It’s been another eventful week in and around the Eurovision Song Contest, so let’s take a look back and see what happened, as it happened!

Monday started with the announcement that Lucky Lips had been given the producers’ wildcard to the Norwegian Melodi Grand Prix final – something that made our #esc community particularly happy, since the bluegrass group were the winners of our chat vote on the third semi-final! Meanwhile, it was announced that Despoina Olympiou’s entry for Cyprus will be presented as part of a dedicated TV show on February 14th. Does this timing mean it will be a romantic ballad? Rumours that the title will be “Na me thimasai” (Remember Me) are floating around the cyberverse, albeit still firmly with ^{[citation needed]} attached.

On Tuesday, Spanish TV revealed the songs which El Sueño de Morfeo (or “ESDM”, as they seem keen on calling them) will perform in the national final. Like last year with Pastora Soler, two songs are already pre-qualified – “Contigo hasta el final” and “Dame tu voz” – while a further two entries, “Revolución” and “Atrévete”, are currently competing in an online vote to determine the third and last finalist.

On the same day, fans around the continent were given the briefest taste of this year’s Georgian entry in a piece on Georgian TV news. Written by reigning ESC champion Thomas G:son, the song is called “Waterfall” and (as previously announced) will be performed by the duo of Sopho Gelovani & Nodiko Tatishvili. Based on the early part of the song shown in the clip below, it sounds like a fairly standard shouting-loudly-at-each-other duet so far – but we’d bet good money on there being a stonking key change and final chorus in there too.

With no finals or semi-finals until Friday night, it was always going to be a bit of a slow news week – so we were grateful to Andy from ESCKaz for reporting on the results of a poll on the proposed changes to the structure of Ukrainian entry “Gravity” on Wednesday. Among other things, 57% of those surveyed believe the song needs a third chorus at the end of the song, 40% are happy with the current BPM of the song, and 25% think the song should be performed higher and louder. Only in Ukraine…

There was a tabloid outcry in Sweden as all 32 of this year’s Melodifestivalen entries briefly leaked on music site last.fm – in strict breach of broadcaster SVT’s rules. Scientists continue to investigate the extent to which the Earth’s axis was shifted by this seismic shock. Meanwhile, it was announced that the final of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu in Finland would have a mixture of jury and televoting – albeit with no indication as to how the two would be combined – and no superfinal. (Hey, we said it was a slow news week.)

Fortunately, Greece came along to relieve the tedium. All four of the entries for their national final were released to YouTube, although – following SVT’s example? – this was preceded by a “leak” of some of the lyrics to each song. We particularly approved of the formatting on the lines “Alcohol, ALCOHOL, ALCOHOL is free” – some drinks are louder than others. And indeed it was the alcoholics of Koza Mostra feat. Agathonas Iakovidis who quickly established themselves as the bookmakers’ favourites to fly the Greek flag in Malmö. Fan opinion remains predictably divided.

More songs were released on Thursday as Ireland’s entries were previewed as usual on the Derek Mooney radio show. We were promised a more modern and youthful line-up this year – the “Jedward effect”, if you will – and several of the Eurosong contenders do indeed feature such radical elements as synths, effects, MTV-friendly videos, and BPMs in excess of 40. Which presumably means the one traditional ballad in the field will walk away with it.

Friday finally brought with it some streaming action for eager fans around Europe, as the Latvian preselection got underway with the first semi-final. There were no huge shocks in the voting, with Samanta Tina’s ballad “I Need A Hero” probably attracting the most fan attention (both positively and negatively), while quirky duo PeR closed the show with “Sad Trumpet”, in which a man rubbed his hands together for a minute then beatboxed while his partner jumped into the crowd to find a poor unsuspecting girl to accompany him on stage for the denouement. All perfectly normal.

However, the real highlight of the night came in the interval, as a choir of about 40 people blasted out a cover version of Rammstein’s “Stein um Stein”. In German. As you do. Unfortunately, your esteemed correspondent was out picking up some Chinese takeaway when this momentous event occurred, and it doesn’t seem to have made its way to YouTube yet – but we can at least spoil you with another of the interval acts, “DJ Mad Ant” (no, us neither) with their cheerfully insane updating of traditional Latvian folk song “Caur sidraba birzi gāju”.

And so to Saturday. Being February, this meant another night of juggling national final events and webstreams for the ESC fan community. The main focus was on the finals in Norway and Finland, naturally enough, which threw up one surprise winner and one not-so-surprise winner – click the links to our dedicated articles to find out which was which!

The Melodifestivalen adventure continued in Sweden, and SVT were big enough to front up to last week’s technical problems with a healthy dose of Scandinavian humour. Fans of out-and-out schlager might be of the view that the Swedish televoters were also having a laugh, with the likes of the Swedish House Wives (sic) falling by the wayside as experienced singer but MF first-timer Louise Hoffsten swam straight through to next month’s grand final with “Only The Dead Fish Follow The Stream” – leaving some bookmakers heavily out of pocket in the process, we suspect. There were fewer surprises when it came to the second qualifier, as last year’s nearly-man Sean Banan bulldozered all opposition with the frankly exhausting “Copacabanana”. Eric & Tone Damli’s charming duet and Anton Ewald’s dance-routine-with-a-song-as-a-footnote live to fight again in the Andra Chansen round.

Meanwhile, Latvia completed the line-up for next week’s Dziesma 2013 final – with PeR qualifying with a second song! – and the expert jury and televoters in Hungary selected a further six songs to progress to the next round of A Dal, including this rather lovely simple little number (albeit accompanied by slightly baffling background images):

And finally, the fact that our review is being published a little later this week means we get to include Sunday’s announcement – namely that Bulgaria will be represented in Malmö by Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov. In 2007, the drumming duo became the only act to qualify for the final in Bulgaria’s ESC history to date, ultimately racking up an impressive 5th place with “Voda”. Will they follow the same formula of rhythm and wailing this year, and if so, will they finally return their country to a Saturday night slot following Sofi Marinova’s near-miss in Baku? Time will tell!

That’s all from another busy week of Eurovision activity! What will the week ahead bring? Well, a look at our Calendar shows that there will be finals on three consecutive nights, as Germany, Austria and Latvia select their entries for ESC 2013 – watch out for our editor Felix’s big preview of the German show. Meanwhile, the selection processes in Sweden and Hungary continue, and there’s the first semi-final in Eesti Laul, which tends to offer up some great entertainment and off-beat melodies. Whatever you watch this week, don’t forget to join us in the #esc chat to discuss it all!