Time-Warp Tuesday | A Portuguese nightamar
Where: Kyiv, Ukraine
When: 2005
Who: 2B
What: Amar
With their failure to make the top 10 in the last sixteen contests, and their recent withdrawal from Malmö, you could say Portugal is rusty on having a good time at Eurovision. Sure, they probably enjoy the meet-and-greets and interviews and parties and free booze as much as any other delegation, but when it comes to their results, things aren’t so good.
2005 was to prove a particularly tough year for them, as boy-girl duo 2B would discover. Not only did she pass out during rehearsals – footage of which is sadly unavailable – but when semi-final night arrived, their performance was plagued with technical problems which prevented viewers from hearing most of the lyrics (the fact that I personally don’t know a word of Portuguese anyway is irrelevant).
To top it all off, probably thanks in part to those pesky technical issues, 2B failed to qualify despite scoring top marks from France, Germany and Switzerland. I don’t know if a repeat performance a la Daniel Diges (which is supposed to be the protocol when there’s a dodgy mike situation or otherwise) would have made a difference to the result though, and I look back on that as a real shame. Apart from some questionable costumes and choreography, this is one of my favourite Portuguese entries. It’s an upbeat, catchy song with a typically Eurovision message…though I’m guessing the only message 2B wanted to send after the semi was an expletive-filled rant about unreliable technology.
What do you think? Was Amar total trash, or treasure tainted by a disastrous performance?
eurovisionbyjaz.com 
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