After Estonia, this the first non-qualifying song that I’m genuinely unhappy that it didn’t qualify. And in contrast to Estonia’s case, nothing went wrong with the performance of “The Real Thing”. The group sounded great onstage. The lone female backing dancer was a rather impressive addition. The framing of the whole performance as well made the whole thing look like a music video (which seemed to be a trend amongst the rock entries those year), which was also really cool.
The only real thing (get it?) I can be unhappy about here is the televoters.
This is bad, I’m sorry. Unless you are Sertab Erener or Stereo Mike, rapping should never be done at Eurovision. At least we got to hear a somewhat obscure dialect (Pontic Greek) in the song.
37TH – ALBANIA, ENEDA TARIFA, “FAIRYTALE”
(16th, DNQ, 45 points)
Albania, oh Albania. Where did you go wrong? The Albanian version of Fairytale, “Përrallë”, sounded perfect. The English version, while musically the same, has horrible lyrics, just horrible ones. I mean, “That’s why I love you, oh-oh, *pause* that’s why I love you”. While I’m not calling for La Source or Uma Flor de Verde Pinho level lyrics, couldn’t the Albanian team at least come up with something better then that?
36TH – IRELAND, NICKY BYRNE, “SUNLIGHT”
(15th, DNQ, 46 points)
This is bad. And meh.
35TH – FINLAND, SANDHJA, “SING IT AWAY”
(15th, DNQ, 51 points)
This is bad. And meh. Also, Sandhja was off like heck in Stockholm. What happened?
34TH – ICELAND, GRETA SALOME, “HEAR THEM CALLING”
(14th, DNQ, 51 points)
The first fanwank entry to fall. While I personally think it’s better then her 2012 entry, I’m still incredibly ambivalent to this. The projection effects were cool though I guess.
33RD- SLOVENIA, MANUELLA, “BLUE AND RED”
(14th, DNQ, 57 points)
No Taylor Swift , I don’t care if things are blue or if things are red. What I do care about is the staging. Who the heck approved this?
ManuElla looked and sang rather well. Same for backing singers. What I do get is why is there a random acrobat onstage? Why does the screens behind ManuElla look like they’re more appropriate for some horror movie and not some bland Slovenian country song? And why is there pyros at the end?
I only did this much entries so I could get to the next one, my first actual favorite DNQ…..
Insipid. That’s the only real way I can describe this song. The astronaut was kinda cool I guess.
39th – DENMARK, LIGHTHOUSE X, “SOLDIERS OF LOVE”
(17th place, DNQ, 34)
I could pretty much just copy and paste what I said for Moldova here, although in this case this song is arguably worse as there’s no astronaut (or soldier for that matter) Danish, Moldovan, or some other European nationality, to save what is a pretty boring, low energy song.
Due to me not posting anything during the actual Eurovision week, I’ve decided to post my review of 2016 now. In this case, I’m not ranking the songs by how I prefer them, I’m going over them as they ranked in the actual contest.
42nd – ESTONIA, JÜRI POOTSMAN, “PLAY”
(18th place, DNQ, 24 points)
This one’s a bit of a surprise. Many people had pegged Estonia as doing well, if not qualifying at least come the big time in Stockholm, and the background behind the song (it was written by Stig Rästa, who competed for Estonia last year), and Jüri gave some rather convincing performances before the actual contest. When Eurovision actually rolled around however, ERR seemingly lost all of the staging magic they had for the previous couple of years. Instead of going for the subdued and somber atmosphere of the Eesti Laul performance, they went with a cheap Las Vegas look, complete with a rather hokey magic trick. Complete with Jüri’s serial killer realness now being a bit too real, and Estonia sadly sank to the bottom in their semi final.
41st – SWITZERLAND, RYKKA, “THE LAST OF OUR KIND”
(18th place, DNQ, 28 points)
Switzerland. The land of the Matterhorn, yodeling, Swiss cheese, healthcare, Celine Dion, and tiny adorable chanson-singing ladies. None of this appeared onstage on Thursday, with the alpine nation instead being represented by a lady with a see-through skirt and a dance that looked like she was constipated. At least Rykka sang well- she was actually let down by her backing singers, who sounded off. Really off. That and the smoking armpits. What the heck was up with that?
To clarify, I’m one of those Eurovision fans who doesn’t really care for the national finals. The only real NF I’m semi-familiar with is Melodifestivalen, and even then it’s only one contest that I’m familiar with (1974). Thus, I didn’t find out about this NF song until way after Eurovision, and even then it still took a while for me to start listening to it. First things first, it’s very… European. The song is a rather morose and militant Eurotrash anthem, with The Hungry Hearts singing about lost disco lesbian love in Moscow, comparing it all to Laika. Oh, and there’s a Bedazzled car in there as well.
What could have been a somewhat formidable song was ruined by staging. Really, interplanetary Barbies? Bedazzled cars? Random disco backing dancers? The only part that didn’t look bad was Lisa, although it looked like she was pulling a Verka Serduchka here.
Oh well, let’s sing it together now: The streets of Moscow, with my girlfriend…
EUROVISION 1991: PORTUGAL, DULCE PONTES, “LUSITANA PAIXÃO”
(8th place, 62 points)
In my previous post I mentioned how I saw Portugal’s 1984 entry as being one of the best entries of the 80s. Portugal’s entry in 1991 is definitely its successor as one of the best entries of the 90s.
Portugal, after a brief glimmer of hope of that they might stay within the top ten, failed to reach anywhere higher then 14th place after 1986. Thus when Dulce came onstage for Portugal in Rome, there wasn’t exactly that much hope that she would do well; the previous year Nucha only managed to garner a 20th place. And yet, as soon as Dulce started her song, Portugal’s golden era of Eurovision came to being. With a gorgeous about fado and sorrows, Dulce got a strong 8th place, bolstered by 62 points from 13 countries, and brought a sense of pride to her home country. Indeed, Portugal would go on to do well for the rest of the 90s, reaching their highest placing of 6th in 1996.
To clarify, The Visitors is probably one of my most favorite albums of all time. But despite it having that rather lofty title for me, that still doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have it’s patchy spots. Two For The Price Of One is one rather well known spot. And One Of Us, the lead single (and ABBA’s last major hit) is another bad spot.
The song itself is rather good. While I really, really despise the mandolins and the reggae beat, I can at least deal with them, although I do wish that Benny and Björn had gotten a proper strings section rather then some mandolins. The reggae beat is meh, but at least it gives the some some energy, in a way I suppose. Agentha and Frida’s harmonizing sound beautiful, and Agnetha sounds great in the verses. Her voval at the beginning gives the song a rather dramatic edge, which makes the whole package sound great. But alas, the music video definitely wasn’t great.
The music video begins innocently enough. We have Agnetha, post-breakup, setting up her new apartment. We see her bringing in various pieces of furniture and books, as well as her putting up some paintings, all fair enough. When the verses come in however, the visuals of the video go south. The members of ABBA, Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Frida all looks pretty miserable and depressed. Agnetha, in particular, looks absolutely miserable. Benny and Björn look both disaffected, and Frida just maintains a sad sort of serenity through it all. The mirror effect, while neat, looks pretty cheap in some spots (we can see the bottom of the mirror in some shots as well). Not to mention, the promo, being filmed on video, definitely did the group nor the music video no favors.
Alas, the One Of Us video did mark a sort of end for ABBA. No more were they the happy couples of the 70s albums, nor the graceful, mature singers of Super Trouper. They were now tired, depressed, and very, very real.
EUROVISION 1984: PORTUGAL, MARIA GUINOT, SILÊNCIO E TANTA GENTE
(11th place, 38 points)
To give you a sense of how this review is going to go, I genuinely believe that not only is this one of the best entries of the 80s, this one of the best entires ever for Eurovision. At this point in time, Portugal had been doing somewhat well for the past decade or so; they had hit the top ten 5 times within the past 15 years, and they got a semi-solid 13th place in Munich the previous contest. Thus, it seems, Maria had no real pressure on her shoulders, and she just needed to get a placing that was equal or higher to Armando’s the year before. She ended up achieving that, placing 11th at the end of the night. And yet, she really deserved a way better placing.
To be frank, to me 1984 is one of the worst contests ever. The host, Désirée Nosbusch (she was only 19!) and the staging were both charming and magnificent. The sound mixing issues from 1973 were thankfully fixed, and the postcards are definitely rather charming, if not dated. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the songs. The previous year’s, notably 1981 and 1983, all had relatively high quality songs; it seems that this quality dropped this year, for some unknown reason. The winner, while catchy, is pretty bleh. Linda Martin thankfully won with a slightly better entry in 1992. Luxembourg’s singer definitely needed way more then 100% of love to actually sound good. Norway is pretty bad. And Yugoslavia tried to go Italian but ended up going more south then north.
Alas, there were some shiners in the filth. Spain, had a nice little tune about a lady. with paper clouds and such. Belgium had a surprisingly somber, philosophical (and creepy) song. Netherlands fielded as rather bombastic, beautiful, ballad (that sounds a lot like “I’ll Be In Your Heart”…), and of course, Portugal topped the whole thing off with a gorgeous piano ballad about finding the right things to say, and indeed, you find yourself in the midst of the silence and so many people.
Just to start this off, I actually am rather excited for Eurovision this year. I like a surprisingly large amount of songs this year, compared to 2015 or 2013, where I only liked around 10-12. I do think that a lot of the quality for the entries have increased, and I’m pretty sure Petra and Mans are going to be good hosts come May. The stage looks pretty neat as well.
But, now for the negatives. Even before any details were announced for Stockholm, I was already in a rather unhappy mood for Eurovision 2016, given how much I wanted Latvia or Italy to win, compared to Sweden’s run-of-the-mill pop song. Don’t get me wrong, the staging is great and Man’s is a capable singer, it’s just that without the staging we have a rather meh winner. Sort of like Azerbaijan 2011 for me, personally.
And the changes that SVT and Björkman announced for this contest, hoooo boy. I’m sort of in the middle for the voting change; while I do like that jury favorites won’t be slaughtered by the televotes and vice versa, I do think that they should be done by doing the 1-12 points for the televotes, and the collated votes for the juries. The biggest thing that I’m unhappy about however, is one that I’ve been miffed about for a while- the producer led draw. While I do understand the rationale for having a producer-led one, it does seem rather unfair for some of the entrants. Compare to 2013, where Denmark, Sweden’s neighbor and the big favorite, was padded in by Hungary and Iceland: one was a rather simple hipster song and the other was a rather heartfelt ballad, with a big Celtic song in the middle. Same with 2014, where Germany’s Elaiza with smothered by the Austrian phoenix and the Swedish disco light cage.
All in all, I’m rather sure that most of these suspicions will be allayed come contest time. Or maybe not.
Now isn’t that an odd little video. And indeed, this a rather odd way to start off my “Songs in Review” series. I’ve already started my “Eurovision in Review” ones, which you start off with here, so I figured the way to make up such a slow start to that series was that I should start off with something notable here.
Hunter is the first track on what is argurably Björk’s most lauded album, Homogenic. The album itself focuses on themes of love, Iceland, and determination- of which is most notably expressed here. The rather cryptic lyrics of Hunter allude to both hunting (which she already discussed in the equally creepy track Cover Me from 1995’s Post) and the sense of some sort of mission (which reminds me of the equally haunting Black Lake from her most recent album, Vulnicura. Interestingly, both of these albums were made after she broke up with someone. Coincidence, I think not!).
The song itself is rather simple; we have the ever-hypnotic, shifting beat,the menacing strings of cellos, various collages of sounds that fade in out of the song, and of course, Björk’s ever lovely voice. She sings solo for most the song, before exploding into an array of self-harmonizing during the middle of the song.
And like the hunting that Björk talks about, the song goes on.
muricavision 