Last week Washington’s Allen Stone became the first jury pick, earning a place in the Grand Finale with ‘A Bit of Both’ in the inaugural American Song Contest. Meanwhile NBC have confirmed New York’s ENISA has secured redemption for ‘Green Light’ of the inaugural American Song Contest. Tonight the second Semi-Final will see 11 acts compete for 5 finalist spots, as well as the remaining televote results from the Live Semi-Finals Premiere.
Enisa receives the Green Light!
During last weeks’ show, hosts Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg announced that New York’s ENISA and her song ‘Green Light’ was the second artist to receive redemption back into the Semi-Finals. Previously she had failed to directly qualify from the Live Qualifying Show 2 episode. However she earned redemption through the amount of online streaming and engagement her song had received. She was the second artist to achieve this after Wyoming’s Ryan Charles and ‘New Boot Goofin’.
American Song Contest – Live Semi-Finals Part 2
Tonight the second of two Semi-Finals, from the Universal Studio Lot in California takes place, with the help of hosts, Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg. In total 11 states/territories will compete. Below are the states and territories participating and their songs. Once again the jury will save their favourite to advance to the Grand Finale. Meanwhile the remaining acts have to wait to find out which four will advance in the combined jury and public televote. The latter consisting of TikTok, online voting and the NBC App.
Among the second set of acts this week is Qualifying Show 1’s jury winner, Tennessee, as well as streaming wild card New York.
- American Samoa – Tenelle – ‘Full Circle‘
- California – Sweet Taboo – ‘Keys to the Kingdom‘
- Connecticut – Michael Bolton – ‘Beautiful World‘
- Georgia – Stela Cole – ‘DIY‘
- Kansas – Broderick Jones – ‘Tell Me‘
- New York – ENISA – ‘Green Light‘
- North Carolina – John Morgan – ‘Right in the Middle‘
- North Dakota – Chloe Fredericks – ‘Can’t Make You Love Me‘
- Puerto Rico – Christian Pagán – ‘Loko‘
- Tennessee – Tyler Braden – ‘Seventeen‘
- Texas – Grant Knoche – ‘Mr. Independent‘
Live Semi-Finals Premiere – Washington into the Grand Finale
Last week the show kicked off with the remaining results from the Live Qualifiers Part 5 episode. Also advancing to the Semi-Finals are, Tenelle – ‘Full Circle‘ (American Samoa), Sweet Taboo – ‘Keys To The Kingdom‘ (California) and John Morgan – ‘Right In The Middle‘ (North Carolina).
At the end of the show Washington’s Allen Stone and his song, ‘A Bit of Both‘ was put forward to the Grand Finale by the jury. Tonight we will find out the fate of the remaining acts! In a change to the format, the jury results were revealed in a live scoreboard after each performance. Below are the full jury results ahead of being combined with the televote. Get to know all the participants further in our deep dive here.
| State | Artist | Song | Jury Result |
| Washington | Allen Stone | ‘A Bit of Both’ | 1 |
| Kentucky | Jordan Smith | ‘Sparrow’ | 2 |
| Rhode Island | Hueston | ‘Held On Too Long’ | 3 |
| Michigan | Ada LeAnn | ‘Natalie’ | 4 |
| Oklahoma | AleXa | ‘Wonderland’ | 5 |
| Alabama | Ni/Co | ‘The Difference’ | 6 |
| Montana | Jonah Prill | ‘Fire It Up’ | 7 |
| Massachusetts | Jared Lee | ‘Shameless’ | 8 |
| New Hampshire | MARI | ‘Fly’ | 9 |
| Wyoming | Ryan Charles | ‘New Boot Goofin’ | 10 |
| Colorado | Riker Lynch | ‘Feel The Love’ | 11 |
The American Song Contest will air on NBC, and begins at 8pm Eastern US time or 1am BST, 2am CET and 11am AEST.
Format
The American Song Contest premiered on March 21 and runs for eight weeks on (local) Monday nights. Atlantic Records will publish the songs at midnight in batches during each week. With 56 competitors – spanning the 50 states, 5 territories and Washington D.C, the acts will take part across five qualifying rounds. Each round will contain 11 acts with one round having 12. Following the qualifying rounds, 20 acts plus two wildcards will see a total of 22 acts in the two-part Semi-Finals and the 10 song Grande Finale. There, one state or territory will receive the crown of Best Hit Song on May 9th. Yes, during Eurovision week!
American Song Contest
With the American Song Contest confirmed, the Eurovision brand has crossed the Atlantic in a massive way. Of course, Netflix released a surprise hit film about the contest, titled Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga in 2020. You can read our team’s thoughts on the movie here. As well as this, Logo TV aired Eurovision across the pond from 2016-2018.Plans for the contest were in the making for a while, with Christer Björkman announcing in March that talks were ongoing.
The first reports about the ideas came out in May 2019, with both Björkman and Ola Melzig hosting a press conference. Ola Melzig is also involved in the first edition for 2022. Soon after the first announcement, organiser Peter Settman confirmed that multiple broadcasters had an interest in the rights, before NBC eventually secured the rights. Meanwhile 14 international broadcasters are showing the contest, including SVT, RTVE, NRK, among others.
Who are your favourites in the American Song Contest? Let us know! Be sure to stay updated by following @ESCXTRA on Twitter, @escxtra on Instagram and liking our Facebook page for the latest updates! Also, be sure to follow us on Spotify for the latest music from your favourite Eurovision acts. As well as YouTube to see our reactions to the news in the run up to the 2022 contest in Turin!
