Well, there’s a surprise – the UK completely bombed in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. I’m not in the slightest bit surprised. We don’t take this contest at all seriously and our nation, that continues to produce some of the greatest pop music in the world, is represented instead by complete unknowns and some very dull songwriting (sorry Pete Waterman, but this definitely wasn’t your finest hour).
I’m actually pleased to say that having caught my first listen to our song entry yesterday, I made the conscious decision not to watch and therefore not to be embarrassed.
Several people predicted that Germany would win… currently being the rich man of Europe and everything. (We could all be heading to them, cap in hand, pretty soon so we needed to keep ‘em sweet). That may be a little unfair, having listened this morning to singer Lena with ’Satellite’. Her ‘mockney’ English accent is slightly dodgy (‘though to be fair she sings English better than I can sing in German), but she’s cute and the song is catchy, young and a bit of fun. It’s the complete package really …and a far cry from our very poor offering.
So, well done Lena and well done Germany. At least you can actually afford to host this next year!
(Last year’s winner – Alexander Rybak, Norway)
Art:Rene Gruau
Art:Rene Gruau
The Eurovision bores me…. I used to watch it, but I don’t anymore. My country hasn’t won in ages anyway… And the commentators usually spend most of the contest making fun of the other contestants…
Really? You could be describing the UK, because this is *exactly* how things have been here in recent years. Like a fool I’ve somehow been sucked into watching the whole thing, year upon year, but felt like a grown up this year that I made a conscious decision to avoid it. I really do think we in the UK should just bow out now since it’s clear we don’t have our hearts in it.
I have to say, whilst it’s a lovely little song, Lena’s accent annoys the heck out of me. It’s not German, not English, not anything! Why, oh why did they change the ‘sing in your country’s language’ rule… Now, everybody sings in English, and that’s that. Boring.
I admire her for at least trying an ‘English’ accent – it beats most Brits who solidly refuse to even try to say words correctly in another language. However the accent is a little odd.
I wish they’d change that rule about language back too. We started losing when everyone started singing in English because then the majority of Europe could understand what each other were singing about, and so it levelled out the playing field!