So many years following both F1 Rejects and the Eurovision Song Contest, and it's only now that I learn that the latter has a cult following here? Wow. And quite a few things to comment on on this page!
shinji wrote:Wallio wrote:Ok you lost me, what the bathplug is Eurovision?
A grand celebration of European high culture and music.
Here's an example.
If we have to go for 2008, I like this one better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8FbpoSLk2E 
Actually, Eurovision is now what is has always been: an excuse to seat millions of Europeans in front of their TVs, one day of the year, for a reason other than football. And I tell you, it still does a terrific job at that. In fact, with the advent of social media I would say Eurovision is stronger than ever - there's nothing quite like commenting on the contest as it unfolds!
roblomas52 wrote:Wallio wrote:Ok you lost me, what the bathplug is Eurovision?
Some european singing contest with deliberatly political voting which Britain are really quite shite at.
(The last British win was in 1997).
This years competition is being held in Denmark this coming Saturday.
It's not a coincidence that Britain's last win was in 97 - the rule about singing in your own language, which had been in place since the beginning except for a short period in the 70s (when ABBA won with Waterloo), was dropped in 1998. Before that, Ireland and the UK had an obvious advantage, as European audiences are more used to English than to other languages. It's for this same reason that France, Luxembourg and Monaco used to win a lot in the early years of the contest, when French was still more popular than English in the continent. Back then the vote was made by a jury, but the point still applies.
Meatwad wrote:WeirdKerr wrote:There is a Connection to Formula 1 with last years Spanish entry which was sang by Fernando Alonso's Ex Wife
And Alonso was also mentioned in the Spanish entry from 2008, along with other Spanish celebrities.
The entry was quite rejectful as well, finishing 25th out of 26, alongside Ireland in the last row of the grid for Pacific. (Now it seems I've messed up things)
After a decent effort by Pastora Soler in 2012, last year was a very bad one for us. Alonso's former wife cannot sing, but this is a moot point as the 2011 Azerbaijan duo managed to win with a disastrous vocal performance in the final (and Lena won for Germany in 2010 without even singing!
). As soon as I heard the song I understood we were doomed, it transmitted absolutely nothing and we kept singing in Spanish. If we are going to stick with singing in Spanish, we need to do something different to achieve a decent result. This year's one should be better, it is a better song, mostly in English for the first time ever, although I would have preferred either to go the "full English" route or stick with Spanish instead.
As for the political voting, it got to the point that many countries started to openly troll the contest. Traditionally, each country had its own jury, but from 1998 the vote was fully made by the public through SMS. This led to diaspora voting: Turkey would ALWAYS make it to the top 10, no matter what song they sent; Serbia-Croatia-Bosnia-Slovenia-Macedonia-Montenegro always voted for each other, and the same for Russia-Ukraine-Belarus-etc, as artists known in many of those countries would enter and minorities still can be found everywhere, as we've seen lately with the Ukrainian conflict, so they ended up voting for each other. Similar things happened with Nordic and Baltic countries.
The "traditional countries" that were entering the contest before the fall of the wall got bored by this, as they felt they no longer had a realistic chance of winning. For 2008 we had Dustin the Turkey, and Spain sent Rodolfo Chikilicuatre which was also a mockery (and still finished higher that our two or three previous, "serious" entries). In the end, the European Broadcasting Union, which organises the contest, had to reach a compromise - they didn't want to lose the income they get from people calling, so they went for a split 50/50 voting system where every country again has a national jury, and their results are combined with those of the televoting. I believe the show has improved - it still has room for contestants such as the "Russian Grandmas" who finished second a couple of years ago, but the focus has gone a bit back to songs and the political voting has somewhat reduced. You just have to look at the Netherlands - they finished in the top 10 last year and this year are suddenly looking like favourites for the win on Saturday, something that was impossible for them just a few years ago.
