So... Eurovision Happened

[D-Lyrium]

At least a "good" pop song won (other than a really crappy one like that year Russia won). I like Azerbaijan too, though Ukraine were awful and I have no idea how they got that high just off the normal Eastern Bloc votes (idiots like Belgium helped, I guess ).

 

Clearly Greece and Romania got screwed though. They'll go on my "all time favourite Eurovision songs" list. ¬_¬

[LoNdOn]

Not like the days when my Nana's cousin was winning it for the UK!

[Fleisch]

<p>Oh good we can make that every year since I was born I've not watched it. The competition means nothing as the votes are more politically driven than actually about how good the songs are.</p><p> </p><p>

Disclaimer: By good I mean the least rubbish as opposed to actually "good"!</p>

[D-Lyrium]

Meh, they're not ALL political. I mean, it's true enough to say that the only countries in serious contention these days are in Scandinavia and the east. Western countries barely stand any chance at all. But it's not as political and 'fixed' as people like to make out.

 

Usually it'll be:

 

A genuinely good song, or perhaps two, will get one of the three big scores.

Either the 12 or the 10 go to your friends IF the song wasn't terrible. If it was terrible, they can nearly be guaranteed one of the 7-1 scores (unless you're Sweden this year apparently, ouch! And NONE of the French-speaking countries gave France ANYTHING).

 

It's not like it used to be where I often wondered if anyone bothered listening to the songs at all.

 

So usually at the end the top five will be the actual best songs, usually with one Eastern Bloc country doing much better than the song deserves due to politics (Ukraine this year). Western countries will get bugger all unless the song is truly amazing. From #5 down it's basically a popularity contest, although some of the countries with no real reason to vote for anyone else (Hungary, Bulgaria, etc) will usually vote pretty straight-up.

 

But yeah, there are some that can be relied on to always happen. Moldova and Romania will ALWAYS give each other big scores. Same with Albania and Italy, Belgium and Holland or Estonia and Latvia.

 

And Spain, Germany, France and UK can be relied upon to never get any points ever from anyone south or east of Poland (except Greece). Which happens to be most of the countries in the contest. ¬_¬

 

UK and Ireland tend to only give each other big points if the song isn't crap.

 

So yeah... these days it's usually a credible top 5, with an eastern-bloc invader who usually doesn't belong there, and then it's the positions that don't matter that are politically driven.

[sebsplex]

<p>I was surprised Ireland's song bombed as badly as it did.</p><p> </p><p>

There's always a solid element of political voting, but sometimes I think people forget to take into account that some of the acts and songs used have considerable exposure in those neighbouring countries... like when we (UK)lavish points on Jedward <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/wink.png.686f06e511ee1fbf6bdc7d82f6831e53.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p>

I was mainly pulling for Greece and Malta, although Hungary's song was strangely catchy and soothing.</p><p> </p><p>

As for Ukraine's... I really didn't see what theirs had going for it besides the giant guy at the start.</p>

[Blackman]

<p>Watched the recap on youtube, and other than a waste of 20 minutes of my time it was another unremarkable evening I reckon.</p><p> </p><p>

You can literaly smell the winner each year. Why does it matter that Ukraine ended up 3rd with a sub-par song we happened to vote for? The winner's basically predetermined each year, especially now they've started doing semis. And the fact that we're always giving the 12 to The Netherlands often has to do with the fact their singers are popular here. Anouk, for one, used to have some immensely popular songs.</p><p> </p><p>

Romania's song didn't get screwed. It added some variety, but it would've sucked as a winning song. My personal fave would be Norway.</p><p> </p><p>

Germany's was really nice to my ears, but then again, Cascada always does. But it seemed to be composed of a bunch of tidbits from existing succesful songs ("Don't you worry child"?). It also used a lot of material from last year's winning song, almost like it was custom made as a copy and it feeled forced.</p><p> </p><p>

Hungary had a nice vibe to it too. Funny there were some really dubstep-like songs. A nice reflection of how crappy the whole thing's become nowadays.</p><p> </p><p>

Didn't actually hear our song until now, but it was quite decent and deserved its ranking. You'd believe our Italian-imported singer would get points from Italy but sometimes the sole factors for giving points are basically just the song being good. How many people actually vote anyway? I've never heard one of my friends voting for it ever.</p>

[D-Lyrium]

To be fair though, you just admitted you didn't even watch the show. You and your friends are unlikely to be the voting demographic. The people who vote for Eurovision are likely to be mostly the same people who vote for X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent or The Voice. Mostly female, often middle-aged women or pensioners, or bored students with nothing better to do.

 

Probably also more people in the eastern/Scandinavian countries, who I wouldn't say 'cared' necessarily, but paid more attention. Let's face it, in Western countries we joke about making a fuss over Eurovision, but in countries like Estonia or Lithuania, how many other times does the rest of Europe actually give a crap about what they're doing? I'd imagine it was quite a bit deal in countries like that, at least with the kinds of people that follow pop music generally.

[Derek B]

I watched Eurovision with a group of friends last night... we managed to avoid key spoilers and pretty much randomly picked countries to support beforehand that we'd end up drinking to every time they got points. Being half Danish, and assuming that the UK entry would be terrible (it was really generic) I went for Denmark... I don't follow Eurovision at all but the friend who convinced me to do this does and knew I'd picked a nation that my liver would regret. Lots of fun was had and I might learn not to blindly support Denmark in future. A pretty girl with a decent song... I was screwed as soon as she showed up!

 

I was pretty surprised that Ireland did as badly as they did, thought they'd get a pretty good number of points. Thought Finland would do better than they did too, their pop-tart seemed like the kind of thing that would get people voting even if the song did set women's rights back about 100 years. And the Azerbaijani entry was pretty much the definition of someone being friendzoned, we loved that here.

 

Oh... my friends were drinking for Azerbaijan, Norway, Greece and Italy... the booze supply seemed to be surviving pretty well, at least up until the voting when things went downhill pretty rapidly for the livers of everyone in the room. And there was much debate about who would try to steal the Norwegian entry home with them.... dayum!

[Jaysin]

EuroVision, is that thing Lordi won right?

 

Outside of them, has a nonpop artist won?

 

Kinda outgrew them, but they put on a heck of a show.

[D-Lyrium]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Jaysin" data-cite="Jaysin" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="36110" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>EuroVision, is that thing Lordi won right?<p> </p><p> Outside of them, has a nonpop artist won?</p><p> </p><p> Kinda outgrew them, but they put on a heck of a show.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Finland had a spell where they thought "right, everyone knows us as the Metal Capital of Europe, so we're bringing it to Eurovision!". Lordi in 2006, some crap Amy Lee knockoff in 2007, then Terasbetoni (!) in 2008. I think people got bored of it though, because Terasbetoni did even worse than the Amy Lee knockoff, and in 2009 it was some crappy techno/rap thing which was absolutely abysmal. ¬_¬</p><p> </p><p> But as for winners, you generally don't get much other than pop. Sometimes you get genuinely good pop, and some winners go on to have good international careers (Sandie Shaw, ABBA, Brotherhood of Man, Celine Dion, Bucks Fizz ¬_¬).</p><p> </p><p> But yeah, I'm pretty sure Lordi are the only winners that weren't actually pop or dance/trance/techno tunes.</p><p> </p><p> Also, only 20 non-English songs have ever won (compared to 28 English songs). Which is quite poor when you consider that English is the official language of 3/39 countries (and that's including Malta, for whom English is a joint-official language).</p>