Tag Archives: national finals

Cookie Fonster Reviews Supernova 2025: An Ethnic Choir Won My Heart

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Introduction

It’s now time for me to review my first national final of the year! I’m not going to watch all of the national selections, oh no, nowhere close. But there’s a few I have planned to watch (see this post) and Latvia’s is one of them! I don’t know much about the prior Latvian selections, but I do know that this one has a higher than usual portion of songs in Latvian (5 out of 20 fully in Latvian,* 2 in a mix of English and Latvian), which is really cool because I know very little about the language and look forward to getting more acquainted with it. I also know that Latvia got a big confidence boost in Eurovision after Dons brought them to the grand final for the first time since 2016, which is why I chose to watch this selection.

Supernova 2025 was originally going to have 20 songs compete, but “Monster” by Grēta was withdrawn because the singer was sick. The semifinal took place on February 1, and ten songs qualified to the grand final on February 8. I’m not just going to review the songs, but I’ll also rank them with a list at the end! I plan to do this for every Eurovision-related blog post I do from here on out.

Spoiler alert: there’s one song from the selection that I immediately fell in love with the moment I first heard it. I have been listening to that song over and over again for the entire past week.

* OK, technically “Ramtai” has a tiny bit of English.

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My plans for pre-show posts on Eurovision 2025

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In case you guys didn’t know, I will be going to Basel for Eurovision 2025! I’ve already pre-registered for tickets this year, so let’s hope I’m able to get some. Since this is my third time following Eurovision live, my plan was to do something different this year and not spoil myself on any of the songs. But upon further consideration, I’ve decided I will watch a small handful of national finals this Eurovision season, and write blog posts about three of them. This will inevitably mean I will spoil myself on four entries for 2025, and leave myself unspoiled on the other 34.

The first national final I’ll review is Latvia’s Supernova 2025 (semifinal February 1, final Feb 8). The 20 songs for this selection are already out and I’ve heard so many good things them that I figured, why not watch the show live? Dons brought Latvia to the grand final for the first time since 2016, which seemed to give them a big confidence boost for next Eurovision. Their selection has seven songs in Latvian, which is pretty awesome because the last few selections only had one or two each. It’ll be a good way to get acquainted with a language I know very little about.

The second selection for me to review is the big one: Chefsache ESC 2025: Wer singt für Deutschland? Stefan Raab, the man who organized Germany’s selection in 2010 which led Lena to win Eurovision, is back from a nine-year retirement from the TV screen and is intent on giving Germany their third Eurovision victory. I’m absolutely stoked to see what he has cooked up and excited to describe what the national final was like for those who don’t speak German. The heats are on February 14 and 15, the semifinal is on Feb 22, and the final is on March 1.

And the third national final that I’ll review is Portugal’s Festival da Canção (semifinals Feb 22 and Mar 1, final Mar 8). The reason I plan to watch that one is simple: because I trust Portugal. I also plan on watching the final of Sweden’s Melodifestivalen 2025 on March 8, but I don’t plan to write a blog post about it.

I’ve started to really miss writing Eurovision reviews since I finished reviewing the 2024 contest, so these blog posts will be a nice way to continue writing music reviews. Hopefully I can make them interesting even for those who didn’t watch the selections.