious exception is the Netherlands, although Albania is on shakier ground than I would have expected it to be. Ukraine is dead-set, and Lithuania is actually well-placed to stand out among everything going on around it. If there is a big casualty here it might in fact be Azerbaijan, unless their performance improves.

Rolling out the same old spiel, here then 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.

- Azerbaijan
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Greece
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Norway
- Serbia
- Ukraine

Mind you, looking at it now I'm not sure I'll score better than about 7 out of 10. My personal preference would see Hungary replacing Greece (oh! how I would love for Sakis not to even qualify) (and for man's man Zoli to camp it up all the way to the bank!) but I doubt it's going to happen, or at least not at Greece's expense. A lot might change though in just a week-and-a-bit's time when the rehearsals start. Fingers crossed in some cases!