{"id":646,"date":"2006-05-18T13:52:18","date_gmt":"2006-05-18T12:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/18\/eurovision-2006-is-here\/"},"modified":"2006-05-18T13:53:44","modified_gmt":"2006-05-18T12:53:44","slug":"eurovision-2006-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/18\/eurovision-2006-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision 2006 is here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the semi-final tonight (on BBC Three or watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\">the webcast<\/a>), so time for my summary of this year&#8217;s entries. I apologise in advance for my inevitable overuse of the word &#8220;Europop&#8221;: there is a glut of blonde young ladies singing slightly dancy numbers and they all merge together eventually (the songs, not the young ladies). Save for a few exceptional cases, therefore, the job the songs this year have is to stand out from the crowd &#8211; and some of them really do, albeit not necessarily in a good way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Good<\/strong><br \/>\nSix that aren&#8217;t too bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Belgium &#8211; The best of this year&#8217;s Europop bunch sung by Jessica Simpson in <em>These Boots are Made for Walking<\/em> mode an a vast improvement on last year&#8217;s drear-fest. There are some ropy lyrics in the chorus but could have been a hit outside the contest.<\/li>\n<li>Denmark &#8211; Mildly country rock&#8217;n&#8217;roll pop song with plenty of opportunity for toe-tapping. Really quite catchy.<\/li>\n<li>Armenia &#8211; Yes, really, Armenia. The chorus is catchy but the song takes a while to get going. The singer appears to style himself after Michael Jackson. That&#8217;s not a compliment.<\/li>\n<li>Germany &#8211; Another country track with more toe-tapping from Northern Europe &#8211; this one (from Texas Lightning) much more so. The strumming guitars and fast pace give it a surprising energy. A personal favourite and it&#8217;s certainly memorable &#8211; it will have the audience clapping along and should do well. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.troubled-diva.com\/\">Mike<\/a> is reporting on the contest from Athens and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.troubled-diva.com\/2006_05_14_troubled-diva_archive.html#114779241555599711\">is a fan<\/a> of this entry too.<\/li>\n<li>Latvia &#8211; Boy band Cosmos will get noticed: they&#8217;re singing <em>a capella<\/em>. Nice idea. What&#8217;s not a nice idea: silly noises, screeching falsettos, jazz\/swing pre&#8230; and some sort of . I don&#8217;t want to be mean though: they&#8217;re trying hard.<\/li>\n<li>Finland &#8211; Oh Lordi. Death metal goes Eurovision &#8211; mad, but pretty good. &#8220;Rock and roll angels bring thyn <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/english\/2115.htm\">Hard Rock Hallelujah<\/a>&#8220;. No-one will forget this one.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Honourable mentions too to Belarus (upbeat Kelly Clarkson thing with dancers from the 1990s), Bosnia &#038; Herzogovina (gentle, pleasant music that gains little from the singing), Slovenia (camp singer with really bad hair performs pretty good Europop), Turkey (Pink does some <em>more<\/em> all right pop nonsense), Russia (mullet man with OK pop song), Estonia (ABBA-esque guitar intro turns into run-of-the-mill, OK Eurovision pop) and host&#8217;s Greece (Christina\/Britney with a slightly stronger power ballad). It remains to be seen how many of these make it to the final.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Bad<\/strong><br \/>\nAs always some of these are awful while some are, in true Eurovision spirit, so bad they&#8217;re good.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>United Kingdom &#8211; on the border between these two. Again, it&#8217;s relatively memorable &#8211; but let&#8217;s face it, it&#8217;s not very good, is it? Mr Sampson&#8217;s stuff with Bus Stop was better.<\/li>\n<li>Poland &#8211; Three women and two men sing ropily and rap cringeworthily.<\/li>\n<li>Moldova (in this section for the second year running) &#8211; The only duet features apparently meaningless lyrics posing as innuendo. And there&#8217;s some bad rap.<\/li>\n<li>Iceland &#8211; Silvia Night is the bastard child of Bjork and Aqua; I&#8217;m not sure if it isn&#8217;t a joke. There are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/english\/737.htm\">lyrics<\/a> about not being Eurotrash, asking the listener to &#8220;vote for your hero&#8221; and &#8220;So boys and girls around the world, let&#8217;s meet next year in Iceland&#8221;? Unashamedly courting votes, self-referential, mildly catchy and quite, quite bonkers. Oh, and it professes to be &#8220;Really hot okay, really not too gay&#8221;. On a different day I might vote for this; it would be stunning if it won.<\/li>\n<li>Lithuania &#8211; <em>Vote for the winners<\/em>. Lithuania are at it too, and really must be taking the piss. They two seem to be courting votes, but with none of the fun of Iceland. Old men chanting &#8220;We are the winners&#8221;? There&#8217;s something very postmodern about this. And also rubbish.<\/li>\n<li>Croatia &#8211; Awful. The singer actually clucks. The backing singers shout. The tune stayed at home. Boggling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Rest<\/strong><br \/>\nI described Spain&#8217;s entry <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/05\/11\/eurovision-2005\/\">last year<\/a> as being &#8220;pretty much Las Ketchup&#8221;. They&#8217;ve gone one better this year: it <em>is<\/em> Las Ketchup. <\/p>\n<p>Romania have entered more dancy Europop, the sort of thing that could easily be a hit in &#8220;the clubs&#8221; in &#8220;Ibitza&#8221;. Switzerland;s entry has a nice, Beatlesy opening which, sadly, turns into a horribly cheesy &#8220;Let&#8217;s all make the world a better place&#8221; chorus. Shame. Sweden are often a talking point (who can forget &#8220;It Hurts&#8221;?), but alas this one gets lost in the mass of dancy Europop. Albania&#8217;s song features a polite young man, some traditional instruments and a dancy beat.<\/p>\n<p>Malta try something different this year with a young man singing dancy Europop. It&#8217;s called &#8220;I Do&#8221;. Alas, the ABBA song &#8220;I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do&#8221; is five times better. Netherlands: they&#8217;ve learnt from Ukraine that lots of drums are a surefire winner. But not in this case.<\/p>\n<p>And finally: Ireland. Dear, dear Ireland. Dear, dear. Give a man an Irish Eurovision entry, and he&#8217;ll be able to entertain his family for a year. But give him a guitar, and he can churn out dire folksy Eurovision entries for the rest of time. This song is called &#8220;Cry for Love&#8221;, but I can&#8217;t help thinking it&#8217;s a cry for help. No doubt we&#8217;ll give it douze points. Sigh.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s so much there isn&#8217;t room for here (Cyprus&#8217;s Whitney Houston sings a Disney theme tripe; France&#8217;s annual boring ballad) so why not watch the entries yourself? Well, OK, I know why not&#8230; Should you wish, it&#8217;s all on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/\">Eurovision website<\/a>. And you can read an alternative assessment <a href=\"http:\/\/newsvote.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/entertainment\/4900740.stm\">from the BBC&#8217;s panel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>Who<\/em> fans should note that onces again the series has been moved for Eurovision. <em>The Age of Steel<\/em> will be on 6.35pm.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the semi-final tonight (on BBC Three or watch the webcast), so time for my summary of this year&#8217;s entries. I apologise in advance for my inevitable overuse of the word &#8220;Europop&#8221;: there is a glut of blonde young ladies singing slightly dancy numbers and they all merge together eventually (the songs, not the young [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geeklife","category-music","category-tv"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Eurovision 2006 is here - No geek is an island<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/18\/eurovision-2006-is-here\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eurovision 2006 is here - No geek is an island\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s the semi-final tonight (on BBC Three or watch the webcast), so time for my summary of this year&#8217;s entries. 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