Winny Puhh - Meiecundimees üks Korsakov läks eile Lätti (Estonia)

Come on now, Estonia! How this isn’t the country’s official selection we will never know. Taking the farce metal of Lordi and dialling it up to eleven, veteran rockers Winny Puhh earn the distinction of having the single best live performance in the history of music. Bizarre costumes, gravity-defying stunts, electric editing and a pair of endlessly rotating drummers make this the finest reject of the bunch by a considerable distance.

Daze – We Own the Universe (Denmark)

In an ideal world, the presence of a top-hat wearing keytarist would be enough to seal a place in the finals. Alas, an ideal world this is not. While the Eurovision Song Contest is hardly the place to go for raw ‘live’ performances, might we suggest the wildly enthusiastic keyboardist / synth-player in the background here probably isn’t performing this cheesy Europop number 100% ‘in the moment’?

INCHEQUIN – Son Kez (Ireland)

With the Eurovision long-since having morphed into a delivery method for the most generic, characterless pop and novelty songs imaginable, a strong cultural identity has slid down the list of priorities. This Irish reject, however, is a bizarre mish-mash of cultural and musical influences (from Ireland to Turkey), with the cheap and sunny video confusing matters further. Still, probably a better song than the one we ended up with.

Swedish House Wives - On Top Of The World (Sweden)

These Swedish contenders attempt to answer the age old question of how many clichéd turns of phrase one band can fit into a single three minute song.

Debora C - Love-O-Holic (Malta)

This would almost be a harmless, ignorable pop song if it wasn’t for the baffling – and amusingly inappropriate – lyrics that offer an impressive array of substance abuse references. Is there anything more romantic than a repeated refrain of “I want to feel your love injection”?

Nicoleta Gavrilita - Freaky Thong (Moldova)

The title – illustrating at least one of the potential pratfalls when composing songs that aren’t in a country’s native language – says all that needs to be said here.