And the answer to that was--karaoke night!
After years of well polished, well turned out performances in the contest, I actually decided to sit down and watch the final of Milli Seçim Turu, Azerbaijan's national selection process.
This was absolute torture to sit and listen to. Absolute torture. I cannot believe that the Azerbaijani national broadcaster would put on a show where it seems like everybody was off key and the sound design was done by a rank amateur.
For example take a listen to poor Nigar Huseynova's performance:
Nigar Huseynova "I Still Believe"
She's a soprano. The audio people were so unprepared for her high note it causes feedback. And you can hear the wind machine at the end.
The songs and the music weren't that much better. Take a listen to my vote for worst song in a Eurovision final this year.
Aysel Babayeva "Sleazy Mo"
I'm going to paraphrase a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States here. I may not know how to define atrocious, but I know atrocious when I hear it.
Really none of the songs come out particularly well. Even the winning song sounds particularly terrible in the final.
Farid Mammadov "Hold Me"
I must admit I would have voted for him because he actually sounded great during the chorus of his song, something that nobody else was able to do with the bad sound engineering. (Although I do dock him points for mumbling his way through the first verse.) And I like the ombre shirt.
I have no real opinion on Mammadov, he seems capable enough and the song seems likely enough to make it through to the final. I fully suspect that the Azerbaijani music machine will train him and clean him up enough to allow the song to make a good showing.
Watching the entire thing leaves me with one question. Are Azerbaijani national finals always this bad? San Marino had a better presentation, and they're a country with less than 40,000 people.
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