Jewlicious

Israel Qualified!

15 years ago
15 Comments
by froylein
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froylein

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15 Comments

  • Unfortunately, the political nature of the voting for Eurovision means that Israel won’t have a hope in hell of winning. They’ll probably do better than us (United Kingdom) though – our entry is truly awful.

    Expect the recent trend to continue and one of the former Yugoslav or former Russian states to win.

  • Tell me about it. I mean, Germany’s delivered mediocre pop at best over the past few years, but even quality musicians from anywhere in Western Europe haven’t stood a realistic chance of winning thanks to the voting system.

    Anyhow, we shouldn’t take this contest too serious and just enjoy it for what it’s worth – a gathering of surprisingly successful pop starlets from all over Europe that nobody would admit to watching but that almost everybody seems to have watched any given year.

  • Hear, hear.

    I don’t think the political nature of voting (scratch my back, I scratch yours) is the key element. The simple truth is that the majority of the music is just utter shit.

    After listening to both semifinals, I can only wonder why this abomination of so-called schlager is still in existence within the Eurovision Song Contests. Is it really so that the most unimaginative, bland, heard-it-a-million-times-before artists get to go to the contest? Why is it that the whole contest is filled with these people who are just wasting perfectly good instruments with their lame attempts at rehashing the same old poop which has already been done to death a billion times before?

    There are not many countries which stand out from the crowd. I applaud all of those who do. Maybe it’s more difficult to do such songs, maybe it requires a bit more work and guts, but for the love of $DEITY why not try to get a bit more innovation to the contest…! For example, even though Teräsbetoni has quite corny lyrics they at least stand out from the mediocre masses in a positive way.

    Oh, and if you are going to watch ESC2008, here’s a drinking game for you: every time there is a “Eurovision modulation”, chorus repeats a few notes higher and with a louder volume, you drink 1 unit of an alcoholic beverage of your choice. I guarantee you’ll be hammered before half of the songs are through, even if you’re doing 2% light beer.

  • Finnish, IIRC, the Grandprix de Eurovision de la Chanson was initially created to attract more TV viewers. I’m not even sure whether the old days were better musicwise, but they at least featured a few (later) well-known names in the pop biz. Nowadays it seems the Eurovision Song Contest is dominated by short-lived aspiring starlets and equally short-lived, lacking a comeback success, former pop “stars” and that the “big names” in the biz either can’t be bothered to participate or fear to damage their street-cred.

    Lordi though certainly had been well-known in their genre way before the Eurovision Song Contest. Guildo Horn, as odd as he was / is, at least is a university-trained musician (and was renowned for fun party music before his ESC participation), Stefan Raab is one of the world’s most successful composers and producers, Sertab Erener had been popular in Turkey before her ESC participation, etc. While I agree that most of the music, more kindly put, is rather a source of amusement than awe, I still think the voting system drastically influences the outcome as the contributions delivered by the states in question usually just is a lame knock-off of some already lame overseas starlet, fake blonde inclusive, so they don’t convince me either. IMHO people still watch the ESC, because a) traditionally, there’ll be snacks and alcohol, b) it can be somewhat amusing, c) there only are re-runs on the other TV stations that know better than to compete with the ESC, and d) nobody wants to be the one at work who hasn’t watched it.

  • Froylein, which countries reach your top-3 favourites?

    My humble hope is that regardless of who wins, Finland will beat Sweden, otherwise your option d) happens with a twist, and I’ll keep on hearing about Sweden beating Finland in ESC for the rest of the year. (I don’t live in FInland anymore)

    Thinking back on this whole Eurovision thing, when Israel won previously there was a huge media buzz around the artist as she was transsexual. Although I think it’s kind of stupid of me that I remember her being transsexual, but nothing of the song itself!

  • “Germany’s delivered mediocre pop at best over the past few years…”

    Yes Froylein, but you have delivered Blixa effin’ Bargeld, Rammstein, Kraftwerk (who were just in town)… and DIE TOTEN HOSEN!! Leave the bad pop music for East Europe.

    Finnish – I was going to ask you how the weather was and you up and leave! When you wrote “Finland will beat Sweden”, at first I thought you were talking about World Hockey Championship. 🙂

  • Israel did fairly well; Germany.. well.. let’s say: we’ll party soon in Switzerland and Austria. 🙂

    Ramon, I’d never have imagined you’re into punk and hardrock; seems as if you and me could go partying together afterall. 😀

  • Ramon, weather seems quite clear around 18 C now in Finland. It’s quite much the same here. Luckily we did beat Sweden in the hockey tournament, the nagging would be endless had we “lost” that as well.

    As for ESC, I think Azerbaidjan was miraculously horrible. I laughed so hard I could not breathe. Especially the chorus… Damn.

    Better luck next year, I hope.

  • Oh well, blend Nightwish with the Scissor Sisters and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, aspiring opera singers, and that’s what you’ll get:

    (In all fairness, the German contribution was beyond lousy.)

  • B-D, my response would be about any episode of Borat in the U.S. and A. 😉

    Don’t worry about the link; I tried the cheesecake Ephraim gave me the recipe for; it turned out well, pic will be up in a bit. I’ll be somewhat busy over the next few weeks till my break starts (and then I’ll be off to NYC), but’ll try to occasionally post something.