There are certain things that we can always count on - after cold winter comes the Spring, day will follow the night, the battery in your watch will stop when you least expect it, the change given to a beggar is the one you will need later in supermarket and every May there will be Eurovision. I wrote about it previously (last year) when I enjoyed 2012's annual TV show and accordingly (and not surprisingly) had almost forgotten who was there - its a family entertainment that perfectly works as Saturday night fun and we shouldn't expect more than this. Decades ago it was actually truly music festival that reflected european tastes way back than, but in the meantime it became circus where visual part of performance overshadows everything else, generations and cultures clash in mind-boggling variety (who actually love this music? Older viewers nostalgically expect big voices and orchestrated ballads, kids want explosions and dazzling shows) and local neighbors vote for each other.
Of course I must admit that I am slowly turning into "old fart" who also unrealistically expect good singers and strong songs but reality is that I don't really get new pop music appeal and to me it sounds derivative, calculated or simply unimaginative. From zillion songs of last year Eurovision I truly remember just a few (Italy's Nina Zilli was a cute Amy Winehouse soundalike) and I always dread songs with local folk influences because this ethno sound is an old hat and nothing new but you can bet that some countries would always try to put some fiddles or bagpipes in their songs - and dress up their artists in century old costumes.
As croatian, I am always horrified with croatian entries because they reflect particular aesthetics that obviously work in our little country but sounds and look old fashioned and laughable to others. This unfortunately describes our own perspective and particular croatian pop culture input in general - to put it simply, there is hardly anything new, original or innovative about our music/movies that might look even slightly interesting to foreigners. Our movies are dry (or amusing only to local audience who would understand its humor), our music follows whatever trend happens in the west, I honestly don't see anything here that might impress anybody in London or Paris.
Some interesting,angry young artists ("Gustafi") are excellent and would leave far better impression than moth-eaten music we send as our representatives on Eurovision, but unfortunately "Gustafi" are not mainstream and mainstream composers usually push their favorites - last year Nina Badrić had limp pop song that got nowhere (Badrić is a perfect example of artist popular locally who has absolutely nothing interesting to offer to wider european audience, they have hundreds of singers like her).
This year Croatia again decided to show to the world our "culture and tradition" which means pushing modernized "Klapa" sound (male vocal group) - Croatians love this kind of music where guys are crooning gently and it is all nice and bla bla but "Il Divo" did it already so what's the friggin' point? Guys sing like a dream of course and their harmonies are beautiful, however this is EUROVISION and we need something catchy or impressive or bombastic to be at least noticed between thirty-nine countries, not depressing song about poverty ("Misery") sung by bunch of undertakers. The fact that this kind of music is very much loved in our Adriatic part of the country just shows that croatians have no clue about discrepancy between what they find interesting and what the world expect. Foreign commentators ridicule us already, calling our singers
"constipated and seriously depressed". If we send eccentric and happy band like "Gustafi" we would at least appear interesting.
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