How do I feel now that Sweden has won the Eurovision Song Contest yet
again? I feel probably the same as most people, that is to say, not a lot frankly.
How did I feel on Saturday night when I was at a Eurovision Song Contest party, wearing a costume to support my randomly allocated team (yaaaaay Georgia), watching the votes coming in and sitting on the edge of my seat when Russia was two twelve point votes ahead of Sweden? Well, considerably more engaged. And that's probably not because we had money riding on it, since Georgia had no chance when they used words like "oximated" in their song.
A lot of people will tell you that the UK doesn't take the Eurovision Song Contest seriously and that they don't care. But I think these people are lying. All the Brits I've ever met can at least converse on a basic level about how shit the entrants are and they wouldn't be able to do that unless somehow, somewhere they had watched the damn thing. For the longest time we had a presenter called Terry Wogan who drawled ironically, sardonically and sarcastically all over proceedings in his Irish accent and most people tuned in just for him, Brits love a good piss take.
He was replaced by Graham Norton, funnily enough another Irish fella who does just as much micky-taking as his predecessor. I've stuck a little load of golden moments from Graham here in the blog, the video is worth watching most at 2:20 when Albania, er, contribute.
The Swedish commentators tell you a lot of factoids in a dry, disinteresting fashion. I will say this though, they may have tried to emulate Graham a little bit and instead of sounding funny and dry they just sounded like they're bitching and slagging off the contestants. If you type in "Eurovision funny" into youtube you get a lot of Graham. If you type "Eurovision rolig" into Swedish youtube you get....a standard list of Eurovision songs. Nuff said.
Everyone left the party feeling like it was really great that Sweden won, also drunk. We mused a bit about why Sweden won. Was it political? Is it because Sweden is viewed neutrally? Maybe it's simply because the song was poppy, likeable and had the best accompanying graphics. Also the singer was good looking which helps.
In fact yeah, I'm guessing that because the song was poppy and crafted in the most generic fashion possible (Swedes being the masters of this as demonstrated by their consistently writing a large number of the songs in the contest and even choreographing some others) it won the Jury vote. But it DIDN'T win over the public, Italy did, by a long way. So perhaps Europe isn't so into shitty, repetitive pop as you might think, and actually prefer shitty opera warbling instead?
This table also handily shits on our drunken happiness that Russia was not as popular in Europe as Sweden, psshh yeah right. It helps if you have had a massive union of countries under your control at some point in the last hundred years. But not more than a hundred years otherwise they all hate you, right United Kingdom?
I realise you've now spent more time than you possibly bargained on reading an analysis of a song contest which has no bearing whatsoever on your life. But before you go I must point out this: the UK's number one choice was Lithuania's far-too-long onstage kiss and Poland's scraping-the-barrel-sympathy-vote wheelchair lady wearing a giant sail. Sweden, meanwhile, took their votes very seriously and nominated arguably the three most talented artists into their top ranks. Muse on that if you will, or you know, don't. It's only Eurovision after all!
How did I feel on Saturday night when I was at a Eurovision Song Contest party, wearing a costume to support my randomly allocated team (yaaaaay Georgia), watching the votes coming in and sitting on the edge of my seat when Russia was two twelve point votes ahead of Sweden? Well, considerably more engaged. And that's probably not because we had money riding on it, since Georgia had no chance when they used words like "oximated" in their song.
 |
| Google trend showing that people in England collectively googled "Oximated" because wtf? |
A lot of people will tell you that the UK doesn't take the Eurovision Song Contest seriously and that they don't care. But I think these people are lying. All the Brits I've ever met can at least converse on a basic level about how shit the entrants are and they wouldn't be able to do that unless somehow, somewhere they had watched the damn thing. For the longest time we had a presenter called Terry Wogan who drawled ironically, sardonically and sarcastically all over proceedings in his Irish accent and most people tuned in just for him, Brits love a good piss take.
He was replaced by Graham Norton, funnily enough another Irish fella who does just as much micky-taking as his predecessor. I've stuck a little load of golden moments from Graham here in the blog, the video is worth watching most at 2:20 when Albania, er, contribute.
The Swedish commentators tell you a lot of factoids in a dry, disinteresting fashion. I will say this though, they may have tried to emulate Graham a little bit and instead of sounding funny and dry they just sounded like they're bitching and slagging off the contestants. If you type in "Eurovision funny" into youtube you get a lot of Graham. If you type "Eurovision rolig" into Swedish youtube you get....a standard list of Eurovision songs. Nuff said.
Everyone left the party feeling like it was really great that Sweden won, also drunk. We mused a bit about why Sweden won. Was it political? Is it because Sweden is viewed neutrally? Maybe it's simply because the song was poppy, likeable and had the best accompanying graphics. Also the singer was good looking which helps.
In fact yeah, I'm guessing that because the song was poppy and crafted in the most generic fashion possible (Swedes being the masters of this as demonstrated by their consistently writing a large number of the songs in the contest and even choreographing some others) it won the Jury vote. But it DIDN'T win over the public, Italy did, by a long way. So perhaps Europe isn't so into shitty, repetitive pop as you might think, and actually prefer shitty opera warbling instead?
 |
| Thx Wikipedia as usual |
I realise you've now spent more time than you possibly bargained on reading an analysis of a song contest which has no bearing whatsoever on your life. But before you go I must point out this: the UK's number one choice was Lithuania's far-too-long onstage kiss and Poland's scraping-the-barrel-sympathy-vote wheelchair lady wearing a giant sail. Sweden, meanwhile, took their votes very seriously and nominated arguably the three most talented artists into their top ranks. Muse on that if you will, or you know, don't. It's only Eurovision after all!
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