Fingernail on 16/5/2011 at 13:33
Even the ones that do well, even the "good" entries are fairly poor.
Sweden's entry, after ripping off Boney M's Rasputin drums, opens with the line:
"Stop! Don't say that it's impossible, cos I know it's possible,
Though I know you never look my way, I can('t) say, you will one day".
That's basically on the level of Friday. In some ways it's worse because although Friday is sort of anti-lyrical, at least the statements in it kind of make sense. Friday is after Thursday!
And the Swedish song has the chorus "I will be popular!!! I will be popular! I'm gonna get there, popular!" (It's called Popular). Well, actually he scored fairly high, so I guess it came true. The only vaguely distinctive thing about the song is the key change into the chorus, and that's really scraping the barrel.
The UK song this year wasn't great, although they didn't do it badly. It was miles better than the disaster of last year, and the scoring reflected that I think. At least Blue can sort of sing harmonies instead of the terrible groups you see on X Factor who just sing in unison, take it in turns, or at best harmonise everything the same.
Even if they did look as though they were subtly advertising something to do with IP addresses:
(
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/832/bluek.jpg/)
Inline Image:
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/9318/bluek.jpgBut yeah, if Blue are indicative of the level of artists that other countries enter, it's no surprise the standard is generally fairly low.
henke on 16/5/2011 at 14:06
Quote Posted by SD
I probably couldn't name more than twenty (non-British and Irish) European artists that have made a meaningful contribution to popular music. Whereas I could name more than twenty from my home city alone.
I'm guessing language has a lot to do with it.
I can easily name 20 Swedish acts who have made meaningful contributions to popular music over here:
ABBA
The Cardigans
The Ark
Kent
Petter
Cornelis Vreeswijk
Lars Winnerbäck
Teddybears STHLM
Håkan Hellström
Timbuktu
Latin Kings
Bob hund
Robyn
The Knife
Just D
Veronica Maggio
Snook
Mange Shmidt
Maskinen
Familjen
Now seeing as all but 6 of those sing their song in Swedish they haven't had much success out in the world. Brittish musicians have an advantage by usually singing in a language that most of the western world understands, hence it's easier for them to make it big outside their nation's borders.
Matthew on 16/5/2011 at 14:28
I was about to explode in hipster outrage until I realised you did indeed have Robyn on that list, henke. Needs more Hives though.
henke on 16/5/2011 at 14:50
It's not a top 20 Swedish acts list or anything like that. Those were just the ones I could think of right away, there's bound to be important stuff left out. The Hives do rock. :)
Xorak on 16/5/2011 at 21:00
Quote Posted by Tomi
They play the ice hockey world cup during the NHL finals
every year, the tournament just barely gets a mention in the media outside the few European "ice hockey countries" I'm afraid. Many of the big name NHL star players don't even bother with the world cup usually, even if their team has been knocked out from the NHL playoffs already, but for example Ovechkin and a few other big stars played for Russia in this year's tournament.
Perhaps there would be more interest for the world cup if they didn't play it every single year, and if it didn't overlap with the NHL playoffs.
This tournament is fairly popular here in Canada, and all the games are shown and repeated throughout the night, but it's still on a tier below the Playoffs, the World Cup, the Olympics and the Junior World Championship. However (and this might seem unbelievable considering how much they already ram hockey down our throats), they do seem to be ramping up the coverage of this specific tournament. We have one sports channel that is basically converting itself into a 24 hour-a-day hockey channel. It's pretty ludicrous... and they just added a radio station so that they can talk more hockey.
With all the success of the Canadian teams over the few years, we still have to listen to the president of Hockey Canada say things like (
http://www.fan590.com/news/sports/more.jsp?content=s6839607) this: "two years without medal at worlds is 'totally unacceptable'". Next to the Canadian teams, the Finns are always my favorite in these tournaments. I don't know what it is, but they're just hardcore and fearless in the way the old Russian teams of the 70's were. Not to mention, they are probably producing more hockey players per capita than even the mighty red-and-white.
SubJeff on 16/5/2011 at 22:07
Moldova were pretty fun actually. So bad it's good.
Kuuso on 17/5/2011 at 07:10
Some posters don't seem to get the point of Eurovision (and I can't blame the American ones at that): It is supposed to be camp, kitsch and gay. The scale you judge Eurovision songs at should not be the same as you judge normal songs. Sure, it's fun when there's an actually clever pop song there and it's even better when it's combined with Eurovision crazyness, but it's rare.
It's a bit sad that you can hire a Swedish producer to make you the most average pop song and win though. More Dancing Lasha Tumbai I say. (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGMb5PakOQ)
Ps. SD showing how little music he follows I guess.
Fingernail on 17/5/2011 at 08:18
Well no, it's not "supposed" to be, it just happens that it largely is, and therefore to make it somewhat entertaining instead of depressing, we choose to view it as such. I have no doubt that there are some people who actually like the music at face value. I feel like this ironic, camp reading of Eurovision is largely an invention of the past 20 years or so.
I mean, yes, things like Buck's Fizz and Brotherhood of Man are silly, but Brotherhood of Man's Kisses for Me, for instance, was no. 1 for six weeks in 1976, the largest selling single of the year. This was the pop mainstream then, however kitsch. It doesn't represent that now. But then, the charts don't represent what they used to either. The last couple of Eurovision winners got a week or two at the top here I think, although I can't see Azerbaijan's entry fitting in alongside Bruno Mars and Jessie J.
So yeah, it's basically a shame that there isn't a genuinely good, innovative and exciting music showcase for Europe (and I don't think it ever was - although they used to have live music not just singing!!!), but since that's far too idealistic a goal, I'm happy to settle with the so-bad-it's-almost-good thing we've got right now.
I mean, really it's a shame that pop music in general isn't better at the moment, I guess that's what I really want.
Kuuso on 17/5/2011 at 09:05
Of course Eurovision had more value before the 90's, since it was still the heyday of television. The media world has changed dramatically since then. People who follow music intensively don't bother with anything else than live gigs and internet nowadays. There's always been good and bad songs in Eurovision. For example Alexander Rybak's winning song from two years back is up there with any other previous winner, it's a good melodic pop song. There's been complete garbage like Belarus' this year every time.
Complaining about the state of pop music is a bit silly in my opinion. There's more and better music available than ever before, people being lazy not to search for it (for example, spending 5 minutes to search for a good internet radio) is their problem. Of course big commercial stations and companies will produce music that appeals with glam and easy hooks, it's always been like that.
I do agree that the omission of live orchestra is really regrettable. It's something I wish that could return in some form (albeit I full orchestra would limit the entries nowadays). I also agree that having genuinely talented songwriters and musicians compete would be amazing, but the thing is that music is not only about technical provess or songwriting abilities (be it a good or a bad thing).
Ps. Topping this overly serious post with a genuinely good song from 2007. (Might be too Björk for some TTLGers though :p)
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