DW's Eurovision picks

Hats off! A jazz vocalist with a wonderfully throaty timbre - and a simple soul-pop-ballad with a nice hookline in the refrain. Many parts of the song sound like something I've heard before. Maybe that's why this is one of my favorites: I just feel right at home with this song.

Salvador Sobral's high and airy voice is accompanied by gentle violins, while his gestures and facial expressions are sometimes erratic; it's been said he cannot travel without his medical team. In this achingly beautiful love ballad, he seems authentically vulnerable. The song was composed by his sister Luisa, and he sings it in Portuguese.

The first time I heard this song, it moved me to tears. And it still does. This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard at the ESC. A soft, silky jazz ballad with enough strings to melt down the concert hall. A guy with a ponytail, feeling, voice and an idiosyncratic delivery. This one's my No. 1!

Catchy tune, melancholic harmonic progressions, dark voice: this song about a love that vacillates between flickering up and dying away gets under the skin. Blanche's performance is consistent and deliberate. Her voice always sounds the same, but anything else would have clouded the concise, unambiguous message.

Wow. Only 17, Blanche wends her almost apathetic sounding voice through a dark electro pop song. "City Lights" is cool, minimalist and yet impulsive: an absolutely fascinating mix. Blanche won't require many props onstage in Kyiv. All she needs is space. Belgium has served up a lot of first-rate material in recent years. I expect this one will get a lot of 12-point decisions.

With this year's surfeit of solo acts and ballads, this combination of singer Aleksander Walmann and Joakim With Steen, alias JOWST, is refreshing. Their recipe: rapid-fire text, a captivating melody and sophisticated electronic accompaniment that takes you through every available timbre. Towards the end, there's even a wacky stretch of polytonality. Vive la difference!

The ballad is captivating, soft and poetic, the female voice gentle over a dark and melodious, magnificently woven carpet of synth sounds. Maybe "Blackbird" will get lost among this year's many over-produced pop songs. Having not initially planned to compete in the ESC, the duo probably won't mind too much. We can definitely look forward to a nice, natural performance without superficial frills.

This stunningly attractive girl sings a song that - despite the sad subject - is infectiously upbeat. And afterwards, melody and refrain zing around in the brain. A stipulation at the French nationals was for at least 80 percent of the song text to be in the native tongue, and this one meets the specification - so at least there's a little more language variety at the ESC this time.

Hey, it's a band! With several guys! And they even play loud guitars. O.Torvald is the only ESC act this year that rocks, although only in the refrain. For that reason alone, I'm positively predisposed. The other thing is their appeal to peace, when they sing: "Let's find a place where there's no violence." I hope that "Time" earns the host country a spot in the Top 10.

Both song and singer were selected in a sophisticated procedure by the German television audience with European-wide participation. So after the German last-place finishes of the past two years, nothing can go wrong this time - right? The song has majority appeal, and this singer, self-assured, very professional and with nuanced vocals, will make her way no matter what happens in Kyiv.