Come on people!
What is not to love?
It is in Baku, Jedward are back, Cyprus have shiny socks and France has half the male Olympic gymnastic team and a JPG corset!
I vote for either Ukraine (Carnival night in your local gay club), Italy ( Amy Winehouse Homage) or Sweden ( Kate Bush meets Rihanna).
Aw… I’ll be watching this one on delay since I’m up to something all afternoon here. But I’ll look forward to it anyway, it is glorious cheese…
I’m surprised Russia didn’t do better. Jedward were just awful, as usual, not to mention creepy. I was a bit surprised to hear that Sweden were allowed to enter a song which is already a hit - I thought that was against the rules. And I think it’s a sad end to Englebert Humperdinck’s career, but he didn’t have a hope. I love how most countries still said “Hello Baku, this is <wherever> calling”. I remember the first time the former Yugoslav republics entered after the war, hearing down some terrible crackly line: “Hello <can’t remember where>, this is Sarajevo calling” - it broke me right up. I love Bosnia. Now I want to visit Azerbaijan, but I won’t until they change their approach to human rights (come on, it’s absurd for a country where it’s illegal to be gay to host Eurovision!).
And these are my thoughts on Eurovision 2012.
This tendency for neighboring countries to vote for one another gives former Yugoslav republics an unfair advantage. That’s the only possible explanation for how well Serbia did. (Guys, I know you want to vote for your neighbors but weren’t they ethnically cleansing most of you like ten years ago? Don’t vote for them.)
Anyway, the Babushki, that excellent song from Ukraine, the Amy Winehouse knock-off from Italy, and the shirtless gymnastics from France’s backup dancers were the highlights of the show for me. (France’s song was pretty good, for that matter.)
I was mostly just grateful that they didn’t interview Jedward during that awkward bit where they go around and talk to the performers. Engelbert Humperdinck was bad enough, but if you’ve ever seen Jedward talking, you realize at the core of your being that there is – somehow – something far, far worse than Jedward singing.
Doesn’t seem to be Lena’s Satellite which won a few years ago had already been a hit in several countries before it was in the Eurovision.
By they way Jedward aren’t creepy, they’re loveable.
I thought this was a pretty poor year. The trumpet people from Moldova I think were ok I suppose but overall it was poor fare.
I disagree. There weren’t any really “wow!” songs for me (Ukraine came the closest, I guess), but aside from a couple of standouts I thought last year was dismal.
Sorry your boys didn’t do so well. 
I thought their song was better than last year’s. Were those…space age suits of armor they were wearing?
Well, my highlight came towards the end, when they switched to Helsinki and there was Mr. Lordi, reading Finland’s votes in-character. 
The TVE (Televisión Española) announcer was absolutely not expecting it.
The Babushkyi were cute. And at least next year you got a venue that people will not be too scared about. Nor too excited, to be fair.
Since they adopted SMS polling for part (most?) of the ratings a-la-Idol, what you often will see is that communities of one or another nationality within a country will intensely ratchet up that vote – so e.g. in Bosnia-Herzegovina, folks from the Republika Srpska will be heating up the lines voting for Serbia.
Oh I never said last year was much better, just for lulz etc. this was slim pickings by comparison with some years.
It’s part of its charm I suppose but it amazes me how few real sounding bands are ever entered. I suppose the Swedish entry sounded like standard chart fodder but of the rest only maybe the German entry sounded like a real song that someone would sit down and listen to. Their song was very like The Script.
It’s not, in fact with the current system it wouldn’t be feasible to try to restrict this. Each country’s broadcaster is free to choose their entry for the competion in any way they want, and nowadays this often means a national selection event organized several months before the song contest final. So all the songs that qualify for Eurovision have at least couple of months time to be played in radio, online or as singles. The rule is that all qualifying songs have to be new, but this means new this year, not that they should be kept secret until the final week. If I remember correctly, the songs may not be published anywhere earlier than in the autumn before the song contest. After that, there are not many limits. Thus participating songs sometimes become hits already long before Eurovision final, like Sweden this year. Of course this also explains part of the neighbour-voting phenomenon: many countries’ songs are much more likely to become regional hits in the months preceding the contest and people from neigbouring countries already familiar with the song then vote for it in the final.
For me, this year’s Eurovision was very enjoyable. I especially liked France’s entry, and there were several other good entries too. Some of the funnier/weirder ones were however dropped already in the semifinals, like San Marino’s “Social Network Song”. Obviously, much of the suspense in final was removed this time with Sweden being such a huge favourite and practically the only possible winner. Still I’m happy with them winning, as Loreen is a good singer and also a classy person, for example she spent some of her time in Baku by meeting Azerbaijan’s human rights activists. It’s good to see artists being exemplary like that.
All valid comments, deserving deux pointe, but don’t forget the actual broader socio-political context within which Eurovision operates.
Eurovisions brings together countries who would love nothing more than to fire-bomb each others’ orphanages and encourages them work together to manipulate a regional singing contest, all through the power of cheesy dance music.
Even at the height of the ugly, horrible Balkans conflicts where neighbours were ripping each other apart, people had a chance to express an oppositional stance their govt by voting for the ‘enemy’. European identity is even more complex following EU than before and Eurovision is one way of everyday people negotiating that complexity.
Indeed. Hell, even the official Eurovision CD was released on May 7th, two and a half weeks before the actual contest. If those tracks were available as downloads then they were eligible for the charts in many countries.
Sorry I am late to this party. I have a friend in Berlin who knows how much I love this show and he puts in on DVD and sends it to me. Got the DVD here in Las Vegas yesterday and watched it last night.
Comments:
Did the UK and Ireland just give up this year? I remember when both were always front runners with singers and song selections, but this was just sad. Come on - at least try to find something worth listening to that isn’t embarrassing to watch!
My SO hated her, but I thought Albania’s singer was amazing - there were some notes in there that sounded almost primal and I thought she was great!
Russia. Seriously? This was mediocre even at the retirement home talent show. Was the high number of votes some kind of “in joke” for Europe this year? Sort of how many who watch American Idol intentionally vote for the worst singer?
As a first time listener to all of these songs, I thought the Swedish song was OK, but hardly worth the huge sweep of votes. It wasn’t all that great and the singer was decent but nothing to get excited about. Maybe if I had heard the song for a few weeks prior, but again - OK, but not “wow”.
Germany did a decent job and came in 8th place - not bad. Certainly didn’t deserve to win, but at least it was not horrible.
Overall, most were pretty good. The only sad point is that this show is proving how the world is becoming smaller due to the internet and TV and marketing; almost all the songs in English, and many of the singers seemed to be transplants from other countries. Plus, the songs could have come from any country - they all sounded pretty much the same. I kind of miss the old kitschier days when everyone sang in their own language and the songs were more regional in flavor. Sure, a lot of it was crap, but at least it was original crap instead of derivative crap.
Still - love watching it and there were some good singers and a few good songs - nothing that made me get excited enough to go out and download the song, but entertaining enough. Looking forward to next year!
Along with the winning entry Germany’s was one of the few that sounded like a song people would actually listen to outside of the Eurovision. It was a contemporary pop song.
I believe they changed the language rules sometime in the 1990s and I agree it is somewhat more homogeneous because of that. Sometimes the skewed English lyrics in the songs though are interesting. Actually I just looked it up on the 'pedia and it seems that the language rules have been changed a number of times but since 1999 countries can sing in any language they want.