Third time lucky?

The third, and last semi-final round of Finland’s Euroviisut competition happens on Friday, so here’s our round-up of what to expect. It’s a bit of a mixed bag this time round. Let us know what you think – Schlagerfiasko would never presume to be right all the time. Just occasionally.

As always, the songs can be found with the best sound quality at areena.yle.fi, but we can’t embed them directly, so here are the YouTube clips that other generous people have posted.

Eveliina Määttä’s Dancing In The Dark gave us a right shock when it started blasting through the earphones. Lovely, dirty bass intro leads into rather sweet vocals. And it quickly loses any excitement because of it. This needs someone really strong to blast their way through it – we’re thinking, as always, of LaGaylia Fraser. It’s a bit weak, sadly. And while we adore a key change, it’s utterly misplaced here.

Sami Hintsanen looks like he’s about to mug you, but that’ll teach you (us) for judging a book by its cover. Täältä maailmaan (This Is The World? Can someone correct us?) is actually the most schlager of ballads we’ve heard for a long time (since last year’s Eurovision season, in other words). We love this. It harks back to the days of full orchestras and proper jury leaders who didn’t have TV cameras to mug to. Fan-lond, dooze pwan!

Well. Hmmm. We’re really not sure. Seis! (Stop!) is another ‘perfect’ Eurovision song, if we were in 1993. Tommi Soidinmäki has a lovely tenor range, but we can’t help feeling that a lot of Fredrik Kempe has been listened to. But what Kempe does exceedingly well comes across as out of its time in this song. It’s all very dramatic, and that key change is great, but there’s nothing to engage with. There’s no hook to connect with the audience, and we’re left wondering what just happened…

Oh, this is lovely. Saara Aalto’s Blessed With Love is a 21st century answer to Dana’s All Kinds Of Everything with a pinch of Minnie Riperton’s Lovin’ You for good measure. And that’s fine with us. It builds into a gorgeous crescendo and ends on a high. Even Schlagerfiasko is starting to feel the love. Although that could be heartburn. If this doesn’t get through, we’ll be surprised.

We’re writing this bit before we’ve clicked play on Pamela by Stala & So. There are three gentlemen done up like Marc Bolan on a bad day who all look old enough to know better, and we have a bad feeling about this…

One of Schlagerfiasko’s most disliked (OK, loathed) musical ‘personalities’ is Justin Hawkins, and this reminds us of him instantly. It’s quite sad that glam rock has left us with a legacy of men who reckon that a bit of lippy and a feather boa can carry a crap song. No. This is going to go through to the final without question.