Comments on: Suck on this, Eurovision!

By: Nick Valvo

Nick Valvo — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:33:09 +0000

I was surprised to hear that the French entry was Sebastien Tellier. He’s a pretty fantastic artist actually, although I haven’t heard his work since 2003 or so. I heard there was some controversy surrounding his occasional habit of writing in English.

By: R. Pointer

R. Pointer — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:41:02 +0000

As for the Greek entry, she was actually raised in New York. That fact might go to explaining why it sounded so pop-parody. Every time my greek girlfriend listens to it, I sing in response, “my perfect combination is mystery to me” and think to myself how bad this song is.

By: abb1

abb1 — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:03:04 +0000

the addition of east europe changed the picture completly. anyone in for a new analysis? I got this.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:36:23 +0000

Good lord.

By: Nadav Perez

Nadav Perez — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:47:18 +0000

an interesting analysis of the eurovision scoring politics, from a networks point of view, can be found here(paywalled).

the main thesis there is that there were at the time (till the mid-90’s) three blocks of states: north european, west european and south european. each participant voted for the other members of the block first. as for the remaining points, northerners did not vote for southerneres and vice versa. so no surprise the westerners won all the time…
the addition of east europe changed the picture completly. anyone in for a new analysis?

By: Richard J

Richard J — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:39:56 +0000

Interesting thing for me was that while the Balkans generally happily voted for each other – Armenaian and Azerbijan gave each other no votes. Obviously Nagarno-Kharabakh (spelling from vague memory) still rankles.

By: Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:52:35 +0000

All in all, this year’s Eurovision was by far the worst that I have ever seen in both music quality and bizarre voting. Yech.

By: ajay

ajay — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:44:25 +0000

And all the world over each nation’s the same,
They’ve simply no notion of playing the game;
They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won,
And they practice beforehand – which ruins the fun!

By: Bob B

Bob B — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:06:53 +0000

“You people actually watch this stuff?”

No, apart from Ireland’s entry, of course, but in this context that shouldn’t precluded meaningful comment concerning a continental issue of seminal significance.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:03:23 +0000

this is classic brit whining i think: johnny foreigner is cheating by actually putting in the legwork
Good grief – you don’t think the Russians had been practising beforehand do you?
Clearly the only way forward for Britain next year is to appeal to the majority of the Euro-electorate & hire Sacha Baron-Cohen to perform in-character . . .

By: abb1

abb1 — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:11:46 +0000

You people actually watch this stuff?

By: Jacob Christensen

Jacob Christensen — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:08:19 +0000

@18 + 34: It has been done. Maybe next year’s ESC…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014

By: novakant

novakant — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:01:02 +0000

Who wants to win Eurovision, let alone brag about it? It’s really bad music, mediocre in the best cases. Are there really Irish people who go around proudly announcing that they have won five times? From my experience they’re rather embarrassed by this fact.

By: bernarda

bernarda — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:36:12 +0000

The Russian singer was about average for Eurovision. The Greek and Turkish entries were horrible parodies of American pop.

I think I would go for the Portuguese singer or the Ukrainian singer, the singer and the song were quite good, but the disco arrangement was awful.

By: nick s

nick s — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:24:22 +0000

Russia’s song was terrible—had I been voting, it would have been nul points—and the only explanation can be somewhere else.

On musical values, it didn’t deserve to get out of its semi: San Marino and Andorra had better songs, but microstates don’t tend to have the pull of the Great Bear. (Though most of the western European entries in that semi were dire: I’ve no idea what was going on with Belgium.)

Sadly, it got eliminated in the first round.

And got booed, no less. There’s a thin line between embracing the tackiness, and taking the piss, and Dustin crossed it.