Eurovision

As every year in the middle of May, the Eurovision Song Contest took place last night in Moscow. I still think of it as the Grand Prix because it used to be called Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson or something like that. Anyway … I watched it kind of half-heartedly. Norway won. I’d read beforehand that they were expected to do very well and had seen the song online. It was a very clear win. I don’t mind. It’s a sweet catchy song by a young man with a boyish face and a violin. In second place was Iceland. Their song was a heart-wrenching (but not too depressing) ballad by a young lady called Yohanna who looked very pretty with her reddish-blond hair and blue dress. So it seems that this year the crazy stage show was not as popular as the years before which is definitely a good thing. I also liked Portugal’s song which was kind of folkloristic with lots of acoustic instruments such as guitar, percussion and flute and a beautiful melancholy melody. Denmark had a song written by Ronan Keating - BTW, where was Ireland?? Eliminated in the semi-final?? – and sung by a guy called Brinck who sounded very much like Ronan, too. That was almost it with the “normal” songs. Okay, there was GB, too, with a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber who also played the piano during the performance. The singer was a lady called Jade Ewen I think. Great voice. Oh, and France with Patricia Kaas. I love her deep voice but the song wasn’t very catchy.

The rest was crazy dancing and wild rhythms and half-naked people. Or just plain awful songs like ours. The “German” team was made up of producer/DJ Alex Christensen and 2 Americans: musical singer Oscar Loya (who I’ve never heard of before – he was in West Side Story apparently) and strip dancer (although she probably wouldn’t like to be called that) Dita von Teese. Oscar’s outfit consisted of a pair of silver sequin leggings – nobody male or female should ever wear such an atrocity – and a black shirt which he ripped open half way through the song to show off his hairless chest and sixpack. Come to think of it, he looked quite a bit like Barbie Ken. Not the type of man I like. And Dita …. Well, she rode on a black thing in the background which kind of was a mix of a sofa in the shape of a pair of lips and an electric bull. For the first half of the song I thought the Russians had decided to keep her off-camera completely but then she came into the center of the stage and danced next to Oscar in one of her typical black underwear thingies. What a ridiculous attempt to win votes by putting something sexy on stage. But the song … Miss Kiss Kiss Bang. Vomit-inducing, believe me. And totally annoying. To be honest, I though the fact that I hated it meant that our chances weren’t so bad. Glad I was wrong. We ended up fifth from the bottom or something (at number 20 out of 25 countries).