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!
Through this series, we have been looking specifically at the last three entries of the chosen nation, however the nations with three entries have already featured in our Best of the Bunch posts! Now we will put the focus on the nations who have participated at least twice in the last three years, and although there are only two songs to vote for, we still want to know which is your Best of the Bunch! Today we are looking at Portugal, so once we recap the entries, it will be up to you to vote!
Portugal 2017
After some pretty average results in the competition in recent years, Portugal took a break from the contest in both 2013 and 2016, but little did they (or we) know that 2017 would be the year that the nation would finally break their non-qualification streak in style! Through a national final, Salvador Sobral was chosen to represent Portugal with the touching entry Amar Pelos Dois which in true Portuguese style was in national language. Not only did Portugal manage to breeze through to the final, the simple and at times quirky stage performance matched with Salvador’s incredible vocals helped bring the nation their first ever Eurovision win! Amar Pelos Dois clenched the Eurovision win with a mammoth 758 points.
Portugal 2018
In true Portuguese style, the nation managed to go from winning the contest to finishing in last place. At least this time they had automatically qualified to the final, and a last place in the final is just slightly better than a last place finish in the semi-finals! Through the same national final process, Cláudia Pascoal was chosen to represent the nation with the song O Jardim. A simple but elegant stage performance with pitch perfect vocals AND a home crowd still wasn’t enough to help this out on the scoreboard, as it finished in 26th place with 39 points.
So now you’ve seen all three two performances, it’s time to vote for your Best of the Bunch!
If you want more Best of the Bunch from Portugal, check out our original series:
If you want to check out who made our Ultimate Eurovision, check it out here: