Eurovision Song Contest 2025: Surprise Luxembourg, the United Kingdom is the musical and the other best moments of the second semifinal

All as per programs, in the Second semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025: in Basel there is still a lot trashperhaps the only real exchange coin of the event, while among the promoted to the final on Saturday – live on Rai 1 in the early evening, the world will finally be able to vote Lucio Corsi, and it will be seen – there are both Israelwhose qualification also brings behind inevitable political aftermath (we get there) and one of the favorites, Austria. Lithuania, Armenia, Malta, Denmark, Luxembourg, Finland, Latvia and Greece also pass. Eliminate Australia, Montenegro, Serbia, Georgia, Czech Republic and Ireland, which historically obtains excellent results, as they remember Gabriele Corsi and Bigmama, good conductors of the Italian live broadcast. If this parade of countries, however, does not tell you anything, do not worry: indeed it takes us to the first theme of the evening.

The songs are all the same

Let’s not turn around: Competitors and countries are often indistinguishable. It will be globalization, it will be that the various competitors have no imagination, but putting in line the songs in the race is a bit How to take a ride in the center of large European capitals: There is always the same, well -known fast food chain, the one that makes coffee with the wrong name, the one that sells clothes – the same – at low price, etc. Well, Fast Fashion or not here sounds all the same. Or with the straight in dance in the dance style – with many pieces recycled by the sounds of the early zero years, such as those of Sissal for Denmark or Miriana Conte for Malta, who also at the performance level if he gets it – or torn Ballatone. In the middle, who would have weapons, like Germany, is limited to the task. Finland, oh well, as Corsi says “turns into a rocket-Christ”. Too bad the few references to the countries of origin return, however, in the center of European capitals, this time in a tourist menu version with the local specialties. It must be said that the Swiss authors this time invented an interlude on their proverbial punctuality, so that we demand?

If in doubt, ‘O famous strange

It is not all to be thrown away, however. It is a question of balance between performance and song itself: the first must play a predominant role – also because it is worth most of the investment by production – but at the same time it does not have to too fall into the kitsch and above all you should not devour the piece in question. There are those who save themselves, therefore, especially among whom it does it strangeamong those who exaggerate well. Like the Goth-pop of Lithuania (TAVO AKYSof the katarsis)the Greece that cites the odyssey without damage (Klavdia, Asteromáta) or the very favorite Austria, with JJ (Wasted Love) which is almost a tenor and that, with a performance that also uses black and white simply breaks.

Toto Cutugno Italian pride

Ok, the tribute – however queuing – to our Toto Cutugno with Together: 1992the song with which he had participated in the Eurovision of 1990 after the refusal of the Pooh (see historical appeals), is partly tragicomic. But there is no laugh: in Italy probably We never really loved and understood Cutugnowith his visceral music and experiments mattecompared to what has been abroad, east Europe in the first place. In a competition like this, in which we historically struggle to pull our heads or even just show us interested, well, let’s think about it.

In the land of musicals

The homologation fair has another, huge consequence: Until half of the pieces seen on stage during the second semifinals they look like small musicalsboth for the scene effects and for how the songs themselves – very narrative, however trivial, and which find fulfillment in the scenic gesture of the singer are conceived. The highest level is perhaps the British Remember Monday, who with What the hell Just Happened? They make the spice girls of the gen Z, net of a song not up to the performance itself (but at least they do not take seriously). France worse with Louane, the sand and the time that passes into the hourglass (Maman), very rhetoric and melodramatic. Pure trash prin with Thousands (Serbia), while the Australian Go-Jo passes from genius, who with Milkshake Man makes a sort of Grease Themed, in fact, Milkshake. Could it be the good twin of Tommy Cash? Too bad he did not pass the turn.

Surprisingly, Luxembourg

It turns out that the piece, perhaps, more interesting than the second semifinal, the daughter of a country of half a million inhabitants, returned to the race only in 2024 after thirty years of absence, brings him out. The merit is all of the Luxembourg by birth Laura Thornclass 2000, here with The Poupée Monte Le Son. He has everything: a barbie style choreography that steals the eye (moreover is a sort of The doll version 2025), a pop attitude that does not seem recycled from the early zero years as much of the competition and above all a message, on Girl Power and female emancipation. It is not a little. For heaven’s sake, the good feelings – which dominate, by law – are always trivialthe point is as They communicate: better a visual choreography and spot on so much innocent rhetoric, or worse for the water of roses, which we already find everywhere.

Israel and the dust under the carpet

It is not just the presence of Israel Or not to the Eurovision – there are those who complain of the disparity of treatment compared to Russia, to say. Nor the fact that Yuval Raphael’s performance, with New Day Will Risehas been accepted at the beginning in an icy way, except to be warmly applauded in the end, also because it is a scene already seen last year. Is that the festival requires the ban on giving political messages, but cannot prevent – and why should it ever? – the presence of an artist like Raphael, who survived October 7 and who, above all, began to sing. Moreover with a song, this New Day Will Risehowever generic however influenced by the traumatic experience of the singer. And we would miss it, even here. The problem, in short, is that the world outside St. Jakobshalle of Basel is on fire, but the only thing that manages to make such a review, apart from offering very trivial messages on peace and the rest, It is hiding the dust under the carpet.