Eurovision 2017: Germany

Germany has had one of the worst Eurovision track records in the past few years.  They have sent songs that have moldered at the bottom of the results table.  (Even one that was one of my personal favorites.)

I don't think Germany is going to change this trend with this year's song.

Levina  "Perfect Life"

This is a perfectly nice song--very credible and very radio friendly.   The problem is the song, like the French song before it, is not particularly memorable.   Unless the stage show is spectacular, there is nothing for a viewer to remember to willingly vote it for and her voice is not unique enough for the juries to rank highly enough to get points.

Poor Levina.

Eurovision 2015: The Aftermath

Although Eurovision has been over for a couple of weeks, I'm typing about it now because I've finally had my yearly Eurovision party.

Congrats to Sweden.  We ranked your fourth.

Usually I have it a little while after the live broadcast, it's an excuse to have people over, make some interesting food, and have a little bit of fun by ranking the songs.

It's always very interesting on where we agree and disagree with the voters from Europe.

Our Favorite:

Aminata   "Love Injected"   Latvia

Latvia's first final qualifier in eight years won us over with the exceptional vocals from Aminata and the extremely modern, almost avant garde, staging.

It was ranked in the top five of everybody at the party and would recieve our "douze points".

Other Winners:

Lisa Angell   "N'oubliez pas"   France

Even though Angell was placed in the "slot of death", performing second on the night of the final, Angell's passionate hit us in the sweet spot, coming in second our voting and would have received ten pomts from us.  Angell receiving only four points was one of the biggest shocks of this year's voting.

Ann Sophie   "Black Smoke"   Germany

Ann Sophie wouldn't have gone away with "nul points" if our little group of voters were considered.  "Black Smoke" came in sixth in our voting and picked up five points from us.  The sexy staging  and the powerhouse vocals worked for this little group of Americans.

The Biggest Loser:

Elhaida Dani   "I'm Alive"   Albania

I'm always happy when Albania makes it to the finals, but I have to agree with almost everybody else at our party and put Dani dead last.  There's no hiding off key, screechy vocals.

Other Losers:

Polina Gagarina   "A Million Voices"  Russia

Although Russia came in seventh in our voting, the little group I had over was made up of members of the LBGT community and their allies.  Politics caused us to vote the song down our list, even though we all admitted she hit this song out of the park.

However, the booking of Gagarina by the crowd was extremely tasteless.  She's just a singer, not a politician.

Nadav Gued   "Golden Boy"   Israel

Israel may have hit the top ten in European voting, but the ethnopop from a guy attempting to be Justin Timberlake attempting to be Michael Jackson got more jeers than kudos.

The fake selfie at the end of the song was a particular groan worthy moment...

And that's Eurovision 2015.   Now it's time to focus on a move and look forward to 2016 and the contest in Sweden.

Top 10 Before The Show: Eurovision 2015

As the rehearsals are going on in Vienna, I now get to the fun part of my blog--choosing my favorite songs.

Read on and enjoy

10th place:

Lisa Angell  "N'oubliez pas"   France

France is always a great country when it comes to Eurovision, and I'm a sucker for chanson.   Naturally Angell's song was going to be high on my list.

9th Place:

Electro Velvet   "Still In Love with You"   United Kingdom

I love the out of left field choice of the UK.   It's weird and most of all fun.   Fun is something missing in this year's contest and I hope Electro Velvet are going to bring a little bit of joy.

8th Place: 

Guy Sebastian   "Tonight Again"   Australia

Australia is sending a commercially successful song that is a catchy as hell.

7th Place:

Nina Sublatti   "Warrior"   Georgia

There are a lot of moody young women singing dark dramatic songs at Eurovision this year.  This is the only one that hasn't been overworked to death.  

6th Place:

Elina Born & Stig Rästa   "Goodbye to Yesterday"   Estonia

I cannot deny that this is one of the best songs in the contest.   I can understand why it's one of the favorites.

5th Place:

Aminata   "Love Injected"   Latvia

Latvia has finally come to win, not place last in the semifinal.  It's delightful to see.

4th Place:

Daniel Kajmakoski   "Autumn Leaves"   Macedonia

I must confess that Kajmakoski's work on reaching out to the Eurovision fan base has worked on me.  If you haven't checked out his cover of Yugoslavia's 1983 entry, Džuli, you really should.    It's made me go back and take a listen to his entry that I wrote off back at the beginning of my tour through the 2015 songs.   It's popped up to the top of my replay list.

3rd Place:   

Monika Kuszyńska   "In The Name of Love"  Poland

I'm surprised by the fact I keep playing the Polish entry over and over again.   Simple songs sung well always hook me.    I don't know if it will qualify, but for me it works.

2nd Place:

Ann Sophie   "Black Smoke"   Germany

If Eurovision songs won on sheer memorability, "Black Smoke" would be my winner hands down.  This song has been stuck in my head since I first heard the darn thing, and it's a great one to have on the car stereo with the volume cranked up.   It also doesn't hurt that it's in my vocal range.  Hello new karaoke song.

1st Place:

Maraaya   "Here For You"   Slovenia

Hands down my favorite song in the contest, and they're going to be the group I'll definaletly follow in the future, joining a small list like Anouk and Patricia Kaas.   Have you heard their other versions--the remix with the students of their music school?  Or the remix with the a capella choir?   This song has legs and Maraaya has the musical chops.

Eurovision 2015: Germany

The format for Unser Song für Österreich is one of the most confusing setups that I have seen in Eurovision.

Let's see if I can explain this:

1. 1213 amateurs submitted songs to the German National Broadcaster.
2. Ten artists were selected to compete for one "wildcard" spot in the final.
3. The winner of the wildcard joined seven established artists in the final.
4. Each of the eight artists performed a song.  Four were eliminated.
5. The four remaining artists performed another song.   The eight songs were ranked and the top two (from differing artists) continued on.
6. The final two songs were performed again.  The most popular song and artist wins.

I'm not trying to watch all of those things and choose my favorite, so I'm just going to take a look at the winning song.

Andreas Kümmert   "Heart of Stone"

Interesting, it's the German version of Darius Rucker.  Self assured, different, and perfectly nice.  Not going to challenge but not an embarrassment either.

But wait, there's a surprise!

Kümmert decides he doesn't want to go to Eurovision.

So why did he compete in the first place?   It's really confusing to me.  If you don't want to do Eurovision, don't enter the contest.

So here's the song going to Vienna.

Ann Sophie   "Black Smoke"

I flat out love "Black Smoke".  It's getting heavy rotation in my musical library and I'm going to be purchasing Ann Sophie's first CD when it gets released.   

It's challenging Maraaya and "Here For You" as my favorite Eurovision song this year.

Eurovision 2015: Spain

Every Eurovision cycle there is a song or two that the Eurovision blogosphere goes wild for that I don't understand the reason for such praise.

Two years ago it was this song:

Cascada   "Glorious"   Germany  2013

Last year it was this song:

Tanja   "Amazing"   Estonia  2014

This year, it's Spain's entry to Eurovision.

Edurne   "Amancer"

Edurne appears to have a pretty stable career in Spain, having released five albums over a nine-year career as well as being a reality TV star in Spain with appearances on a number of high profile television shows.

The song, however, is boring.   It's a Spanish dance song that lacks any verve.   It's a disappointment in comparison to their entry last year, which was a memorable song and performance (even if it wasn't my favorite.)

Perhaps she'll deliver on the night, but right now it's completely off target.

If someone can explain why this is so popular, I'd love to know.

My Predictions: Final 2013

Like everybody who has a love of the Eurovision Song Contest, I've been sitting down and analyzing the running order for the final.

Here's the running order, as determined by the lovely people at SVT.

1. France

2. Lithuania

3. Moldova

4. Finland

5. Spain

6. Belgium

7. Estonia

8. Belarus

9. Malta

10. Russia

11. Germany

12. Armenia

13. Netherlands

14. Romania

15. UK

16. Sweden

17. Hungary

18. Denmark

19. Iceland

20. Azerbaijan

21. Greece

22. Ukraine

23. Italy

24. Norway

25. Georgia

26. Ireland

Of course, I'm going to be looking at my personal favorite, Anouk for the Netherlands.  Unluckily drawn into the first half, she's got a good position--the last song in the first half.   She's also between two really lousy songs--the Armenian ecoballad and the (forgive me for offending delicate sensibilities) salute to menstruation--Romania, which will hopefully make the song stand out.

Anouk   "Birds"   the Netherlands

I hope for a good result for the Dutch entry--maybe a top ten position.   I doubt Anouk can win--the song is kind of too classy for the room.  If it does, just expect me to be very, very, happy.

As for likely winners, if I were to put down some money, I'd actually go with Ukraine. 

Zlata Ognevich   "Gravity"   Ukraine

It's well placed and if performed the way it was in this clip, it's worthy of winning the Eurovision Song Contest.

And as a long shot, I'd put some money down on this song too:

Krista Sigfrieds   "Marry Me"   Finland

Hatred has turned to love on this one.  

But to be honest any number of countries songs would be worthy.   Norway, Georgia, Ireland, Italy, Greece,  France, Russia, Moldova, and Iceland are all songs that I would be happy to see win.  

Really there are only three songs that are likely winners that I don't particularly care for.

Cascada   "Glorious"  Germany

Emmilie de Forest   "Only Teardrops"   Denmark

Both of them seem way too generic to actually inspire love, but they are true fan favorites. 

Farid Mammadov   "Hold Me"   Azerbaijan

And on this one, the song is very much back burner to the fantastic gimmick.   It's like the sand lady from Ukraine a few years back.    That's not a particularly flattering comparison, but it's going to get votes.



But all of this analysis is really pointless.  I'm just looking forward to tomorrow morning--the final starts at 11 AM local time here in Alaska.   And then comes my favorite part of the Eurovision season.  The Eurovision parties to determine Alaska's Choice!

Eurovision 2013: Germany

Well, there's something that I can say about Germany after watching their national contest, Unser Song für Malmö.  Germany wants to win the Eurovision Song Contest again badly.

Very badly.

Out of the twelve songs in their national finals only one of them was really a duff one:

Die Priester & Mojca Erdmann  "Meerstern, sei gegrüßt"

 

And even then, the singers aren't particularly bad, it's just that the gimmick wasn't the greatest and the vocal mix between Die Priester and Ms. Erdmann was kind of off.

 

But you have to hand it to the producers of the Unser Song, they presented a contest that had a song for pretty much everybody:

 

A song that could be sung on the next She and Him album:

 

 

Betty Dittrich   "LaLaLa"

 

 

Blues tinged rock:

 



 

Saint Lu   "Craving"

 

And an interesting song from a rap/soul collective:

 

 

Söhne Mannheims   "One Love"

 

All of them are quite good for very different reasons, and would be worthy of representing Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest, but Germany chose to send a group that has had success throughout the world.

 



 

Cascada   "Glorious"

 

It's an intelligent choice.  Cascada has had success throughout Western Europe--particularly in the British Isles.  They've even had success here in the United States, with their single "Every Time We Touch" landing at 31 on the Year-End Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2007.

 

So Germany has placed themselves in a very good place to win the whole kit and caboodle.  Cascada has name recognition throughout much of the countries that vote in Eurovision and they have plenty of experience playing in venues much like the one they'll be performing in Malmö.

 

But as a performance as a whole I found it rather lacking compared to the other performers, and had I had a choice I would have gone with another song

 

 

LaBrassBanda   "Nackert"

 

And no, it's not this song, although La BrassBanda looked like they were going to sweep the contest at the early part of the voting.

 

Germany split the voting into thirds, one third each to televoting and to a jury made up of musical professionals.  The third part, however, was online voting at radio stations throughout Germany, and the punk Bavarian folk band looked like they were going to sweep the contest.  The received top marks from each regional radio station.

 

It made for an interesting voting portion of the contest, and I recommend watching this clip of the jury votes to see the audience reaction.

 

I personally agreed with the audience, I didn't get the song.  But I've never been one for frat bands, no matter what the genre they perform in.

 

For once, I also agreed with the jury on the best song of the night, and it was the one by Bitzkids mvt.

 

 



 

Blitzkids mvt.   "Heart on the Line"

 

Although the singer was undermiked, the combination of dance music, fashion, and performance art was something really fantastic.  I'm definitely going to check out more of their work.  In fact I'm probably going to check out the work of a number of these artists...

 

Good show Germany.

 



 





Eurovision 2012 Entrants: San Marino

Do you wanna be more than just a friend?

Do you wanna play cybersex again?

If you wanna come to my house

Then click me with your mouse OK.  I realize I'm beating a dead horse with my review of the San Marinese entry, because pretty much everybody has had the same reaction the "The Social Network Song" and it's really the easiest song to criticize.  I mean, all you really need to do is read the lyrics at the beginning of the post to understand why.  I do not condone any song that uses the word "cybersex". And with an introduction like that, you're probably dying to hear the full song: Valentina Monetta  "The Social Network Song" Although the song's lyrics are really smutty, I have to say the music is catchy and that's because the music was written by Ralph Siegel, who is Germany's Mr. Eurovision,   Siegel is famous for composing nineteen songs that were performed at Eurovision, most famously this winner: Nicole  "Ein Bißchen Frieden"  Germany 1982 Yep, Nicole's song about peace is a long, long distance away from hooking up online. But vulgar lyrics aren't my big issue with the song, there have been some songs with vulgar lyrics before, and I can overlook it. Serebro  "Song #1"  Russia 2007 It's pretty awful, but I'm willing to forgive this.  And that's because the girls singing it are barely out of their teens.   It is sexist and ageist, but teenaged girls singing songs that are barely covered come ons are more acceptable than a more mature woman--especally a woman who has been tarted up to look like a teenager.  It's a shame really, because Monetta has a decent voice and is very attractive.  Had she been given a song that would fit with her image, she could have sold the song into the finals, but this song is definately not going there.

Alaska's Winner 1959: Cannes

The fourth Eurovision Song Contest took place in Cannes, France on March 11th, 1959. Twelve countries participated in the fourth Eurovision Song Contest, with Luxembourg opting out, the United Kingdom returning, and Monaco debuting.

I'd love to be able to say that there was some sort of exciting scandal that took place during the fourth Eurovision Song Contest, but it seems that this contest took off without any hitches or scandals.  (Although there is an unconfirmed rumor that France and Italy didn't vote fore each other to prevent the rival song from winning.)

After the songs were performed (on a troika of rotating backdrops with pictures of scenery from each participating country), the juries, made up of 10 people each selected their favorite song.  After the voting, the winner was the Dutch entrant, making the Netherlands the first country to win the contest more than once.

Teddy Scholten "Een Beetje"  the Netherlands

But the Alaska jury, as usual, came up with a different result. and we did the same thing as the original jury--this is the first time a country won our contest more than once.

Freddy Quinn from Germany was our choice as the winner for the 1959 contest, and we gave the title to Germany again:

Alice and Ellen Kessler  "Heute Abend wollen wir tanzen geh'n"  Germany

We were suckers for singing and dancing German twins.  They did dance moves on the rickety set and sounded good.  Can you blame us for choosing them?

And be grateful it wasn't this entry. 

Ferry Graf  "Der K und K Calypso aus Wein"  Austria

A place checking song in a calypso beat that blends in waltzes and yodels.  Yep, it's one of the more bizarre entrants, and there was no way I could leave it out...even though we placed it in ninth place.

And for those of you who are interested, here's our breakdown of the songs.

1.  "Heute Abend wollen wir tanzen geh'n"  Alice and Ellen Kessler  Germany
2.  "Uh, jeg ville ønske jeg var dig"  Birthe Wilke  Denmark
3.  "Een beetje"  Teddy Scholten  the Netherlands
4.  "Piove (Ciao, ciao banbina)"  Domenico Modugno  Italy
5.  "Irgenwoher"  Christa Williams  Switzerland
6.  "Sing Little Birdie"  Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson  the United Kingdom
7.  "Oui, oui, oui, oui"  Jean Phillippe  France
8.  "Augustin"  Brita Borg  Sweden
9.  "Der K und K Kalypso aus Wien"  Ferry Graf  Austria
10.  "Hour toch van mij"  Bob Benny  Belgium
11.  "Mon ami Peirrot"  Jacques Pills  Monaco

Eurovision 2012 Entrants: Germany

Unser Star für Baku finished up a couple of weeks ago, and a young man by the name of Roman Lob came out on top.  It's not much of a surprise, since he led the competition's voting from the beginning.

Roman Lob  "Standing Still"

 

 

Yet again, the German entrant is mimicking English pop music.  The last time this contest was run, Lena Meyer-Landrut won the contest by singing songs by English singers like Adele and Kate Nash, the latter's singing style Landrut borrowed from heavily.  And what happened?  She won the contest...

So Germany sticks with the English pop sound, this time choosing a co-written by a somewhat successful English jazz pianist that VH1 attempted to push down my throat a couple of years ago by playing his videos while I was working out on the elliptical trainer.

What do I think of the song?  It's good.  And if clips from Unser Star für Baku are any indication, he's going to do quite well.   Germany's found a pattern for success--a fresh young singer singing a song like they're a singer from England.

Alaska's Winner: 1956 Lugano

Who would have thought that from humble beginnings as a radio program in the mid 1950s, the Eurovision Song Contest would go on to enthrall people throughout the world? 
Yet somehow, the idea of Marcel Benzençon, a Swiss telecommunications manager, of creating a "light entertainment program" in the style of the San Remo Song Festival, that could be broadcast to all the member nations of the European Broadcasting Union back in 1955 had continued to this day.

The first Eurovison Song Contest was much different than the current spectacle.  Instead of the 43 countries participating in this year's contest, only 7 countries competed in Lugano, Switzerland, each entering two songs.

After all 14 songs were performed, the judges--two for each country--voted, selecting:

Lys Assia  "Refrain"   Switzerland

Unfortunately, the rest of the placings are unknown, the results of the voting never released, so we have no idea who actually won the contest.

However, when a group of Alaska's voted, poor Lys was left out in the cold--coming in fourth place.

A score sheet was sent out to a number of Alaskans along with a link to the fourteen songs in running order.  They were asked to score the songs on both performance and lyrics on a scale from one to ten, with the worst score being 2 and the best being 20.

The results of the poll brought a very different winner.

Freddy Quinn  "So geht das jede Nacht"    Germany

 

Freddy's song was the the only song that was popular with all the voters, scoring well with all the judges.  So, congratulations to Germany and Freddy Quinn, the first Alaska's Choice in the Eurovision Song contest.

But don't feel too sorry for Lys Assia.  She's still around, in fact she entered this year's Swiss finals with this number.

Lys Assia  "C'était ma vie"

 

She didn't win, but you have to admire her chutzpah.

Welcome!

I have a confession.  
I love the Eurovision Song Contest.  




The problem is, I live in the wilds of Alaska, about as far away from Europe and still be in the Northern Hemisphere.  For many years it's been my secret obsession.  On days where I have nothing much better to do, I've spent hours watching clips of Germans singing country music,

Texas Lightning--"No No Never"  2006

Portuguese girl groups wearing sequined pirate costumes, 

Doce--"Bem Bom" 1981

and songs that seem to be one word sung repetitively

Massiel--"La La La"   1968  Spain

It's cheesy.

It's frivolous.

And it's a hell of a lot of fun.

I hope you come along for the ride.