Even during the rehearsals in Malmö Arena have Golan met with boos from the audience, but also applause and cheers. And despite the ban on Palestinian flags, activists with both Palestinian scarves and flags were taken out of the arena on Thursday, according to Expressen.
— Thank you very much, Eden Golan shouted from the stage and threw kisses to the audience after his performance.
Whoever tops the advance speculation in the other semi-final is Swiss Nemo with the song “The code”. During the semi-finals, Armenia also climbed the odds charts, pushing Greece down from third place with their ethno-pop entry “Jako”.
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Israel’s entry was announced during the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024
Israel’s participation in the competition is disputed and security in Malmö rigorous. “Hurricane” is a finely tuned ballad and the song is currently fourth on the betting companies’ odds lists.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) initially stopped Israel from performing the song, then titled “October rain”, citing that the message was too political. The title and several lines of lyrics in the song referred to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 last year.
The Israeli public service company KAN approached the EBU and rewrote the lyrics and changed the name of the song to “Hurricane”.
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Denmark has the odds against it
Norwegian riddle with the song “Ulveham” does well on the charts and is tipped sixth by the betting companies. Denmark’s Sheba on the other hand, seems to find it more difficult. According to the betting companies, her entry “Sand” risks being kicked out of the competition even before the final.
When the Danish singer had finished singing her contribution in the semi-final, she remained on stage moved and with tears in her eyes as she received the audience’s applause.
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Saba representing Denmark with the song “Sand”.
Countries from the “big five”, i.e. Great Britain, Italy, France, Germany and Spain, do not have to qualify via the semi-finals. Therefore, their contributions are usually only shown briefly, but new for this year is that they can perform the contributions in their entirety.
Tonight it’s France’s SlimaneSpain’s Nebula and Italy’s Angelina Mango who participates outside the competition.
Who is Eden Golan? Competing for Israel in Eurovision 2024
Perrelli and Sertab
Swedish is also offered in the middle acts in the second semi-final. Charlotte PerrelliTurkish Sertab and Swedish-Greek Helena Paparizou all won the Eurovision Song Contest in the years 1999–2005. During Eurovision’s second semi-final, they perform “Take me to your heaven”, “Every way that I can” and “My number one”.
But Perrelli also has another mission: she and Petra Mede will together perform the newly written song “We just love Eurovision too much”, a number that plays with Sweden’s history of taking on Eurovision with a certain megalomania.