After the first semi-final of Eurovision 2025

Yesterday, the first semi-final of Eurovision Song Contest 2025 took place in Basel. If you've been following me on Bluesky, you might have seen my live commentary of each entry.

After the first 24 hours after the semi-final, I managed to order my thoughts on the semi-final in a more linear way. Let's see what went right, what went wrong and the elements that defined this first evening of the Eurovision Song Contest (and if you agree with me!).

The vocals were mostly on point

This semi-final was vocally decent, as all the qualifiers managed to either deliver impressive vocals or at least show that they could sing their own songs.

Instead, the performances where the vocals were not completely on point ended up not qualifying.

It makes me laugh how some Cyprus'fans thought that, had there been a jury vote, Theo would have made it to the final instead of Napa (the band representing Portugal). If anything, the jury would have butchered his performance even more because of the vocals, and the result would not have changed.

Not many shocking changes in staging and performance

Aside from Poland, Ukraine, Albania and Croatia, all the countries kept the structure and visual elements of their performances similar to their national final performances, changing just the lightning or smaller visual elements.

I'm a big fan of changing stagings and performances, so seeing such consistency felt slightly boring, even though most performances seemed more polished, which is positive.

However, I think that one country in particular was affected by this: Sweden. The performance was good as always but, like many other Eurovision fans have pointed out, it did not make me think "oh, that's a winner!".

The countries that changed their staging the most did the right decision, in my opinion:

- Albania adapted the performance (especially Beatriçe's movements) to a bigger stage, adding some high notes at the end to make the song more theatrical. It worked the best among these four and it was my favourite performance of the entire night.

- Poland's change in choreography and background elements, with Justyna hanging above the stage, the dragon and the natural elements made the performance more interesting and less repetitive in comparison to the national final.

- Ukraine, with its pastel-toned staging, created a dreamy atmosphere that suited the bigger stage better in comparison to the fake lawn that Ziferblat used in their national final.

- Although Croatia did not qualify and the staging still looked messy, they were smart in using flashing lights and colors like fluorescent green, bright red and yellow to create a spooky, almost cartoonish atmosphere, avoiding the bakery concept that they used in the national final. Thanks to this clever change and his vocal improvement, Marko Bošnjak can definitely be proud of himself and I hope that we can see him again at Eurovision.

Cyprus: mistakes were made

I could write an entire essay on everything that went wrong with Cyprus'performance.

Let me start by saying that I'm deeply sorry that the first act from a Cypriot artist in years did not get to the Grand Final, and I hope that this setback will not discourage the delegation from selecting other talented artists from the island.

However, I still think that this was one of the weakest performances of the night.

The first problem was the vocals: Theo was mostly off-key and he cut short all the high notes before the choruses, which were meant to be kept long and powerful, letting the backtrack do the job.

This is one of the wrongest use of the backtrack you could do: it's supposed to help you so that you can catch your breath between two close verses, or as an artistic effect in case you have no backup vocalists with you. It's not supposed to be doing some of the most important high notes for you.

Another mistake was the choice for the choreography. It was too draining for Theo, which caused him to struggle immensely while singing. Since he was having difficulties catching breath, some parts of the song felt sped up and rushed. Among these, there was yet another key part: the chorus, which is the point where there should be more emphasis.

What's more infuriating was that Theo had backup dancers, too, so why not give him less tiring movements and let the dancers do the rest? That's where the singer can rely less on themselves, not with the backtrack, and yet this opportunity was completely ignored.

The nail in the coffin was the staging: the concept behind the lyrics of Shh is hard to understand, even if the song is in English. The song deals with a mysterious entity while giving some confusing hints about what said entity could be.

With this premise, I would expect that the staging would have somewhat helped in clarifying this but, instead, we got an even more confusing staging where the most interesting part - a pose inspired by Leonardo's Vitruvian Man - was put at the very beginning.

To me, the metal structure they used also resembled Dua Lipa's first performance of Training Season at the Grammys in 2024.

So, we have a performance that does not suit the artist's stamina and vocal capabilities, that blew up any possible chances of making the meaning of the song more accessible or even interesting, and also a performance that feels like it's already been done before.

Great job, Cypriot delegation!

Obviously I'm not blaming Theo because there's no way that an individual artist with a huge staff behind him has managed to mess up like this solely by himself.

The qualifiers and the influence of Italy

Overall, I was satisfied with the qualifiers, except for Belgium being left out. The song and the performance were unique and I liked them better than San Marino's performance, which I found very static.

However, as an Italian, it was predictable that San Marino would have qualified, specifically because Italy could vote. Gabry Ponte is a legend in Italy and the song itself has been on repeat even before competing in San Marino's national final, because it was Sanremo's anthem.

Had San Marino not been in the same semi-final as Italy, the qualification of Tutta L'Italia might not have been as secured.

After causing controversy in Italy because of his song Espresso Macchiato, Tommy Cash started appearing in Italian shows, doing tours to promote his song, and he even performed at one of the concerts to celebrate International Workers' Day in Taranto.

This hard work paid off, because he managed to kind of "clear his name" after the first negative reactions, which probably led to a good amount of Italians voting for him.

Shkodra Elektronike, the artists representing Albanian, both have double citizenship - Italian and Albanian - and they live in Italy.

Although I don't think that this have given them a huge advantage, because their song Zjerm is already popular in itself, the Italian commenters have highlighted their double citizenship, which might have brought in one or two more votes.

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That was all for the first semi-final of Eurovision Song Contest 2025! Now I'm curious to know your thoughts, too.

Have you watched the show? What did you think of it? Tell me in the comments! I'll see you tomorrow with another post on the second semi-final!