large sigh On paper, the Eurovision Contest could be a great place to celebrate music from all the countries we have. Sounds great, right? Everyone gets to show their best artist with an original song to represent their country. Musical Olympics. Great! Except that it's not, mostly because of two obvious problems with voting: 1) people vote for countries they like out of solidarity, not just based on music (the Belgians vote mostly for us, and we Dutch return the favor) or 2) the weirdest / novelty / whichever artist played right before the voting wins. Good music hasn't won in decades, and because of that, lots of good artists don't want their names attached to it. Also, most of the Eastern European countries are just terrible. And we only won once. And this year we have some kind of mediocre-country song representing us, which is not the best we have to offer, not by a long shot. On the other hand, Twitter is hilarious if you follow funny people while watching it. Great trashtalk.
I am trying to imagine a show where every state in the United States somehow picks a band to represent them and they all go sing in front of millions. It would be the most craptacular clusterfuck in the history of music. You guys have mentos-ness. It makes it hilarious. I mean, "dutch country." That's almost as good as "Texas Taiko." The vintage '92 Anton Corbijn cinematography is just icing on the cake. And as an honest-to-god American who grew up among cows and whose middle name really is Waylon, I am allowed to mock freely.
The best way to imagine the kind of song that will win is to imagine the entire Eurovision audience as a scene from Grease, and then imagine the kind of song that will get every single person standing up, doing dance routines/swaying in (imagined) "solidarity" with all other nations. Crack that shit and you have a winner every time.
This year's Tipped To Win: (this woman makes me question my sexual orientation as a straight woman) (yes, they made a song about child abuse into a popular dance song) ("We couldn't find a rhyming dictionary") Bonus: (HARMONY) (SCOOBA DOOBA DOP DOP DEE DEE DAI)
On the other hand, at least in my perspective as someone whose country can't send a song (I guess that's why?), this just makes it a lot more fun. I actually think it's more fun to watch the worse the music is. You're from the Netherlands? Yeah, The Common Linnets aren't even fun. You know who's fun? And widely panned? Pollaponk from Iceland. Their movie is great. HARMONY!!!!Except that it's not, mostly because of two obvious problems with voting: 1) people vote for countries they like out of solidarity, not just based on music (the Belgians vote mostly for us, and we Dutch return the favor) or 2) the weirdest / novelty / whichever artist played right before the voting wins. Good music hasn't won in decades, and because of that, lots of good artists don't want their names attached to it. Also, most of the Eastern European countries are just terrible.