http://www.eurovision.tv/gfx/artist/artist_greece_image.gif

Revive!

(This thread will be revived at least every 3 days for next 2 weeks)

Revive!

Listening to the UK entry now. Who the flip is Jessica Garlick? Oh - a PopIdol reject, might have guessed. Anyway, this'll nevah win. Also, aren't gospel choirs NOT ALLOWED in Eurovision? I can't remember a previous instance anyway.

Dude, why is this even considered un-hip in the first place?

(aside: which was worse - Angus Deayton's script on "Not Another Eurovision" on Wednesday night or the - admittedly bad - clips they showed in between? I'd say the former)

The Crotaian lady with the whip was cool

The Cyprus boy band had a mullet and copied N'Sync's dance moves

I voted for Russia...they had a young Michael Jackson, a genetically modified Nick Carter, a what's his name from N'Sync crossed with Peter Andre...and some other bloke...they were also called Prime Minister.

Malta should have won over Latvia. And JG was the best singer.

(The Greek guys looked really cool but the best was Lithuania - it sounded really Romo!)

Granted, I only care because I'm writing a "thing" about this "phenomenon", which seems to be turning into a piece about why Americans don't get it (though I might abandon that angle if I can't think of a better reason for this besides, "um, well, because I said so").

If you g00gle "Eurovision", you should find a site hosting MP3s of most of the entries (among other things).

Though there's some kind of semis/final nonsense going on isn't there?

Anyone want me to gmail them the Lebanese entry? It's Topham/Twigg stuff!

Tom, I guess that's happened the last 2 years - 25 countries in the semi-finals, & the top 10 vote getters perform in the finals 2 days later w/ 14 pre-determined countries (the Big Four - England, Spain, France & Germany, I think? - & the top ten finalists from last year).

I thought Lebanon WITHDREW, Ed - were they banned?

Fun facts: Serge Gainsbourg entered a song way back when! & KATRINA & THE WAVES won?!?!? (It's news to me, anyway.) (As is Celine Dion singing for Sweden!)

Ed - GMAIL ME SON!

As for other semi-finalists:

I love Vanilla Ninja to death, but "Cool Vibes" is crap. Best of the uptempo disco numbers is Lithuania, lyrically reminds me of Whigfield's "Gimme Gimme", the Icelandic one is REALLY EXCITING but gets boring away from the choruses. Norway should have no trouble with coming last this year with their COMEDY METAL THEATRICS. Macedonia's quite good, Bosnia/Herzegovina have sent bona-fide popular pop group Femminem (yes, really, they've had a number of hits in several ex-YU republics, including a REALLY good one last year whose name I can't spell). Moldova haven't sent O-Zone, sadly. Worst song in the qualifying is Austria, who've been dismal three years in a row and should be banned.

I think the site you mean is www.esctoday.com, Daver. The BigPoll! Last year it pretty accurately predicted a Ruslana win, but any fool could have predicted that.

1. Iceland (the return of the blessed Selma)
2. Hungary (NOX)
3. Switzerland (Vanilla Ninja)
4. Netherlands (Glennis Grace)
5. Romania (Luminita Anghel & Sistem)

Can't argue with the high placing for Greece - especially as it rhymes "fire" and "desire", as did last year's Greek entry. Same singer as Antique's "I Would Die For You" from 2002.

Iceland, though, could be their year. I thought Selma's last entry was highly overrated, mind.

Euro visions
May 12th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Where the Eurovision song contest goes, Europe tends to follow

WHICH cultural achievement best captures the spirit of Europe: the “Mona Lisa”, the “Moonlight sonata”, “Hamlet”—or “Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley”? No contest. In modern Europe it has to be the Swedish ditty that won the Eurovision song contest in 1984, whose cheery inanity captures the spirit of the annual pan-European event. Every year millions of Europeans tune in to Eurovision. This year's contest will be held in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, on May 21st. For those seeking evidence that Europe is more than a geographical expression, Eurovision is a rare example of a cultural event that engages the interests of people across the continent. T.R. Reid, a former London correspondent for the Washington Post, argues that the contest “is playing an historic role. Eurovision has become a celebration of Europeanness that strengthens the growing sense among 500m people that they all belong to a single place on the world map.”

So what does the contest tell us about Europeanness? First, that Europeans, for all their sophisticated self-image, cannot resist costumes that involve sequins, lamé and plunging necklines. Second, that nursery babble is the preferred pan-European language: the 1984 Swedish entry was in the fine tradition of an earlier British winner, “Boom-Bang-a-Bang”, and a Dutch one, “Ding Dinge Dong”. But nonsense is now giving way to English, which dismays those who want Europe to remain a bastion of linguistic diversity. Georgios Karatzaferis, a Greek member of the European Parliament, has asked the European Commission to take action against the “bastardisation” of the contest, and the triumph of “bad music and American words”, by forcing contestants to sing in their national languages. This was the rule between 1977 and 1999; since then, all contestants have been free to choose any language. This year's favourite is Helena Paparizou, a Greek compatriot of Mr Karatzaferis, who will be singing “My number one” in English.

Americans may appreciate the fact that Eurovision is often in their language, but find other features baffling, if not repulsive. Cultural conservatives would be struck by evidence of European moral degeneracy. In 1998 Eurovision was won by Dana International, an Israeli transsexual; in 2003, the most talked-about act featured a couple of Russian teenage girls whose performance involved fondling each other suggestively to a techno-beat. Janet Jackson's errant nipple seems tame by comparison.

But the biggest single lesson of Eurovision is that Europe's centre of gravity is moving east. The contest is being held in Ukraine this year because a Ukrainian won in 2004. Over the previous three years, the winners were Turkey, Latvia and Estonia.

The parallels with the European Union are obvious. The Eurovision song contest was the brainchild of Marcel Baison, a French music producer, who was an admirer of Jean Monnet. It got going in 1956 with a mere seven contestants; the Monnet-inspired European Economic Community was formed a year later with six countries. In both cases, membership was initially restricted to western Europe. Over time Eurovision and the European Union have both grown in popularity and membership. The EU now has 25 members; this year Eurovision has 39 contestants. Eurovision has expanded faster because it is easier to compose a mindless ditty and don a lamé costume than to pass the 80,000 pages of law needed to join the EU. But the new Eurovision entrants hope—and many old Europeans fear—that where Eurovision goes, the EU will one day follow.

New entrants to Eurovision, rather like new entrants to the EU, also embrace the contest with a naive enthusiasm. By contrast, as the song contest and the EU have both grown in size, the older members have become increasingly jaded. When Estonia won the song contest in 2001, the country's politicians, who were enmeshed in negotiating the finishing touches to their EU entry terms, seized upon the victory's symbolic significance. As the Estonian prime minister expressed it at the time, “we are no longer knocking at Europe's door. We are walking through it singing.” The Ukrainians, who are eager to follow Estonia into the EU, are sure to use their staging of Eurovision next weekend to underline their membership of a wider European family. In honour of the occasion, they have even dropped all visa requirements for EU nationals.

The Eurovision sceptics

While the new participants enthuse, older members of the family are getting distinctly cynical about the whole Eurovision thing. British television commentary is doused in irony and often draws attention to the way in which neighbours tend to vote for one another: the Greeks and Cypriots can always be relied upon to give each other high scores, and there is plenty of Baltic and Nordic solidarity. This goes to confirm the ingrained British prejudice that the odds in Europe will always be unfairly stacked against them. Indeed in Britain, the whole event is now regarded as a high-camp joke. A British contestant who scores the fabled nul points is likely to get far more attention than one who achieves respectable mediocrity.

Other western European countries also take Eurovision less seriously. The Irish, serial winners in the 1990s, now feign indifference. Denis Staunton of the Irish Times wrote in 2002 that trying to win the contest “seemed to jar with our new, nonchalant, national self-image.” The Italians, who gave Eurovision one of its few memorable songs in 1958 (later released as “Volare”), no longer bother to enter. As for the French, who won three of the first seven Eurovisions, they have not had a winner since 1977. The French referendum on the EU constitution takes place eight days after this year's contest. At a time when France agonises over its declining influence in the new, enlarged EU, it might be politic to let it win the new, enlarged Eurovision. And certainly to avoid a winner like “Waterloo”, Eurovision's all-time favourite, with which ABBA took the prize for Sweden in 1974.

If you call kneeling in front of each other and vaguely touching the ends of each other's hair for about 0.5 seconds "suggestive fondling", that is. Ooh, we were LET DOWN by that.

We applaud your insight.

This year's favourite, because NOT ONLY does she uphold her country's all-important "FYE-ya!"/"diz-EYE-ya!" rhyming convention for the second year running, but she ALSO scores extra points by appending a cheeky "take me HYE-ya!" for good measure. To say nothing of rhyming delicious, capricious and vicious in the first verse.

But not in a good way. And if it is a big joke now, that's partly as a result of (justly) getting the nul-points in 2003.

-- Kris England (Brasseye2...), May 15th, 2005.

"Ding-A-Dong"'s a lovely song and I continue to maintain that Nile Rodgers must at least have cocked an ear to its intro (cf. with "I Want Your Love").

"Ding-A-Dong"'s a lovely song and I continue to maintain that Nile Rodgers must at least have cocked an ear to its intro (cf. with "I Want Your Love").

-- Marcello Carlin (marcellocarli...), May 16th, 2005.

Yes, yes, a hundred times yes!