I grew up watching Eurovision Song Festival and loved my old LP records with winners and favorites from different decades.Perhaps in a way it has influenced my music taste unconsciously since I always had soft spot for good old "kitch" - the word "schlager" that describes that particular european style of radio-friendly pop ditty always had fitted Eurovision perfectly although various countries have completely different opinion what it means good music - its simply one of the year's biggest nights of TV entertainment. I don't remember when was the last time I watched Eurovision without getting all upset about voting or winners or both - many times really good songs/performers end up completely overshadowed and politics rule as neighbor countries vote for each other, while winners are usually songs I hated. It shows that I am completely out of tune with what's popular and trendy perhaps. If you ask me,countries would sing in their own language and there would be no smoke bomb and SF effects, just live musicians.
Alas, nobody asks me so Eurovision is one big circus, TV spectacle where stages are bigger and bigger, singers are lost in acrobatic choreography and music is of absolutely no importance.
Last night I watched it again - after many years, since my job always has me somewhere on the other part of the world at this time of the year - and was enjoying it very much with usual degree of annoyance and wonder whatever happened to music. The spectacle had happened in Azarbaijan (!) and grand finale started with UK participant ENGEBELRT HUMPERDINCK who was joke back in the 1960s and even bigger now. He was utterly out of place with his old-fashioned ballad and looked simply ancient with his acoustic ballad which was actually not bad if you ask me, but it was creepy to watch him singing and the whole world agreed - he ended up really big loser on complete bottom of the list and UK media is now trashing the whole Eurovision like they don't care for it and it's just a joke (if they had won,they would celebrate for days).
After him there were few bland ditties than Albanian singer Rona Nishliu who looked like some out-of-space alien singer and wailed until I thought she would explode - it was bizarre experience and not much of the song but she left strong impression. Guy from Lithuania sang "Love is blind" and actually was blindfolded, hm. Than bunch of russian grandmothers dressed up like babushka's and they were cute but this was clearly a gimmick, not a song.
French singer Anggun was striking - not only her song was very strong Eurhytmics-like pop but she looked shapely and had three half naked acrobats jumping around her - the song was actually the first one when I listened. Than another favorite - Italy with leggy Nina Zilli who looked and sounded like Amy Winehouse - it was clearly a tribute to Winehouse and not bad at all. Estonia had a very good rock ballad titled "Listen" sung by young Ott Lepland and I really liked him, alone on the stage with just a beautiful voice and nice song. Another favorite was Germany with a gentle pop song "Standing Still" (Roman Lob) that had cool young guy singing radio-friendly pop hit,finally nice song. East european countries were of course embarrassment as they always use same old folk motives and it goes more and more bombastic, they always vote for each other and it's all terribly predictable. The only exception was Macedonia who had singer Kaliopi - she belted hard-rock ballad and was really charismatic though perhaps too witchy for this mainstream TV program but I thought she was very good, at least she was not wiggling her bottom in mini dress like bimbos from Romania, Greece and Cyprus.
Somewhere in the audience was wonderful Lys Assia who was the winner of the very first Eurovision in 1956 - she actually somehow got convinced to participate again but Switzerland wouldn't send her this time so she only graced the audience with her presence and was shown in close-up,what a nice lady. The winner ended up being some creature from Sweden with a high energy/dance tune "Euphoria" that to my ears sound like zillions other similar mindless "songs" always blasting in bars, just refrain and than more refrain and repeating forever, couldn't care less for that one. Russian grandmothers came second (proving this is all about circus) and Serbian ethno-pop third. Guy was interesting years ago when he first competed (that was probably the last time I watched Eurovision, in 2004) but now this was just re-hashed and lukewarm, if you ask me.
Favorites: France, Estonia, Germany.
1 comment:
This German feller is só cute!
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