Eurovision chat! [Here be spoilers]

[Miguel]

Ok guys, Eurovision 2008 is almost upon us, and the semi finals have been won and lost (Hooray for a buy, in every sense of the word!).

Discussion for Eurovision goes here, and if people want to post youtube links to entries (someone please find Ireland's, what on earth was that?) then go right ahead

[Kantark]

There's a video on the BBC News article about Ireland failing to qualify, here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7411958.stm

Shame, he had an LED display and everything.

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed herein are those of Rainbow Daydreamer (and in a couple of places her brother) and are not intended to disparage any otherwise lovely NCers who do not happen to share the same musical taste.


...THAT is the qualifying list? They got rid of the amiably ridiculous Maltese entry but kept the Ukraine's horrible dance-urban hybrid? Finland are in with the same trick they pulled two years ago, but Cyprus, who I had predicted would make the top quarter of the leaderboard, are out? And Ireland are out but Spain are still in?! I wonder what the brother is going to say about that after his comments the other night...

Me: (over MSN) Funny how Spain are pulling exactly the same stunt as Ireland but without the turkey.
The kiddo': Oh, come on. That guy pretty much IS the turkey.

As things stand, my vote is going to (capital-T) Turkey, one of the few genuinely good songs on the list, but I haven't ruled out casting a couple of extra "strategic" votes (i.e. for songs I suspect the country I'm in will vote for, thus reducing the chance of our points going to some idiot with a microphone) if necessary. (For his part I know the kiddo' is voting for Azerbaijan now the turkey's out.) I hate to think how much it will cost me to vote from France, to an international TV programme, with a British mobile.

I probably won't enter the Eurovision Song Contest Contest, being paranoid-protective of my Neopets account, but good luck to all who are.

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice a bit of a 1990s feel running through the entries this year (with the exception of the UK and France who both appear to be stuck in the seventies)? Nostalgia (heck, I know I'm nostalgic for the whole darn' decade) or is the ESC permanently about ten years behind the fact?

ETA: *AND* Estonia are out? Does nobody appreciate amiable silliness at Eurovision any more? And if so, should we warn Terry Wogan?

[adi_gallia]

but Cyprus, who I had predicted would make the top quarter of the leaderboard, are out?

Did you see her perform at the semi-final? I think she was off key and it didn't stand out.

I can't believe I've become so interested in Eurovision this year, usually it's background TV for me, but this year I've been so into it that I listened to some of the other songs before the semi-finals just because our song is that bad.

I am surprised, but very pleased that Ireland didn't qualify as that was too stupid to even be considered. I hope Ireland sort themselves out next year, they used to be the best at Eurovision.

As for your dismay about Estonia, a novelty act, being out, there's always Latvia, Spain and Croatia to look forward to. Nothing says Eurovision like Pirates, a comedy character and a 75 year old man trying to rap.

I wanted Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta and Andorra to qualify, they were some of my favourites and I thought Andorra or Malta were potential winners. I really thought the performance from Bulgaria would be enough to put them through and I thought Switzerland would make it.

Overall I haven't been too pleased with who has and hasn't qualified. Germany, Armenia, Iceland, Sweden, Ukraine, Greece and Norway are the only entries I am supporting. No Angels (the German representatives) are quite bad live, so realistically there are probably only 6 performances I will enjoy on Saturday.

I would really like Norway to win, she is the best vocalist there and she has the coveted last spot to perform, but I think it will be between Ukraine, Armenia and Russia for the win. I'd be happy if one of the first two won it, but not Russia. I could rabbit on about this contest and the entries for longer, but I think I'll give in for now.

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

but Cyprus, who I had predicted would make the top quarter of the leaderboard, are out?

Did you see her perform at the semi-final? I think she was off key and it didn't stand out.

No, I didn't. Oh, that makes sense then. The bad old Jemini factor. It wasn't that I was into her song in particular, but I figured it might well be one of my strategic votes.

I am surprised, but very pleased that Ireland didn't qualify as that was too stupid to even be considered. I hope Ireland sort themselves out next year, they used to be the best at Eurovision.

Oh, I come from a nation
What knows how to write a song...
Oh Europe, where, oh where did it all go wrong?

As for your dismay about Estonia, a novelty act, being out, there's always Latvia, Spain and Croatia to look forward to. Nothing says Eurovision like Pirates, a comedy character and a 75 year old man trying to rap.

Is Croatia's entry a novelty act? I assumed he was on the straight-up. Perhaps I've had too much listening to French radio-- in the 1960s a lot of their songs sounded roughly like that, perhaps without the synthesisers.

What baffles me slightly is why there are semi-finals at all. If the TV stations wanted the songs to get more exposure they could play them in advert breaks (which everyone but the BBC has, right?) Assuming one Eurovision song is three minutes or so long, they could easily fit fifteen into an hour. I count seventeen disqualified entries. So they're basically taking several hours, over two nights, in order to avoid having to add an extra hour to the programme. Do they really have that little confidence in our collective song memory?

I'll try and remember the Eurovision "chocolate game" we played at university. I call it a game, it's not a game, just an excuse to eat lots of chocolate. You need a bowl of small chocolate sweets and ESC-watching experience. Basically, you just grab chocolate every time something apparently improbable but horribly predictable happens. You can also make bingo cards that way.

[adi_gallia]

As for your dismay about Estonia, a novelty act, being out, there's always Latvia, Spain and Croatia to look forward to. Nothing says Eurovision like Pirates, a comedy character and a 75 year old man trying to rap.

Is Croatia's entry a novelty act? I assumed he was on the straight-up. Perhaps I've had too much listening to French radio-- in the 1960s a lot of their songs sounded roughly like that, perhaps without the synthesisers.

What baffles me slightly is why there are semi-finals at all. If the TV stations wanted the songs to get more exposure they could play them in advert breaks (which everyone but the BBC has, right?) Assuming one Eurovision song is three minutes or so long, they could easily fit fifteen into an hour. I count seventeen disqualified entries. So they're basically taking several hours, over two nights, in order to avoid having to add an extra hour to the programme. Do they really have that little confidence in our collective song memory?

I'll try and remember the Eurovision "chocolate game" we played at university. I call it a game, it's not a game, just an excuse to eat lots of chocolate. You need a bowl of small chocolate sweets and ESC-watching experience. Basically, you just grab chocolate every time something apparently improbable but horribly predictable happens. You can also make bingo cards that way.

I don't think Croatia is technically a novelty act, but I don't know if it's totally serious. The old man who sings is called 75 Cents, which is surely a parody of 50 Cent or just a strange coincidence.

As it stands the final will be airing between 8pm and 11:15pm tomorrow, which is quite a long time. An extra hour might make it drag out even longer than it does already. If anything I think including every country would further ruin the contest, at least this way a country might not be able to vote only for it's neighbouring countries if they don't get through the semi-final.

The "chocolate game" sounds interesting, I assume you mean events like Cyprus and Greece exchanging 12 points? (though this year Cyprus isn't in it, but they still get to vote) That's one thing I don't agree with actually. Why do countries that didn't qualify get to vote?

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

The "chocolate game" sounds interesting, I assume you mean events like Cyprus and Greece exchanging 12 points?

Yep. We had a few country-specific ones but I'm darned if I can remember what they were. Also:

A country's representative attempting to sing the song they're voting for
Terry Wogan correctly predicting a country's top three votes before they're announced
A country that doesn't use phone voting (if there are still some) coming up with results that are completely skewed from the rest of the leaderboard
Presenters breaking into rhyme or dancing on stage (dancing during the winner's encore does not count)
The UK's highest vote coming from Ireland
Technical fault lasting more than thirty seconds during performance
Technical fault during voting (doesn't count if votes are declared void because of this) (take two sweets)
Someone in your group actually managing to get a vote through for your country (which isn't supposed to happen)
An English- or Germanic-language country representative attempting to deliver the results in French

[Kantark]

I am surprised, but very pleased that Ireland didn't qualify as that was too stupid to even be considered. I hope Ireland sort themselves out next year, they used to be the best at Eurovision.

Aww, I think it's a shame. Are you familiar with the episode of Father Ted entitled 'Song For Europe'? Basically,

Spoiler: open/close

the Irish television company is fed up with winning the contest and having to pay huge amounts of money to host it the following year, so deliberately picks a truly dreadful song to represent them - which goes on to score 'nul points'. Which seems to be what Ireland has done this year - I was really hoping the turkey would somehow capture the public's imagination and become the most unlikey, and most ironic, winner ever.

(If anyone gets a chance, watch it - it's one of the best episodes of one of the best sitcoms of the 90's. And contains 'My Lovely Horse' by the Divine Comedy, which I think really would make a good Eurovision entry with a little padding. And possibly some more sax solo.)

[adi_gallia]

Perhaps I would have found this years Irish entry funny if they actually had been doing that the last few years. But they haven't won since 1996 so it seems rather pointless, I'd have thought they'd want to send a serious act after coming last place last year. Perhaps this was a backlash for failing with a serious song last year - trying to send a message saying "what's the point of even trying any more, we'll fail whatever we send these days". If so, look out for the UK sending Sooty and Sweep or the Tweenies next year.

[EofS]

I still feel betrayed that we're not sending Bill Bailey. Is there any good reason not to? You'd pick up a handful of votes from the few countries which vote based on merit, the countries which take Eurovision seriously would hate it (what's different there) and the countries who think it's all a load of balls will be able to have a laugh. Hell, he wouldn't even need to write something new, Das Hokey Kokey probably has reasonable international appeal. Or Docteur Qui could become the first time France has ever given the UK Douze Points.

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

I read through the entire Wikipedia article on ESC, and didn't find the answer to a question that's always rather perplexed me: why do we always enter new or obscure artists? I'm sure it's thrilling for them, but other countries don't have the same commitment to giving new artists an exciting day out: Russia entered T.a.t.u. when there wasn't a Western country that hadn't heard of them, and from what I can see Greece have thrown in a few singers so well-established that they're somewhat of national treasures. Yet on the few occasions when we've entered a non-upstart, they've been someone obscure trying to get their career back. Why? It's not as if the UK is so bereft of talent that we have to grab the first person who puts in their CV. Why has the UK never fielded (to take the widest random grab of pop/ESC-material talent I can think of right now) Lily Allen, Steps, Dizzee Rascal, James Blunt, the Stereophonics, or the Crazy Frog? Is it some sort of vague, twisted sporting notion of giving the other little countries a chance?

Are you familiar with the episode of Father Ted entitled 'Song For Europe'?

So I was not the only one who thought of this!
As for a novelty entry winning, in my opinion if that was going to happen it should have happened last year to Verka Seduchka. Bloomin' Russian journalists.

[Kantark]

I read through the entire Wikipedia article on ESC, and didn't find the answer to a question that's always rather perplexed me: why do we always enter new or obscure artists?

I think it's partly a credibility thing (as you say, it's only artists that are trying to resurrect their careers that appear 'desperate' enough to go for Eurovision) - e.g. I can't see a band like the Stereophonics going for it given its extremely kitsch and cheesy image. It hasn't always been this way - Cliff Richard took part after he was famous, though you could argue the contest had a more credible image then. There were serious rumours that Morrissey had been approached to write (but not perform) our entry last year, which would've been a bit surreal. And the last time we won the song was sung by Katrina and The Waves, who had previous succes in the charts - albeit pretty much a one-hit-wonder falling into your 'obscure' category.

Partly, also, I don't believe that standard Anglo-American style pop songs do all that well at Eurovision nowadays. A lot of countries are fed up with us walking all over their musical heritage as it is Over the past couple of years there's been less of the cheesy Steps/Pete Waterman-type songs being successful and more unusual tracks like Lordi and Serbia's entry last year (which was a more traditional ballad) doing well.



...and I second E - Bill Bailey would be brilliant!

[daisybell]

I've just listened to Denmark's entry, and the main phrase "All Night Long" is identical to the phrase "Sunny Day" from the Sesame Street theme music- the intervals between notes and the rhythm are exactly the same. It's most distracting. And then they've got the lyric "celebrate good times, come on" which is well known from Kool and the Gang's "Celebration". It seems to be a bit of a collage of other people's songs.

[EofS]

ALERT! ALERT! EUROVISION IS GO! I REPEAT, WE HAVE A GO ON EUROVISION!

For anybody who would like to join the Annual NC Eurovision Chat on M$N, poke me/Jazzy/RD/Miguel for an invitation. It's rather small right now, we need more mockery people!

[Kidnemo]

I didn't know we were going a chat this year ;-; sorry guys, I watched it with the fam anyway, it would be tricky to juggle.