JESC 2020 - Part Two - The Results!

Before I continue with the post, I just wanted to say that this is my 500th post! Can you imagine, 500 times I have clicked the post button and shared something with you all. It's a fantastic landmark, and I'm so pleased to be able to write about it! I just want to say thankyou to everyone for your continued support in reading my posts. It's taken 13 years to get to 500 posts, maybe it will take more, maybe less to reach a thousand. But I can't wait to see the next milestone! Thank you all for reading! :)

 Hello and welcome back, this post is all about the results, and the rest of the show after the performances. I will also be sharing my votes with you as well, and we will see what that changes on the leaderboard! So without further ado, lets jump back in and Move the World!

Hosts Malgorzata, Rafal & Ida are back, and announce you can buy the JESC album, and Ida wants Santa to bring her one, but as if by magic, Rafal pulls one out from somewhere and gives it to her. But more importantly, the voting is about to open. And with a ten second countdown, the voting is open!

To help us decide our favourites, here is our first reminder of all the performances tonight. Who was your favourites from the contest? Let me know in the comments!

Ida tells us that Duncan Lawrence won the adult contest, and that the pandemic cancelled the main contest, and a video clip plays of him wishing him all the contestants good luck, and announces that the 2018 JESC winner Roksana and the 2019 JESC winner Viki will be performing "Arcade", with himself in a recorded performance added in. He looks very out of place, with Roksana and Viki in purple and him looking rather underdressed. The two girls are competing with each other, rather than harmonising, and parts are a little hard to hear, but they come together better for the chorus. It's a nice idea, but hasn't quite worked how I think the organisers planned it out to be. It ends up with us discovering that Viki has a more powerful voice, but Roksana has better stage presence.

Our hosts are pretending that green screen technology is ground breaking. I think it's been here long enough that we all know about it. We get another recap, and it's your final chance to decide who your favourites are.

Malgorzata tell us, that each of us is important, and together we can move the world, which is very true, but is hard to believe coming from someone who wears clothes like that. But moving on, and we get another interval act, this time with a group of dancers and a contemporary piece of music. There's a lot of moving chairs about and something about forming a queue, but other than that, I can't explain what's going on. 

We next get to hear Alicja Szemplinska, who is going to perform "Empires". You'll be aware that she was due to represent Poland in Eurovision in May. When we reviewed the song as part of our reviews for ESC 2020, she came out as joint winner along with Hurricane from Serbia. It's a powerful song, and she performs it beautifully, with her powerful voice. Again, it sounds like it could be from a James Bond film soundtrack.

And for good measure, host & dancer Ida appears after changing into something sparkly to give us a performance of her capabilities. I will just say, it's such a shame Alicja is not returning to Eurovision for 2021, her voice is sublime. And it's now time for the final countdown, and the voting is now closed.

I thought we were going to get the jury votes straight away, but instead we get the song "Move the world", which I suppose in normal times would have been a group performance of the contestants together, but instead this year again it's been done by Green screen. Some of them look like they are floating, but otherwise it's nice to see them all performing together. What I would have done was have them all perform in the outfits they performed in, because a couple are in different clothes, and it's a bit confusing. A good idea was getting the Dutch girls on their own stage, as they had made a dance routine up that would have looked out of place next to the other contestants who were stood on the spot on the main stage. I feel like asking the contestants to learn a song and perform it almost seems like we are asking more of them than of the adult contest, but then again I suppose with the semi finals, the workload probably balances out.

We now speak to Martin Osterdahl from the EBU, who is Jon Ola Sand's replacement. He tells us votes have come in from 120 countries across the world. Would love to know who those were. We also get to speak to Gert Kark who had problems with the Polish Language last year. He confirms we have a valid vote, and the jury results are ready to go. 

As always, I won't go into full detail for every vote, but I'll give you the highlights. The first jury douze points go to the Netherlands.  Ooh this is jarring, the rest of the points don't show until the 12 has been given. I don't like that, that's confusing. Halfway through, France is taking the lead, but it's tight at the top. Kazakhstan takes the twelve from Georgia, Russia brings a cute looking but creepy sounding pig puppet, and also, its seems sad to see the Georgian entrant celebrating alone in her green room. And the final twelve points from current leaders France goes to Serbia, who had been in the jury last place. A crafty vote if ever I saw one

There's just 5 points between France and Kazakhstan, but as always, the televote can change everything! Previous winner Viki arrives on stage with the trophy. It's all getting very tense now!

Ida takes over the televote scores, Russia who I thought would do better, gets 44 points from the televote, who briefly takes the top spot, but we know they won't stay there. Hosts Poland get 44 points, meaning a third victory is off the table. It seems every country who receives televote points briefly becomes the next top of the leaderboard. Spain fly in with a televote score of 79 to take the lead with some margin. Ida says the excitement get her carried away. God help us all if you can't give us the results! Belarus come in with 57, ruling them out as winners. With just Kazakhstan and France to receive televote points, it could be anyone to win. Next up, Kazakhstan gets 69 points pushing them into the lead. However it's all down to France, and they need 65 points to win. Ida tells us that there was a record amount of votes, more than 4.5 million were cast from across the world. Could Kazakhstan become the first associate winner? And finally, France receives...112 points! It takes a moment for the message to go across to them, but they soon are celebrating with tears and jumping for joy, to finish atop the leaderboard with 200 points, almost 50 more than runners up Kazakhstan, who seem to be always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

And there we go, we have our winners France, and it's Valentina and the song "J'imagine". It was a good song, very catchy with a good performance, so there's no complaints here. Overall, it was a well put together show and TVP did an amazing job, especially with a pandemic going on. This was a great year overall. I thought that Russia would have done much better, but other than that, the results seemed correct. So as "J'imagine" plays again, it's time to say thank you Poland, and we shall look forward to next year!

All that's is left to do, is announce my votes! And we begin with:

1 Point is for Serbia

2 points for Ukraine

3 Points for Poland

4 Points for Belarus

5 Points for Georgia

6 Points for the Netherlands

7 Points for France

8 Points for Russia

10 Points for Spain

And finally, my twelve points to Kazakhstan!

And so dear reader, I hear you begging to know how that changes things on the leaderboard. Well luckily I am a dab hand at Google Sheets (Other spreadsheet services are available). Let's take a look!

As you can see, the only change is Russia and Host's Poland swapping places. Never mind, one day I will be able to change the winner!