Europhoria

I haven’t been paying much attention to Eurovision this year – work has been a nightmare lately and I’ve mostly been coming home, grabbing something quick to eat, then crawling into bed. But I had dinner over at Rebecca and Dom’s last night and watched some of the second semi-final, so I have some thoughts on that.

What I heard of the Netherlands seemed to be a cheerful little song, even if the Native American head-dress seemed a little culturally insensitive. Sweden’s song was nothing really special, but there was something about Loreen’s voice and performance that… I dunno, it just had something that kind of lifted it above its parts (and is probably responsible for its winning). Georgia seemed to have no idea what they were doing – as Rebecca commented they seemed to have looked at all the winning entries for the last 30 years and tried to incorporate elements from them into their act – with the result being a horrible mess. Slovakia got confused and sent a Whitesnake impersonator, while Lithuania sent Scott Summers. Turkey featured a posse of dancing bat-men who periodically turned into a boat. The song didn’t really grab me, but after re-listening to it I can perceive some of its latent merits.

What I found particularly interesting about this year was the use of video screens to overcome the “only six performers” rule. Several of the acts featured extra – often computer generated – dancers. It’ll be interesting if they allow that next time.

Don’t know if I’ll watch the final tonight. We all know who won and I need to be up early to get into work tomorrow (supposed to be my day off I might add!).

While on the subject of music and dancing, how’s this for a marriage proposal? There’s been a lot of debate over whether it’s a viral marketing campaign or not, but it genuinely seems to be authentic…