Eurovision weekend wrap-up

Yes believe it or not, other events were taking place in the Eurovision sphere while Australia Decides was happening.

Here's a quick wrap up of the weekend including the three national finals came to a conclusion.

United Kingdom

Our friends the United Kingdom held their national final over the weekend. Their winner was Michael Rice with his version of 'Bigger Than Us'. 21-year-old Michael, won the show 'All Together Now' (the one where 100 music people stand up) earlier this year.

Watch his winning performance below and also check out our quick 'Take 5' interview with him from last week here.

Italy

Italy held their long-running Sanremo Song Festival last week (it's a competition that pre-dates Eurovision itself).

The winner was Mahmood with his song 'Soldi' which won thanks largely to a strong jury vote beating out Ultimo and 2015 Eurovision representative Il Volo.

Now the winner of Sanremo doesn't alway go to Eurovision, it's something they can choose to do or not. After initially indicating he would, it seems Mahmood is getting cold feet for a variety of reasons. So watch this space and more importantly watch his song. It's a cracker.

Montenegro

The small (and beautiful - you should seriously visit!) Balkan nation of Montenegro also decided their Eurovision representative over the weekend.

The group D-Moll (translated as D-Minor) won with their song 'Heaven'. The group is made up of 16-21 year olds and easily won their head-to-head superfinal 62% to 38%.

Watch their performance below:

Finland

We all know Darude will be representing but he released the first of three songs that could be going to Tel Aviv. The first song is 'Release Me'.

The rest

Semi finals were held in Sweden, Romania, Iceland, Ukraine, Hungary and Lithuania over the weekend. Three songs we wanted to show you are:

Laura Bretan - the 16-year-old American of Romanian heritage go through to the Romanian Selectia Nationala final with this performance of her song 'Dear Father'. With operatic elements, could this dilute Kate's impact in Tel Aviv if it goes?

The Icelandic group Hatari will definitely split opinion. With this out there performance, they aren't one you will forget though...they made it through to the Songvakeppnin final.

And finally over in Ukraine, the first semi final of Vidbir took place with MARUV winning with her entry 'Siren Song' (despite not going down super well with the jury).

You can listen to our take on the full week in detail via our Eurovision Weekly Update podcast episode.

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