Israeli contestant fails to reach Eurovision finals

Israel’s representative in the annual Eurovision song competition, singer May Feingold, failed to make it to the finals, which will take place Saturday night in Denmark, last year’s winner.

Feingold sang “Same Heart” in Thursday night’s semi-final.

Israel has failed to make the finals for the past four years.

The eventual winner is picked by juries and television viewers across Europe. The final tally for each country is a 50/50 combination of the telephone votes and tallies of a national jury. A country that received a good result in the telephone vote could still be left with no points in the overall tally if the jury gave its highest points to other contestants.

Strong contenders include Armenia’s Aram MP3, who fuses a traditional piano ballad with contemporary dub step beats; a haunting melody with traditional sounds from Azerbaijan; a bluegrass tinged World War I homage from Malta and Hungary’s New York-born singer Andras Kallay-Saunders, whose high-energy song about domestic violence could end up being a chart hit across the Continent.

Organizers say they expect 180 million television viewers this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.