Photos & Video by Edward Till

The annual London Eurovision Party took place at Cafe De Paris in Central London on Sunday 17th April. The show featured 18 artists from this years contest, including Amir from France, Zoë from Austria and of course Joe & Jake from the UK, plus 4 special guests, Aminata (Latvia 2015), Selma (Iceland 1999 & 2005), Eleftheria Eleftheriou (Greece 2012) and Destiny (winner of Junior Eurovision 2015 from Malta).

The evening, presented by radio presenter Paddy O’Connell & Nicky French (UK 2000) began with Ireland’s Nicky Byrne and his entry Sunlight. Vocally, he sounded good and warmed up the crowd well. Next up was Kaliopi from Macedonia and her song Dona. Kaliopi really played up to the crowd and gave a near perfect performance. Poli Genova from Bulgaria was up next. Her song If Love was a Crime got the crowd dancing, and everyone joined in for the chorus in Bulgarian. The Maltese team came next with the 14 year old Junior Eurovision winner, Destiny, performing her entry Not My Soul, followed by this year’s Maltese singer Ira Losco and her song Walk On Water. Ira knows how to work a crowd and everyone loved her performance.

Ira was followed by Barei from Spain and her song Say Yay! The high energy number worked perfectly in the venue and the crowd loved it. Next keeping the energy up was the first band of the evening, Minus One from Cyprus performing Alter Ego. Selma came next with both her Eurovision entries, If I Had Your Love (2005) and All Out of Luck (1999) proving that good Eurovision entries never go out of style. Montenegro’s Highway performed their entry The Real Thing next. Although the performance was good, the song just didn’t seem to work as well as the others of the night.

Zoë from Austria was a clear fan favourite of the night. Her performance of Loin d’ici brought the house down with the entire audience singing along in French, and their reaction brought Zoë to tears. Romania brought the rock factor to Cafe de Paris. Ovidiu Anton performed Moment of Silence perfectly, and it is a shame that Romania is no longer allowed to participate this year. Croatia followed with Nina Kraljić singing Lighthouse. Her performance was beautiful and she really made the most of her time on stage. Poland received a great applause thanks to the many Polish fans in the venue. Michał Szpak‘s vocals were near perfect and his performance of Color of Your Love was very good indeed.

Sweden’s Frans was next with If I Were Sorry. He seemed a little low-energy compared to the other contestants but the audience loved him. Italy’s Francesca Michielin came next. No Degree of Separation was beautifully sung but felt very subdued. Hopefully Italy will be able to bring more energy on the night of the Final. The Latvian delegation came next. Aminata sang her 2015 entry Love Injected which was very well received. Justs followed with his song Heartbeat which he performed well.

Another fan favourite for the night was Amir from France. Amir was very comfortable on stage and the crowd loved his performance of J’ai cherché. Greta Salóme of Iceland followed. Hear Them Calling worked very well and she should do well in Stockholm. Albania was next and Eneda Tarifa brought her entry Fairytale. She looked and sounded great and the audience responded with enthusiasm. Finally, the United Kingdom’s Joe & Jake were introduced by Scott Mills. They closed the evening with their performance of “You’re Not Alone“. Both Joe & Jake performed well, although they were on stage for too short a period of time. The audience would have loved another song by them and they really need to add a past Eurovision cover to their performances.

The concert was followed by a disco featuring some of the Eurovision’s greatest songs. The crowd was great and loved getting the opportunity to meet some of the performers. Thank you London for a great evening. See you next year.