shewhomust | Entries tagged with eurovision

I enjoy Eurovision. I make no apology for that: one night a year of international silliness, glitter and incomprehensible pop songs, what's wrong with that. One night a year ought to be enough. I wouldn't dream of sitting down to watch the semi-finals. Yet somehow this year it happened that twice in a week we asked the television to supply some undemanding entertainment, and it gave us Eurovision, so that we came to the show having seen fragments of many songs (though not, as it happened, the UK entry). Did San Marino really have a row of little robots? (Yes.) Was Georgia really entering a choir of monks? (No, that was Iriao, an Ethno-Jazz band. What?)

Anyway, neither of these made it into the final. We invited F and C to help us through the big night, and had a good time. The New Seriousness announced by Portugal's winning entry of last year has not caught on. Portugal tried to repeat it, with a song about the writer's grandmother, in which the singer, in a floor-length nightdress, was joined onstage by the writer in what looked like a straitjacket (I don't remember this from last night, I have just looked it up. How can I have forgotten this?). But elsewhere there was glitter and sequins, flashing lights and gimmickry. Graham Norton's commentary was scathing about Moldova, who appeared to have offended him by the low-tech nature of their very clever retro staging: but if the song was forgettable, I liked the klezmer tinge of the music. There were pretty boys giving knowing, aren't-I-cute performances: it's a toss up for who irritated me more, the Czech Republic or Sweden - but the Czech Republic (I thought they weren't called that any more?) made C laugh a lot, and F liked the ambient quality of Sweden's song, so there you go. I understand that Ukraine's young vampire was bidding for the Goth vote, but why was his piano on fire? And what can I say about Israel?

Well, OK, I can say this about Israel: if Israel thinks that what Eurovision wants right now is a novelty production of a song allegedly "accepting differences and for celebrating diversity.”", the voting shows that Israel is absolutely right. There isn't a reward for an emotional response to the tragic journeys of refugees (sorry, France) nor for cleverly subtitling your response to the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in all the languages of Europe - which shows you how much I know, because as soon as I saw Italy's entry, I thought it hit the target spot-on, and I couldn't understand why it wasn't being talked about as a contender. But it seems that as well as the right message, you need a mini-kimono and a wall of lucky cats.

I also don't understand the voting. Apparently there are now two rounds: in the first, the juries of experts tell us who ought to win; in the second, the public phone in and vote for someone completely different. We found ourselves agreeing more with the public vote than with the professionals, which was unexpected: it was the public vote which boosted Italy into fifth place, for example.

My head said Italy should do well, but my heart went to Denmark: a squad of stomping Vikings, what's not to like? Better, a squad of Vikings singing about Saint Magnus, against a background of rolling seas, in a storm of carefully choreographed snow:

Watch on YouTube

And a special Best Dress Award to Estonia.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/633006.html

We watched the Eurovision final on Saturday. If I were taking this seriously, I suppose we'd have watched both semi-finals, and then lived-blogged our way through the final. But to take Eurovision seriously is to miss the point.

I did consider live-blogging the final, but couldn't bring myself to do it. If I had, it might have kept me awake, at least until the end of the competition. As it was, I nodded off somewhere in the last few songs: looking at the running order, I don't remember anything after Belgium, so that must be when I fell asleep (sorry, Belgium) and woke up as we launched into the mid-way entertainment, wondering "When do we get to France?"

Since we are living in the future, I hadn't missed my chance forever, and caught up not only with France's entry as performed during the show, with spectacular lighting but also with the official video, a stronger performance of the song but with the distraction of a couple dancing - or appearing to dance - all over various Parisian landmarks. Usually you can count on France singing in French (or at a pinch, Breton, but in any case, not English) which always wins points from me. Requiem was half-French, half-English, despite which I rather liked the song; I could still remember phrases of it ten minutes later, and that's unusual for Eurovision. I don't know why it didn't score higher. Was it too blatant a bid for the sympathy vote, with the lyric:

On pleure mais on survit quand même
C'est la beauté du requiem

and the visuals playing on the idea of Paris, city of lights?

Another deep and meaningful entry was Italy's Occidentalis Karma - it seems there was a reason for the man in the gorilla suit. Only in Eurovision would you decide - quite late in the proceedings, apparently - to underline the serious message of your song by bringing on a man in a (not very good) gorilla suit. So perhaps there was a reason for Azerbaijan's staging: the blackboard with key words I sort of understand, because you'd need help to remember the lyrics, which seem to have been rendered from the Azeri by Google translate. But why is the man with the horse's head standing on a stepladder? Or, if you prefer, why is the man on the stepladder wearing a horse's head? You might as well ask why Belarus's duo, channeling the young Sonny and Cher (or perhaps Esther and Abi Ofarim) were in a small boat? Still, they sang in Belorussian, which is a first, so top marks for that!

The slogan of Eurovision 2017 was "Celebrate Diversity". This was achieved by having three presenters, all white men - all youngish, able-bodied white men - wearing dinner jackets each of which had a different design of sparkly decoration. You think I'm just being snarky? Here's the official video explanation of the brand: the image is based on a traditional Ukrainian necklace, a string of beads of different sizes. The European nations are like the beads of that necklace, all different but alike enough to make a harmonious whole - no, that's my interpretation.

And, to be fair, the winning entry was the one which was most unlike any of the others. By which I don't mean Hungary's operatic blend of Gypsy drama and rap (one man and his milkchurn, a woman in white to express adoration in dance and a woman in black to play the fiddle) though politically this was a remarkable piece of ethnic diversity. I don't mean Romania's blend of rap and yodelling, though musically that's pretty WTF even by Eurovision standards. No, I'm talking about Portugal's decision not to play the Eurovision game of bigger means better, more staging, more lights, more dancers and special effects, and to present instead what BBC commentator Graham Norton described as "just a boy in his bedroom singing a song written by his sister". Which, allowing for the lights which have transformed that bedroom into a magic forest, happens to be true, but it is a very pretty song - none of this is my kind of music, and this particular kind of 'LaLa Land' nostalgia less than most, but it was the bookies' favourite and it won, giving Portugal its first ever Eurovision victory.

It has happened before that the winning song has been a rejection of the razzmatazz and hype. I'm thinking of 1994, when Ireland won with Rock 'n' Roll Kids, a male fuo, two older-than-the-average-contestants singing about being middle aged, without a big band, accompanying themselves on piano and guitar. It was Ireland's third consecutive win, and there was a rumour (though Wikipedia denies it) that it was deliberately designed not to win, not to incur the expense of hosting the contest yet again. I'll end with a reminder of what Eurovision used to be like, back in a quieter age, with Terry Wogan in the commentary box:

Watch on YouTube

Crossposts: http://shewhomust.livejournal.com/579993.html

The news from Eurovision is that somehow a clever little song has found its way into the contest, representing Sweden.

durham_rambler was so shocked that he phoned in a vote for it.

I'm still lamenting the absence of Belarus: but the video on the Eurovision website doesn't show the extraordinary lighting effects that so impressed me in the semi-final - no, not that Ivan appeared naked, and not even the wolves.

Actually, forget the songs, this year's show is all about the lighting. Italy, wearing sparkly dungarees, in a flooded garden, Ukraine's beatiful tree of light...

If Germany is channeling some manga that I ought to recognise, would someone let me know, please? No hurry, though, I'm not planning to stay up for the voting.

Specially for

athenais, the Scandinavia and the World version.

Why yes, we were watching: I baled after the songs, but

durham_rambler stayed up until the bitter end of the voting. I thought the songs themselves were unmemorable, but there were some interesting themes in there. Anyone who elected to sing in their own language gets bonus points from me, but the stand-out WTF Eurovision moment was surely Serbia's entry, "Let it Go" from Frozen as it would have been if Elsa had been played by Meat Loaf.

The week of watching too much television continues into its third week; luckily, "too much" means "more than I am used to" and "too much" means "where did that evening go?" and even "too much" means "I don't regret any of it"...

Saturday night was Eurovision, and we invited friends round to help us watch it; which was just as well, because on the whole it was a pretty dull contest. We found ourselves supporting Moldova, because we could remember which one they were (not for the song, but for the staging: the pointed hats, the unicycling fairy, the circus music). We felt sorry for Spain, who had played by the rules and entered a chirpy little piece of Europop, only to discover that nobody voted for it, and would have liked to like the French entry (because it was so perfectly perverse: how could you be less Eurovision than a bloke with an operatic voice singing in Corsican?*) but didn't. Craig Murray's description pretty much nails it (and the comments will lead you down the byways of pointy hattedness and Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (with especial reference to the ceramic cow on wheels).

desperance stayed until Sunday morning, and help us to eat his apple and cinnamon bread with his Vintage Oxford Marmalade, and to beat the Saturday crossword into submission. Then he went home, and we looked round and realised that the bright if breezy weather of the last couple of days had given way to grey skies and faint but perceptible showers. So we decided that our walk had better be somewhere where we'd find shelter if we needed it, set off for a National Trust property in Northumberland and decided at the last minute (as we drove past the signs on the motorway) to go to Beamish Museum instead (we've been promising ourselves for some time that we would invest in annual tickets and spend some time at Beamish).

It was a good decision; we enjoyed our visit very much. There semed to be less walking that I'd remembered, and not just because

durham_rambler kept saying "Let's take the tram / train...". The site is very cleverly laid out, so that it feels quite rural as you walk, say, from the waggonway to the town, but the distances are not great. On the other hand, we were on our feet for most of the day, and saw maybe half of what there was to see. It's over ten years since we last visited the museum, and the collection has grown. We knew this from walking the public footpaths which cross the site, from which we had seen the waggonway and Pockerley Old Hall; and the town has acquired new shops, and a bank and a Masonic Hall. There were also more staff than I remembered wandering around in period costume, ready to talk to you: the young men who drove the train, the woman who had just baked some cinnamon biscuits and would we like to try them, the men glimpsed across the fields with the muck waggon. I took a huge number of pictures, and can't decide which one best encapsulates the day: so here's something slightly random, because I love the texture (and the sentiment:

All this, and we were still home in time to settle down with a glass of wine and watch The Doctor's Wife, which like everyone else I enjoyed a whole lot. There was a moment when I thought "Oh, here we go again" Message from a Time Lord! But all the Time Lords are dead! Oh, no they're not! Oh, yes they are! etc. But we got past that, and it was all fun (biting: like kissing only there's a winner) and the rather irritatingly teaserish title (is he going to explain any of the hints about River Song? No, of course he isn't, not at this stage in the series) turned out to be a way of pulling the rug out from under that whole game, because of course now Mr Gaiman points it out, we all know who the Doctor's Significant Other is... There've been quite a few Doctor Who stories that I've enjoyed watching, but as the final credits roll I start picking holes. This one still works for me a day after we watched it.

And as if that weren't enough television, we carried on and watched Vera: this episode was The Crow Trap, probably my favourite of the books, which is usually a recipe for not liking an adaptation. And it's a long and complex book, and even at feature film length, a dramatisation is going to have to leave a lot out (including a couple of plot points whose absence left dangling threads). Despite that, I thought this was the best yet of a very watchable series.

*I miss the days when everyone sang in their own language...

A quick catch-up list, as much for my own benefit as because anyone else might be interested - starting where I left off, which was last Monday after a walk on the coast.

On Tuesday we were at the Sage to hear the Chris Stout Theory - Shetland / Brazilian fusion fiddle. Brilliant playing, charismatic enough to carry me through some of the more free-form passages - and I loved what Catriona McKay did with the harp.

Wednesday was the City of Durham Trust AGM; sometimes you have to do these things.

Thursday - I don't remember. Were we home on Thursday?

Friday we went to Darlington Railway Museum for an evening organised by Colpitts Poetry - some ten poets reading poems which were to a greater or lesser extent about trains. The e-mail invitation apparently said "Not Adlestrop!". Some good stuff: I liked Joanna Boulter's two poems, one about Chinese trains which remember that they are really dragons, one about being prevented by floods from travelling by train to the funeral of an aunt. But Andy Croft stole the evening with a set of poems about the Moscow underground (results of this collaborative project).

Saturday was Eurovision: we watched in the company of

desperance and a number of people who don't have LJs, and were unanimously disappointed when the favourite won: how boring is that? Also, why was it the favourite? I preferred Armenia, myself, and Israel. Others present were very taken with Germany: the whole 50s approach, not to mention Ditta von Teese... After this

desperance and I sat up late and drank and conversed, and had a Brilliant Idea which I'll tell you about another time.

Yesterday we went to two separate parties (one barbecue, one tea party) and then more music, Julie Fowlis this time: I think of Gaelic music as sad and wistful, but this was an extremely lively set (the tunes, at least - there's no knowing, of course, what the songs were about).

Which is why I decided to give the French café a miss this evening, and stay home...

I don't know why, given my resistance to television in general, I have such a weakness for the Eurovision Song Contest. But everyone has a secret indulgence for some form of junk food, and Eurovision is mine. At least it's essentially sociable: it's a programme to share with friends, to settle down for the evening in front of the television with food and drink and company, and argue about which songs and dance routines and costumes are best (or worst, or strangest).

So last night

durham_rambler and I invited over a friend who we knew would join in this pointless activity, and lured in a passing

valydiarosada, and gathered up food and drink, and set about the serious business of awarding points for whatever pleased us: points for singing in your own language (and, in the case of Latvia, points for singing in Italian while wearing a top hat), points for pinkness of costume (won by France, who also lost points for singing in Franglais. We suspect that les Fatals Picards were not taking this entirely seriously), The Swedish entry gained points for androgyny, and for most familiar music (eventually identified as Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes); runner up was the German entry (with bonus points for retro appeal), always on the point of lapsing into Mac the Knife. Most baffling entry was Ukraine, the bookies' favourite: why were the band dressed as blue meanies in aluminium foil? (and no, finding the subtitles didn't help); most blatantly anious to please was Romania, whose song switched language with each verse.

Not that this won them many votes - but then, the voting is a whole other can of worms. It's always been political, but this year seemed more blatant than I remember it in the past: possibly the decision to cut short the reporting by giving each country's lower choices en bloc emphasised the partisan nature of the top choices, or possibly the switch from national juries to a phone-in vote removed any chance of limiting the popularity contest aspect of the vote. For whatever reason, the result was as inscrutable as ever: Turkey, whose song (and singer) I profoundly disliked, did inexplicably well. The much-reviled Scooch (who were certainly better than last-year's ill-judged entry) may have paid the price for the UK's anti-Europeanism, but were saved from last place by the Irish entry (a piece of saccharine pseudo-traditionalism, complete with bodhran) doing even worse. It's all a mystery...

And I really don't know what to say about Serbia's victory, so I will evade the issue by remarking instead that the opening sequence (last year's winners, Lordi, in fields of ice and flames) was spectacular, and that I enjoyed the trapeze artiste at the interval.