Euro-Visions

I'd like to talk about the Eurovision song contest which was on last weekend. In New Zealand we sometimes see and hear brief snippets of Eurovision, but never really more than a few seconds' footage of the winner, so this was my first chance to see the whole thing (the finals at least), not really knowing what I was getting myself into. Now, I knew that the contest is celebrated for its fairly cringeworthy songs and general cheese factor, but I really was not prepared for just how extreme that was. However, it didn't take long for me to realise that it was much more fun to embrace it and get behind those crazy Euros.

Your typical Eurovision song entry falls into one of two main groups: the hyper-dramatic power ballad and the high-energy dance-pop number. Personally, I prefer the latter, as they are usually more fun and most of the ballads take the whole thing a bit too seriously.

One of the main things I did not realise about the contest was just how political it gets. No one is allowed to vote for their own country, so everyone tends to give lots of points their neighbours and political friends, even if they are completely terrible songs. Fascinating really.

The pre-final favourites were Azerbaijan, Greece and Belgium, but this year's winner was Germany with a song called 'Satellite' sung by a girl called Lena who had a bizarre accent that sounded almost Australian. It doesn't really fit into either of the categories I described above, but maybe that is what set it apart on the night. Check it out:



It wasn't the worst song of the night, but I don't really like it. My personal favourites were the really weird and tacky ones like Moldova's neo-fusion rave-up, featuring a sax solo that will gnaw at your brain. Also it has some classic badly-translated lyrics:

There's no other time to make
In happiness you have mistaken
We have no progressive future
I know your lying nature.

Serbia also had an impressively crazy entry called Ovo je Balkan (English: This is the Balkans). I think they may possibly have been angling for the vote from the other Balkan countries. Sample lyrics: "Balkans, Balkans, Balkans! This is the Balkans! Come on!" Their song at least actually had a bit of an Eastern European flavour to it, and the music was apparently written by the same guy who did the score for the film Borat.

For the record, the UK came dead last, behind even Iceland who everyone hates at the moment. It was fair enough though, the British entry was just awful.