Eurovision Song Contest
Last year we wheeled in Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to see if that would help. It didn't.
This year we tried a song written by Stock and Waterman, ie two-thirds of the hit-making machine Stock, Aitken and Waterman but judging by the resulting song I decided that it was, perhaps, Mr Aitken who made all the hits.
I put it on this blog when I first heard it and I wasn't exactly championing its cause then - it seemed to me to be badly-written Europop and actually I didn't think our poor singer Josh did too well with the last note this evening either - - mind you, it was a blessing in that it was the last note.
I did like the "flash mob" dancing in the middle of the contest tonight(why was London so rubbish at it compared with everywhere else?). And someone from the audience got onto the stage during Spain's rather strange offering, which meant that they got to thrill us with it all over again.
But the voting was totally predictable, as usual - - all the middle-of-Europe countries voted for anyone they want to be friends with. And nobody cares about the Royaume-Uni, or United Kingom, which is the Euroname for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Let's face it, nobody likes us and we're a Victorian irrelevance.
Mind you, at least we didn't get booed, like Russia did every time they got a few points.
The presenters from the different countries who give the votes do tend to seize their one minute of international fame and say things like "As a singer myself, I want to say that they all did a great job." WE DON'T CARE! JUST GIVE THE VOTES!
In the end Germany won, with a bouncy song sung by a pretty young girl called Lena. I quite liked it and I quite liked Lena as a singer even though every word was pronounced in a totally different and entirely random manner. She won a contest to sing it, apparently, and it's already well-known in Europe.
But then she was interviewed in the middle of all the votes coming in and was very, very annoying indeed. Though perhaps she was a bit tipsy. She did seemed very surprised that she had to sing again at the end, though I'm sure it might have been mentioned once or twice in rehearsals that this is what would happen if you won.
Anyway, here she is.
The song is called "Satellite" which is exactly what Britain is as far as this contest's concerned - - we're kind of circling round the edge of it and our glory days of Sandie Shaw and Puppet on a String are well and truly over.
Did I mention our position on the board? Yes, bottom. Belarus with their exciting opening-butterfly frocks kept us off the bottom spot for a long time but finally they staggered above us near the end.
The nations have spoken to the United Kingdom and their message is this.
"In the Eurovision Song Contest, Eurubbish."
Still, there's always next year. I expect we'll do much better then. Hah.
This year we tried a song written by Stock and Waterman, ie two-thirds of the hit-making machine Stock, Aitken and Waterman but judging by the resulting song I decided that it was, perhaps, Mr Aitken who made all the hits.
I put it on this blog when I first heard it and I wasn't exactly championing its cause then - it seemed to me to be badly-written Europop and actually I didn't think our poor singer Josh did too well with the last note this evening either - - mind you, it was a blessing in that it was the last note.
I did like the "flash mob" dancing in the middle of the contest tonight(why was London so rubbish at it compared with everywhere else?). And someone from the audience got onto the stage during Spain's rather strange offering, which meant that they got to thrill us with it all over again.
But the voting was totally predictable, as usual - - all the middle-of-Europe countries voted for anyone they want to be friends with. And nobody cares about the Royaume-Uni, or United Kingom, which is the Euroname for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Let's face it, nobody likes us and we're a Victorian irrelevance.
Mind you, at least we didn't get booed, like Russia did every time they got a few points.
The presenters from the different countries who give the votes do tend to seize their one minute of international fame and say things like "As a singer myself, I want to say that they all did a great job." WE DON'T CARE! JUST GIVE THE VOTES!
In the end Germany won, with a bouncy song sung by a pretty young girl called Lena. I quite liked it and I quite liked Lena as a singer even though every word was pronounced in a totally different and entirely random manner. She won a contest to sing it, apparently, and it's already well-known in Europe.
But then she was interviewed in the middle of all the votes coming in and was very, very annoying indeed. Though perhaps she was a bit tipsy. She did seemed very surprised that she had to sing again at the end, though I'm sure it might have been mentioned once or twice in rehearsals that this is what would happen if you won.
Anyway, here she is.
The song is called "Satellite" which is exactly what Britain is as far as this contest's concerned - - we're kind of circling round the edge of it and our glory days of Sandie Shaw and Puppet on a String are well and truly over.
Did I mention our position on the board? Yes, bottom. Belarus with their exciting opening-butterfly frocks kept us off the bottom spot for a long time but finally they staggered above us near the end.
The nations have spoken to the United Kingdom and their message is this.
"In the Eurovision Song Contest, Eurubbish."
Still, there's always next year. I expect we'll do much better then. Hah.
posted by Daphne at 1:05 am
5 Comments:
I still remember the last time we won which was 1997. That was my last year at university and I was at a fancy dress Eurovision party (dressed as a vicar). Was good fun as we all had far too much to drink and we did actually win that year so had even more reason to celebrate.
I didn't really follow any of it this year but am surprised that with the bands this country is able to churn out commercially that we keep doing so badly.
Wiki says we are joint 2nd in terms of how many times we have won it (5) and that we have come 2nd 15 times which is more than any other country. And Ireland won it 92, 93, 94, 96 so their luck also seems to have run out.
I think the UK coming 5th last year was a pretty good achievement considering our previous disasterous run.
I think the main reason for the contrast between this year and last year is that Andrew Lloyd Webber actually went around Europe promoting the song and getting it aired lots before the contest. This year, there was no such publicity.... curious.
I am ashamed to admit that I watched the whole Eurovision show. Our song was awful and our singer was an unknown nineteen year old lad. Why can't they bring in one of our country's big musical guns? This is the country that more or less invented pop music and from time to time breathed refreshing new life into it. Let's have Elton John or Lily Allen, David Gray or The Stereophonics, Adele or Def Leppard, Tom Jones or Charlene Spiteri but no more bloody Joshes!
Because I didn't watch Eurovision and because I wanted to be sure for myself how terrible the UK entry was, I went back to your blog post predicting our nil points result so I could listen to young Josh. I had completely forgotten I had listened to it via your blog before. This is the comment I put on that post:
'Arrghh! That is so horrible I couldn't watch more than about 90 seconds and why were those poor girls 'dancing' (well, moving) with their vests tucked into their gym knickers?'
I stand by every word of that but don't think I lasted even 90 secs this time (and I didn't recognise it at all).
Is there always next year? I thought the bottom few got thrown out since there are so many countries nowadays.
Julie paradox
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