My original plan was to write a post about this quickly yesterday, but a combination of being absolutely shattered and completely baffled by our entry left me unable to collect my thoughts on the matter in words.
I've had some sleep, some time to think about it, and some time to rewatch the video, I have my opinion all ready for you.
That guy is the biggest problem this song has.
He's a much worse singer than the woman, he's got much worse lines than the woman and the combination of his lines, his not superb singing and the fat that he's just okay to look at make him come across as a total dick posessive dick who has no faith in his girlfriend whatsoever and there's very little that she obviously sees in him.
I'm just talking in terms of the song.
In terms of what this man is actually like, I don't know, and I really don't care.
Although, he tries to skat. Oh, honey...
Apart from him and the lines he has, I kind of like this song.
Take the words out and it sounds like it could be a track in a game where Gordon Freeman from Half Life and Elizabeth from Bioshock join forces to stop time and space hopping Combine in a wide variety of settings.
As previously mentioned in the Eurosong 2015 Finalists post, occasionally countries have been known to sabotage their own chances of winning Eurovision.
This is usually achieved by sending an act so laughably bad that they have no chance of winning.
Heck for most countries, the act can be so bad that they won't even get into the final. The night everyone considers to be Eurovision proper.
(There are a handful of countries that always get into the final and we'll cover who they are and why they get a free pass in another post.)
Why do this?
Mostly it comes down to money.
Ireland is the prime example of this, although it has been known to happen with other coutnries.
As previously stated, Ireland is the most successful country in Eurovision history (something Irish-Americans never seem to be aware of, for some puzzling reason) and the 1990s was their most successful decade with three consequetive victories and another a couple of years later.
The 2000s, however were not kind, and this is largely due to self sabotage.
Ireland is not a rich country. Or at least it didn't used to be, the Celtic Tiger did a lot of work to rapidly improve the economic standing of Ireland in the world and even living standards in Ireland itself.
It wasn't so long ago that a scarily high proportion of people did not have running water in their homes.
To make this all even more depressing is that the Celtic Tiger only kicked in around the time that the Troubles ended. AKA The reason why a gun company throwing a hissy fit over Liam Neeson's ability to seperate the cool fantasy of firing guns at bad guys from the harsh reality that barely restrained gun ownership leads to people dying is so unforgivable.
If you're unaware of what the Troubles were like, and you're not easily thrown into a fit of abject depression at the cruelty and injustice of the world, I'd suggest doing some research on them.
It explains a lot about a lot of things.
So considering this, and considering that the economic crash put Ireland back onto a far more shaky footing financially than it had been the years previous, it was not financially viable for the country to keep hosting it.
Hence the self sabotage.
I mentioned Jedward before as self sabotage, and the performance was pretty dire, but it would be far from fair to call them the worst act Ireland has had to offer.
Heck, giving anyone the title of 'worst act from x country' is a horrid thing to do. Labelling them as self sabotage isn't great either, but come on, I showed you the performance, you saw how bad they were.
Jedward can do a heck of a lot better than that.
Anyway, I can show you a contender for Ireland's worst Eurovision act, and it's way worse than Jedward on just a conceptual level.
Yeah, that's a turkey puppet.
Yeah, the song is called 'Irlande Douze Pointe'.
And yes, it does sound like that.
After some reasearch, this is indeed a song that the people of Ireland voted for in Eurosong 2008.
How did RTE end up putting this song in their competition in the first place?
Easy, that's Dustin the Turkey. He was the star of a kid's programme called The Den from 1989 until 2010. On RTE.
Quelle surprise.
Or cad iontas, I suppose.
I've been watching Eurovision for a long time, and without a doubt, this is the worst Eurovision song I've ever seen.
Worse than Jemini in 2003 and they were actualfax out of tune the entire time.
Dustin didn't make it to the final, unsurprisingly.
Interestingly enough, self sabotage isn't an accusation that is thrown about all that much.
You'd think that any sufficiently bad song would end up with someone going 'yup, Latvia really doesn't want to win this year', but that's not really how it works.
There's a certain type of song that you see on Eurovision and while that would be considered terrible by the standards of the average native English speaker (for want of a better term), in Eurovision it's the bread and butter.
These are the kinds of songs that people watch Eurovision for.
There's a reason that the act below is Tumblr's go to example of Eurovision.
This may be bad, but it's not the kind of bad that's going to attract accusations of self sabotage, because it's Eurovision.
You can barely get more Eurovision than this.
In fact, you're more likely to be accused of self sabotage if you enter a song that's objectively better than those like this one.
Like Denmark's song from last year, which The Guardian certainly didn't rate.
Yeah, I can kind of see where they're coming from.
The accusations can come from within, like I mentioned previously about Eurosong 2015 and Johnny Logan's feelings about the time slot, and the UK's repeated failures.
Of course, there's no punishment for a country self sabotaging, but it is definitely a part of Eurovision history and tradition that it pays to be aware of, especially during the semi-finals.
Speaking of the UK's repeated failures, by the way, the winner will be announced after The Voice this Saturday on the Red Button.
The Australian act for the Eurovision Song Contest has been announced!
Unfortuately, it's not Kylie, but you can't have it all.
The act they're sending is Guy Sebastian, the 2003 winner of Australian Idol!
I don't think I've seen anyone in GQ look bad, have you?
He's had two number one singles and eight top ten albums, so he seems like a pretty solid pick for the competition.
According to the man himself, he hasn't picked a song yet, but he'll have to get a shift on, there's only two months left until he has to travel to Europe and wow us all with his Australian charm.
As always, I'll keep you all updated as soon as I know the news.
I was gong to have this week's post be about self sabotage, but the Eurosong 2015 winner was chosen on Friday, so it's time to announce on this blog who is the entry for on of our 'ones to watch' countries.
I would kindly ask you to imagine a drumroll as I tell you that the winner this year is... Molly Sterling!
I think they may actually be trying to win this year.
(I called it on the 'sad woman behind a piano' thing.)
Yeah, this won't do terribly, which shows that there is some desire to win, or at least do well, among the people of Ireland.
If not in RTE.
At least according to Johnny Logan.
This year Eurosong was done on the Late Late Show, which Mr Logan considers to be an attempt at self-sabotage.
We'll talk more about this in the dedicated self-sabotage post next week!
So, it's time to have a listen to the five Eurosong 2015 finalists and have a punt as to who the Irish Eurovision 2015 entry may be.
First up, Nikki Kavanagh with Memories.
She's got a good voice, I'll give her that. She could stand to enunciate more, as I had problems making out what she was saying at times.
Actually, when the song started I actually couldn't tell if she was singing in Irish or English.
So yeah, enunciate, woman.
The song itself is... Hmm. I'm not really sure what to say about it. There were parts of it that I really liked. The melody and the way it swelled, for example, but I didn't really care for the lyrics. Some of them were okay, but a lot of them were pretty hackneyed. This was not helped by the aforementioned enunciation issus.
In the scheme of Eurovision, this would be a middle lower song. It's not good enough to get into the top ten, it's not novel enough to get into the top ten and it's not bad enough to end up in the top ten or at the bottom.
It's okay.
Next up, Kat Mohan with Anybody Got a Shoulder?
Gosh, this is repetitive.
The chorus is probably more than half the song, and since it's repeated so much I can't ignore the first line's biggest problem. 'Anybody got a shoulder I could cry'.
Okay, maybe there's supposed to be a question in there. Like, 'anybody got a shoulder? I could cry ;-;'.
But that's not how she's singing it, so it just sounds like there's a word missing. I keep adding 'on' at the end in my head and it's really annoying.
She sounds fine, she's got a nice voice and she enunciate's better than Kavanagh, it's really just the song.
Which is cliche, and hackneyed and boring. If this wins Eurosong, she's just going to sit at a piano or stand behind a microphone stand looking sad as she performs.
This would probably do slightly worse than Memories in Eurovision.
Anyway, let's have a listen to Alex Saint and see what She's so Fine is like.
I'm not super keen on this guy's flow.
Aside from that, this is definitely the best one so far.
It's got a strong premise and the lyrics and the music serve that really well. Sure, Saint hasn't got the best flow in the world, but it's passable.
In a just world, this song would be middle field, heading to the top of Eurovision.
However, this is not a just world and racists exist, so what can you do?
Next up, Erika Selin with Break Me Up
This one's about as repetitive as Anybody Got a Shoulder?, however, this one is a dance number.
So it's okay.
I actually really like this one, the lyrics are pretty cliche, but they're not as cliche as they could be, and the purpose of lyrics in dance music is to serve the music anyway. Selin has a good voice and it suits this song really well.
I actually like this one more than She's So Fine, but this is probably a combination of not being super keen on Saint's flow and really liking dance music.
Dance music tends to do pretty well in Eurovision, so I'd say this is probably their best shot at winning.
Last, and possibly least (I don't know, I haven't listened to it yet) is Molly Sterling with Playing With Numbers.
We have another sad woman behind a piano performance in the making here.
Except this time the song is better.
It's fine, really. There are no glaring flaws, although you can hear her 'sixteen year old'ness in the lyrics. She doesn't sound sixteen though, she sounds great.
I guess my problem with this one is that I don't really care for this kind of music.
I do think it would be on the left side of the score board, though. So there's that.
Overall, I suppose that if they went with one of the last three, Ireland would do pretty well. I doubt that they'd win, but they wouldn't be in the bottom ten to be sure.
Selin is my favourite, and I do think they'd do the best with her.
As for who they do pick, we'll just have to wait and see. The winner will be announced on the 27th of February.
In my previous Eurovision post I mentioned that I would report on the entrants to the contest from the UK, Austria, Australia and Ireland and acknowledged that, considering the subject of the post, Ireland seemed like an inconruous mention on that list.
Today's post is going to cover why Ireland is getting a special mention.
In short, Ireland is the most successful country in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest with seven wins under its belt.
In long, not only is Ireland the most successful entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest, it also achieved three consecutive victories in the 1990s and won again in 1996.
Ireland also boasts the title of being the only country to have an entrant win twice with Johnny Logan. He won twice as a performer and two of his songs won the contest and another came second.
I really can't argue with this.
Oh yes, it is definitely worth paying attention to what Ireland does in Eurovision.
Now, the 21st century hasn't been quite as kind to the Emerald Isle, but it's only a matter of time until we see another Irish Eurovision winner.
Especially when they stop purposefully sabotaging themselves. I'm not joking, this is a thing, you'll see an example of it below. (I'll cover why this happens and a few other examples of it in a later post.)
An entrant hasn't been chosen yet, but we do have five finalists for RTE's Eurosong 2015 competition.
They are:
Nikii Kavanagh (we'll talk more about her in a second.)
Kat Mohan (who has a song written by the 1994 winner)
Alex Saint backed by the MJs (I plan to bring him back up in another post)
Erika Selin (who will also be brought up in said post)
Molly Sterling (who is the youngest entrant at sixteen)
Now, I haven't heard any of these songs yet, I'll cover that in a bonus post on Sunday.
So, why does Nikii Kavanagh get a special mention?
Because in 2011 she was a runner up to these two.
I'm not sure how she has any self confidence left.
If you don't know who these two are... forgive me for what I am about to do.
Long story short, they were on the UK The X Factor and were so laughably bad that they gained a huge ironic following.
Don't ask me why they were on our X Factor, they're Irish born and bred.
You've seen how bad they are.
Yet somehow, they came eighth in Eurovision 2011.
... Somehow...
The UK gave them 12 points.
I'm not joking that ironic following was huge. (I don't know what Sweden and Denmark's excuse is.)
With this in mind, I'm not sure what expectations to have for Nikii Kavanagh.
Well, I guess we'll have to see on Sunday when I go through the Eurosong 2015 finalists to see what's on offer.
One thing that's always bothered me is that Israel is in Eurovision.
Don't get me wrong Dana is my Empress, but Israel isn't... in Europe.
It just isn't.
But, you know, you have to learn to accept these things for the sake of cheesy music and avoiding another world war. (I'm not joking.)
This year, however, it's got more right to be in the competition than our newest entry.
Australia.
It's going to be in the contest for one year (two max) because this year is the sixtieth anniversary and Australians really like Eurovision.
(I can hear the sounds of frustrated Americans from here. Hehehehe.)
Considering that Australia is famous for the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and famed gay icon Kylie Minogue, I have high hopes for the most amazing camp performance I have ever seen in my life.
Well, second most amazing camp performance.
They'll have a hard time beating that, to be sure.
This year I'm going to keep on top of the Eurovision News and share it with you, because I love Eurovision.
They haven't decided whether the Australian public will be casting votes like European viewers do, but once they've got a decision, I'll let you know.
I'm also going to let you guys know about the UK entry, the Irish entry, the Austrian entry and (of course) the Australian entry as and when they've been selected.
(I'll do a post on why the Irish entry is on this list next week.)
So consider this your warning, we're starting our Countdown to Vienna.
Europe, you'll be interested to know, is derived from 'Europa' which means far-seeing.
So Eurovision literally means 'far seeing vision'.
We do not screw about in the western half of Eurasia.
So, Eurovison!
Mother loving Eurovision
I love Eurovision.
I've watched it since I was but a wee lass, and when I was eight years old it was in good old Birmingham.
Gina G was the entry for the UK, and the fish in the SeaLife centre were very confused.
It was a good year, but hey, that's the late nineties for you.
Now, I'm bringing it up because it's going to be painfully relevant later on.
But now, let's talk about this year's contest.
Honestly, it was one of the duller years, but we did get some wonderfully strange acts, and some awful, awful music.
Painfully awful.
Wonderfully awful.
And awfully catchy.
This is Poland's entry, it's stuck in my head and I watched the entire performance with this expression.
We were using the red button, so I was slack jawed reading the subtitles.
However, allow me to show you the English lyrics.
This special thing we have in our genes
Makes us proud of our natural shapes
On Our lands you have everything you need
So pour the Vodka straight, no need to mix.
Cream and butter taste so good
We will prepare for you delicious food
Our beauty is famous all over the world
You gotta see it for yourself and then You will know
We're Slavic girls, we know how to use our charming beauty
Now shake what your mama gave ya!
Clap your hands to this music
This is our nature, This is our call
This is our hot Slavic blood
Yeah, I think you can see why I was staring in fascinated horror.
Also, yes, there is a woman churning butter on stage with her baps out. I don't know why.
And Americans like to pretend there are no distinct ethnic groups in Europe. Hah. It makes you think that they don't actually understand what ethnicity means.
I'm calling it, that was the most Eurovision song of the night.
My favourite song of the night was the entry from Montenegro
It's a beautiful sounding song, and the lyrics were packed full of beautiful sentiments and the guy seemed so nice and earnest. My heart melted a little.
Okay, I know, I have strange taste in men.
Moving on.
The weirdest performance is between the Ukrainian act where a very pretty woman who looked a bit like Selena Gomez sang to a very hot guy in a hamster wheel and the Romanians with their terrible special effects and fake round piano.
I'm gonna go for Romania on this one.
In regards to the actual song, it wasn't bad. Although Will.I.Am will doubtlessly need to have words with someone at some point.
But come on, it's Eurovision.
So, even though they only had two people on stage, this is still one of the most Eurovision performances of the night.
I think the piano and effects are a large part of that, although Paula moving her arms around so much I nearly mistook her for Tony Blair probably didn't help. Love, if you can't dance you should have admitted that ahead of time so they could have gotten dancers in.
The round piano was hilarious though. No one could take it seriously, because it looed silly and he clearly wasn't playing it. Watching him ineffectually bash keys was pretty amusing.
Now I feel it's time to talk about Russia.
You have to feel sorry for the two girls, they got booed a lot during the whole thing. Not just the final, but the semi finals before it.
On the other hand, considering what a massive dick Russia has been lately, I'm not going to say anything bad about the booing crowd whatsoever.
They're not bad people, they just care more about gay people and Ukraine than they do about a couple of pop stars who were proud enough of their country to represent it. Anyone not capable of understanding that clearly needs to rethink their priorities.
So, from countries with homophobic leaders to a drag act who stole Europe's heart.
Conchita Wurst, Queen of Europe.
Yeah, she's a drag queen.
So imagine my disgust and horror when I saw people on tumblr refer to her as transgendered.
She bloody well isn't.
And this is why Eurovision Birmingham 1998 is relevant.
The thing people are saying has happened this year actually happened 16 years ago, when Dana International won for Israel.
Dana International is a transgendered woman, Conchita Wurst is a drag act.
The fact that tumblr cannot distinguish between the two and does not seem to know Dana even exists is the most infuriating thing in the world right now. Surely if you cared about trans representation and/or Eurovision at all, Dana would be your personal heroine.
And Thomas Neuwirth would be your hero.
I love Conchita, she's amazing and well deserves her title.
But surely if she's the Queen of Europe, Dana is the Empress.
One final thing.
France got one point. Please excuse me while I indulge in some patriotic laughter.
Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Okay, done. Regular pro-France service will resume now. It was a cute silly song, look it up.
