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 are travelling to one of the smaller nations to compete at Eurovision, and that’s Slovenia! The nation first performed at Eurovision back in 1993, and fairly consistently participated since then, only missing two contests since their debut. In terms of results, it’s been a mixed bag for Slovenia. Today we’ll be looking at the most recent three results, which really demonstrate that you never really know what you’ll get from Slovenia!
Slovenia 2016
After qualifying for the two years previous, Slovenia was on a roll! Come 2016 and the pressure was on to make it three in a row, and through a national final it was decided that ManuElla would represent Slovenia with her country inspired song Blue and Red. Performing solo on stage until halfway through the performance, ManuElla commanded the stage with her fierce stage presence with vocals to match. It was a song that was quite different to anything we had heard from Slovenia, at least in recent years but with strong competition, Slovenia failed to qualify for the final, finishing in 14th place with 57 points.
Slovenia 2017
The following year we saw a former participant return in the hopes of improving his results from last time! We last saw Omar Naber in 2005 with the song Stop, which only just missed out on the final finishing in 12th place, but through a national final, he was chosen once again to represent Slovenia, this time with an English language ballad titled On My Way. Although Omar showed off his incredible voice with a simple but effective stage performance, unfortunately he fell to the same fate as he did back in 2005, missing out on the Eurovision final. This time, he finished in 17th place with 36 points.
Slovenia 2018
That brings us to Slovenia’s most recent entry, which as you may remember was the energetic Lea Sirk with the Slovenian language song Hvala, Ne! Although Lea herself said in an interview not long after her national final win that Slovenia is a small nation, and her hopes of qualifying are slim, it seems that she underestimated her own abilities. A sleek stage performance helped Slovenia qualify to the final for the first time since 2015, and the nation finished in 22nd place with 64 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 Slovenia, check out our original series:
If you want to check out who made our Ultimate Eurovision, check it out here: