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!
I know what you may be thinking, there aren’t three entries to recap in today’s post and you’re right. Today we are concluding our Best of the Bunch: The Trials series with Russia, a nation that has only participated twice in the past three years. We didn’t want them to miss out, so although there are only two entries, we still want to know which song is your Best of the Bunch! Once we’ve recapped the entries, it will be up to you to decide on your Best of the Bunch!
Russia 2016
Let’s start our journey on a high, and for Russia, it wasn’t uncommon to finish in the Top 10 at Eurovision and 2016 was no exception to that. Sergey Lazarev was chosen to represent the nation with the unique pop song You Are The Only One. Upon the release of the song, Sergey received a lot of support from fans and became one of the favourites to take out the competition, but little did we know that Russia would be bringing one of the most memorable stage performances to the contest. Integrating the led visuals into the choreography is impressive enough, but then we see Sergey ‘climb the wall’ and it looks as if he is floating in the air. This was certainly enough to impress voters, qualifying into the final in 1st place. In the final, Russia ended up in a very respectable 3rd place with 491 points.
Russia 2018
It was ‘expected’ that Russia would compete at Eurovision 2017, however as many of us know, withdrew from the competition even after selecting Julia Samoylova with the song Flame is Burning. She returned in 2018 with the song I Won’t Break, and with Russia’s flawless streak at Eurovision since the introduction of the semi-finals, the pressure was on not to break this streak! Much like their previous entry, big props were used to elevate the performance, but this time around, Russia weren’t as lucky. The song finished in 15th place in the semi-final with 65 points, marking the first time that Russia had failed to qualify.
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 Russia, check out our original series:
If you want to check out who made our Ultimate Eurovision, check it out here: