Through our Best of the Bunch series, we gave a recap on the Eurovision entries from 2006 to 2015 and gave you the opportunity to choose your Best of the Bunch. As you may remember, the current Best of the Bunch winners were put into our ‘Ultimate Eurovision’ but it’s time to see which of the latest three entries have remained as your favourites! In our Best of the Bunch: The Trials series, we are going to recap the entries from a certain nation starting with 2016 and continuing through to the latest Eurovision season of 2018. Your job is to simply enjoy the music, and vote for your Best of the Bunch winner!
Today we’re travelling to the Baltic nation of Latvia, who first made their Eurovision debut in 2000. They have had a couple of Top 5 finishes in their history, but overall can’t be considered the luckiest country when it comes to Eurovision! In fact, they have had more last place finishes than they have had Top 5 finishes, but let’s forget their Eurovision win back in 2002 on their third year of participation! Before we reminisce on this, we are first going to look at their latest three entries, and after our recap, it will be up to you to vote for you Best of the Bunch!
Latvia 2016
Expectations were high after Aminata finally broke the lengthy non-qualification streak that lasted from 2009 all the way up to 2015. Not only did she break the streak, but she also finished in 6th place in the final with arguably one of their best Eurovision entries. I mean, no pressure, right? The responsibility was put onto Justs with a song written by Aminata titled Heartbeat, so things were looking promising for Latvia. Justs’ solo performance on the Eurovision stage did impress audiences, with the entry qualifying to the final at 8th place, and then went on to finish in 15th place with a total of 132 points.
Latvia 2017
With a couple of successful results under their belts, it was time to continue the run of good luck with a third strong entry. After another edition of their national final Supernova, the nation decided on the group Triana Park to continue the good results with their song Line. With what we considered a strong song, and a very visually memorable stage performance, we thought they would have a decent chance of being the third Latvian entry in a row to make it to the final, but it seems the juries and voters at home didn’t quite agree. In fact, they really didn’t agree. Sure, it wasn’t the strongest vocal performance, but the group ended up finishing last in their semi-final. Justified? Well, perhaps not, but that’s just how it goes!
Latvia 2018
On the bright side, you can’t do any worse than last place in the semi-final, so it could only go up for Laura Rizzotto who was chosen to represent Latvia in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with her song Funny Girl. It was in quite a different style to most of their recent entries, and many within the Eurovision bubble saw its potential to do well in this year’s contest. Despite a great performance on stage, unfortunately Latvia would once again miss out on the final, but this time finishing in a close 12th place with a total of 106 points.
So now you’ve seen all three performances, it’s time to vote for your Best of the Bunch!
If you want more Best of the Bunch from Latvia, check out our original series:
If you want to check out who made our Ultimate Eurovision, check it out here: