Thoughts on the songs in tonight’s Eurovision semi-final

Apologies for missing a couple – they all merged into one after a while.

Denmark would be my top pick.

Norway – very energetic with excellent superimposed musical instruments. I liked it very much.

Netherlands – a classic Nashville country music rock song. It shouldn’t even be in the contest.

Denmark – very powerful and popular. The imagery of the four big blokes with beards is very strong. Great song.

France. OK. Didn’t really grab me but that may be because it is in French.

Italy – horrible captions on screen – like a news broadcast. Visually appalling. Threatening vocals.

Germany – Poor man’s Ed Sheeran. He has a bouncy castle behind him, onto which are projected some fantastically good graphics and old black and white photos. Very strong.

Moldova. White boxes and singer doubles. 1970s trick. Very old hat.

Georgia. Nice harmonies. Rather dreary.

Malta – Animals. Strong. Back projection is a little distracting.

Serbia – certainly sounds very Serbian but not riveting.

San Morino – lively and catchy. Deserves to get through to the final.

Hungary – assume the brace position before listening. Singer just shouts, but doesn’t shout very well. Ludicrous. Makes you realise how Led Zeppelin, Muse, Biffy Clyro etc make so much money. There has to be some musicality in the singing.

Russia. Nice song. Nothing special.

Romania -not sure what the tailor’s dummies are doing in the background.

Slovenia – quite good but the false music failure is just crazy and rather deceitful.

Ukraine – very strong.

Sweden – too dark. You need a torch to see the singer. They’ve used lots of fluorescent light strips so the whole thing has to be performed in darkness which looks awful. Song is an average Michael Jackson track circa 1980

Poland. Strong and bouncy. Nice hats.