Well, I wasn’t going to make an entry tonight, but then I read Ali’s blog criticising me horribly *g* for not mentioning Turkey’s entry in Eurovision, so I just had to respond 🙂
The reason I didn’t mention Turkey was (of course) that since they came in the top 24 (or some other number) last year they qualified automatically and didn’t have to perform in the qualifying round. So there! 😉
Sad to say, I didn’t get to see all of the final since we went out to dinner (at a Korean barbeque restaurant would you believe?) for Andrew’s birthday, but I did manage to catch the last few acts. Also (thanks to SBS’s Countdown to Eurovision) I’d heard most of the songs anyway. So although I can’t do as detailed a rundown as I did for the qualifiers I can still make a few comments.
Spain. I didn’t see Spain’s performance on the night, but I quite liked their song. Ummm, France – same deal. Russia – their song was quite good, but I’m sure large parts of it are lifted from some 80’s track that just kept tugging at my mind. If I could hear it a few more times I’m sure I could figure it out.
Poland – I really liked Poland although no-one else (including the rest of Europe) seems to. OK, the lyrics were a bit stupid, but the tune was good. Sweden were very good, and frankly their singer looked amazing for 38 :). Turkey’s ska band were spectacular, I’ve been humming their song all week. if Ukraine hadn’t won, then they should have.
Ukraine of course were spectacular – I really can’t say more about them than I did previously, except that it’s great that they won. Of course Estonia should have won, but Ukraine was a pretty good substitute 🙂
Of course a lot of truly horrible performers did far too well, Malta and Bosnia in particular. I was also impressed that Greece did as well as they did – I mean their song was hardly anything special. On Ali’s note about countries with similar languages it was interesting to see that most of the former Yugoslav states rated each other’s song very highly – moreso than the rest of Europe did.
Hmmmm, I’m sure I had something else to say. Oh yeah, it turns out that Ukraine are the highest scoring winners ever with 280 points, smashing the record held by the UK with 227 (for some song by Katrina and the Waves – no, not Echo Beach, something else). A lot of this has to do with a lot more countries competing this year, sure, but it’s still very impressive.
So yeah, that’s it for now. Got to go eat dinner 🙂
PS: All the video clips are available on the SBS website here. Just in case anyone really has to see how bad Bosnia were 🙂
PPS: Not the actual Eurovision performances, the official video clips for each entry – such as they are. But at least you get to see the Estonian “Five Women in Sacks and their Diabolical Drummer”
PPS: In Estonian it’s “Neiok
