Who’s on First: Let The Games Begin

The nights are drawing in, Strictly’s back on the TV and mince pies are being sold in supermarkets. The summer is most definitely over and that can only mean one thing: the sleeping giant that is the Eurovision season is starting to rear its head. Despite the fact it was only a few months ago Kyiv already feels like something of a distant memory. We must not dwell on the past, however, and march forward towards Lisbon in May.

Last night it felt like we took our first significant step in that direction with the artist reveal from Belgium. Many on Twitter and even the official Eurovision YouTube channel referring to this as the first artist to be chosen. As I said, Kyiv feels a long time ago now and the short memory of the Eurovision fandom seems to be forgetting something…we already have an artist. Don’t we?

Who’s on First?

On March 22nd 2017 Russian national broadcaster Channel One confirmed that regardless of the 2018 host city they’d be sending Yulia Samoylova as its representative. Surely we have to take Channel One’s word for it? Surely! The manner in which Yulia has been treated through all this is fairly disgusting, literally wheeled out as the sacrificial lamb to make Ukraine look bad. She’s then promised a go the next year when, in reality, she will almost certainly get nowhere near the MEO Arena. On the bright side, regardless of what Russia does, they can’t send that bloody awful ‘Flame is Burning’ this time. Small mercies.

What’s on Second?

Whilst Yulia Samoylova and Russia’s participation as a whole remains unconfirmed we got our first official artist reveal last night from Belgium. VRT, the Flemish national broadcaster has internally chosen Laura Groeseneken also known as SENNEK to represent them in Lisbon next year. We were treated to a somewhat reversed engineered ‘Where’s Wally’ puzzle to find Laura last night. Imagine Where’s Wally but you don’t know actually what Wally looks like. That’s the game we played for several hours on Twitter. Look out for it in Flemish book stores, just in time Christmas!

I Don’t Know’s on Third

So that’s it, we’re off. We’ve had nearly a month already where any three minute song is eligible for the Contest. We are of course, still a long way from Lisbon. These first early steps of preparation do, at least, feel like a teasing nudge in the right direction. We have confirmed dates for Melodifestivalen and Eesti Laul; Spain and Germany will hopefully be trying to sort out the trainwrecks they call National Finals and Russia?

Who knows!

You’ll have to ask him.