Ok Saturday was the kitsch highlight of the year with the airing of the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest. A competition to find the best song in Europe (and apparently Israel - no idea why). Each country hosts a competition to find the best original song, for a given year, to represent them in this annual Fiesta. Unfortunately it kind of had its heyday in the 70's when its most famous winner, Abba, won with Waterloo. In '88 Celine Dion even won it with an entry in French for Switzerland. In those days each country had a jury of 12 music officianados who actually listened to each entry and voted on the merits of the music. Since then, due to escalating costs, it has been thrown open to the public to televote for the most popular, rather than the best, entry. The fall of the Wall and the admission of eastern block countries has taken a lot from the earnestness of the competition (it was there once - I remember) as all the eastern block countries vote for each other now and the best song very rarely gets a look in. Certainly the countries of western Europe haven't a hope. That said the top 5 were all reasonable songs but there were a LOT of very silly songs too!
However, as extremely silly as it's all become, it's still worth a watch as 25 counties try to outdo each other in spectacle. It's long since been worked out by quite a few Eastern block countries that to catch the votes - you gotta get a gimmick!
This is the Latvian entry for this year. I chose this one as an example because I actually laughed out loud in the middle of it. Watch out in the second (possibly?) verse when chief Pirate waves his cutlas with menace!
This is Pirates of The Sea - Wolves of the Sea the 2008 Latvian entry to Eurovision (not Panto in case you were wondering) - Seriously! This came 12th!
As the Last "Tenku Yoroop!" was heard my hubby T, leaned over to me and said,
"D'you know - I'm not entirely sure those were real Pirates!"
Anyway this was the UK entry - it came last. Judge for yourselves which is the better song!
This is Andy Abraham - Even If.
Apologies for the quality - blame YouTube!
6 comments:
Does Terry still present it - please say, no!
The Latvian entry appears to be no longer available - so comparison is out of the question - but if it was anything like the Ukrainian (or was it Georgian) one which won a couple of years back, then say no more!
Frightful thing, Eurovision! ;-)
Vanilla -Terry did present it yes, with his usual dry wit - but even he is sick of it. He's talking about stepping down now. That Latvian link is sticky - sometimes it appears sometimes it doesn't. It's pure theatre. As I say, I found it funny but you might not want to waste your time! ;0)
I thought it might be interesting for our American friends. You've got to admit - it's very European!
Oh. My. God.
MAKE IT STOP!!!
Seeing as how my ethnicity is somewhere around three-eighths Lithuanian, I had to check out their entry. Dear Lord.
Thank you for that brief tour of Hell, Jane.
Pete - I am SOOO sorry! I hadn't looked at the stuff that didn't make the final - and given how awful some of the stuff that did make it was, I was right to avoid the rest of it. That Lithuanian one made me want to eat a cyanide sandwich!
But believe it or not that's why I love this trashy event.
The Irish entry was inspired - totally taking the piss out the whole thing, but I think you might need to know all the history of the event to get it. The singer is a puppet. He's the worst excuse for a puppet you've ever seen called Dustin and he's a turkey. He's an institution in Ireland. The biography in the site says it all!
It is awful - but it's tongue is firmly and warmly in cheek.
Background info Ireland has won the contest more often than any other country and when it hosted it in the early 90's the interval act was Riverdance - that's how it was launched on the world! Also in the scoring system the highest score that can be awarded by a country to another is 12 points or douze points
A link to Dustin the Turkey!
Dustin rocks. Thanks for the link. :-)
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