image source: Instinct (Facebook page)

SongHunt 2017, our poll series to find the best non-winning national final song of the year, has come to an end: “Petale” by Instinct, from the Romanian preselection, has won the grand final!

Based on the votes of our chatters in the #esc chat and supplemented by our Last Chance poll, a total of 96 songs took part in the eight SongHunt heats between January and March, followed by four quarter-finals and two semi-finals. The 12-song final was open for the two weeks during and after ESC 2017 itself, and over the past week we have been eliminating one song every day until we got to tonight’s six superfinalists.

In a special event in the chat, our chatters voted in three rounds. Firstly, they chose their favourite of the three lowest-scoring songs from the public vote, which resulted in “Feel Me Now” by Ariadne going forward to the next round (with Holly Brewer from the United Kingdom and Inês Sousa from Portugal dropping out). Next, the four remaining songs were whittled down to two, which meant we said goodbye to Loreen and Roger Pontare from Sweden.

Ariadne and Instinct were then left to compete in the final duel, which ended up in a dead heat. According to SongHunt rules, we counted back to the previous rounds as the tie-breaker. As “Petale” had scored better previously, it was duly crowned the winner of SongHunt 2017!

Looking back at the full results for this year’s SongHunt, “Petale” actually achieved the highest chat score of any non-winning finalist during the respective national final show, so its victory didn’t come completely out of the blue. That said, it’s worth noting that “Statements” by Loreen received a higher average score during its Melodifestivalen semi-final – but that didn’t count towards the SongHunt master list as only finals are counted, not earlier rounds in the national selection process, hence she had to qualify for SongHunt via the Last Chance poll instead.

Here’s the reprise of the winning song and performance – many congratulations to Instinct, and we look forward to seeing which songs become our chat and poll favourites when SongHunt rolls around again in 2018!