Eurovision 2004!!!!!! (This Saturday!!!!) Who are you going to root for?!?!?

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Yes, that's right!!!! A billion peeps will be watching Eurovision on Le Weekend on the Tellybox, but thanks to the power of the megmighty netwebby inphopipe you can get a quick preview of the tunes in the "Multimedia" link from here...

So what tunes will you be watching for on Saturday!?!?! Well, the short answer is- probably not very many, since nearly all the good ones were voted out in the Semi Final on Wednesday!!!! Flippin' ace entries from Finland (Hilariously over-the-top Brel-style theatrics!!!), Belarus (A poppy Miranda Sex Garden do a song.. about Gallileo!!!!), Israel (OPERA!!!), Portugal (90s "Robin S" style dance!!!), and especially Estonia (3 girls and a fat scary percussionist!!!! Plus a really great song!!!!) all got the chop, as did the token "wacky" entry!!! (Swiss guy in "Saturday Night Fever" threads does apparently Peter Andre influenced "funky" song about how we should be really happy, because the world is, like, a really great place, ya know?!?!?) Meanwhile, a really really crap entry by Croatia gets through!!!!! For obvious reasons, I think this semi-final malarkey is a really really bad thing!!!!! To be fair, all those tunes still are still on the official Eurovision CD, thank goodness...

Anyway, back to Saturday!!!! Well, there are the usual crap ballads- this year they're from Austria (Busted minus the guitars!!! And Tunes!!! And Personalities!!!!) Ireland (Ronan Keating's dad, or something!!!!) and... (Staggers) Iceland!!!!! But the worst has got to be France's effort, which sounds like the sort of ballad you hear EVERYWHERE you go in Europe!!!! It could be a different singer, it could be a different country, it could be a different language!!!! It doesn't matter, because the music is the similarly inoffensive to a completely offensive degree, and words are going to be complete and utter twaddle in any language!!!! And the completely forgettable French bloke singing this doesn't even sound French, even though he's singing in the language!!!! Mon dieu!!!!!

Thankfully though, that kind of slop is receding in importance in Eurovision, in favour of more upfront pop!!! Some of the Baltic and Balkan nations go in a bit of folky influences in their pop, but what's really striking is the amount of Spanish/Latin influenced numbers on offer, with the usual acoustic guitars, crashing drums, and even the odd bit of Spanish influence in the chord sequences!!!! Belgium, Macedonia, Lithuania, Romania and especially Greece (Half Tarkan, half Ricky Martin- with balalaikas!!!!) deliver creditable Spanish pop numbers!!! Even Poland gets in the act and comes off pretty well!!!! Which is just as well, as the actual Spanish entry is actually pretty dull!!!!!

What about the rest?!? Well, Germany's going for a bloke that's kind of like Jamie McCallum!!!! With a decent voice!!!! And a halfway decent tune!!!! Malta are probably the only really old-skool Eurovision tune this year, with a duo of opera standard singing typically cheery intricate and catchy pop lovesong ditty!!! And Russia gives us what looks like a 12 year old with a guitar who has obviously picked up her pop moves from Eddie Vedder!!!! And the song rips off Texas' "Summer Sun"!!!! And it's actually not bad!!!!

But enough of that!!! Two decent entries have survived the semi final ordeal and are the ones to watch!!!! First is Ukraine's entry- Girls Aloud X 4 plus BIG drums!!!! And a great tune!!! But the best is from this years host nation, Turkey, who bring you... Turkish influenced..... SKA!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not kidding!!!! And it works as well!!!! It's the best Eurovision entry for years!!!!!

OK, enough of this: Here's my top 5 of the final entries:
1) Athena "For Real" (Turkey)
2) Ruslana Lyzhicko "Wild Dances" (Ukraine)
3) Sakis Rouvas "Shake It" (Greece)
4) Julia Savicheva "Believe Me" (Russia)
5) Blue Café "Love Song" (Poland)

And here's the Top 5 that didn't make it to the final:
1) Neiokõsõ "Tii" (Estonia) (TOP TUNE!)
2) Alexandra & Konstantin "My Galileo" (Belarus)
3) David D’Or "To believe" (Israel)
4) Jari Sillanpää "Takes 2 to Tango" (Finland)
5) Piero & The MusicStars "Celebrate!" (Switzerland)

Obviously the semi-finals are going to be required viewing next year!!!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm going to be rooting for this overrated, superannuated crock of shit to be discontinued forever.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Surely not if Turkey wins!!!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Two picks:
Turkey
Israel

So let's see.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, Israel got the chop then? Turkey, then.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:15 (twenty-two years ago)

i will only start taking eurovision seriously if peter brotzmann performs the german entry.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

The Turkish entry sounds like a potential nil points to me. It's a Turkish No Doubt tribute act who couldn't find a chick to front.

GO ALBANIA! Or at least Sweden, because their song has an incredibly rude subtext, although possibly it's only the Austrian entrants that would read it that way, or Belgium because it's a big gay disco number.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

The Turkish entry sounds like a potential nil points to me.

Umm, where is it set, this year?

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, but clearly Istanbul is doing everything it can to avoid having to host it two years running. "For Real" is abominable.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh yeah, I forgot the Swedish entry!!!! The one that looks a bit like Posh's mum!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I haven't really heared the turkish entry, but everyone is talking about it. That hasn;t happened since Dana International.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought everyone was talking about Ukraine (justifiably) and Iceland (less so).

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, where have people been talking about this!?!? I haven't really seen too much in the media, and the semi-final was buried away on BBC3!!! I had to rely on websites for more info!!!

Mind you, this is the British media we're talking about here...

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I really don't care who wins and will only watch the programme if I think there's a reasonable chance of Terry Wogan being assassinated during the broadcast.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, quite why someone who thinks the whole thing is so ghastly and tawdry is excused by the OCCASIONAL funny remark in their otherwise evil, demeaning, condescending commentary is beyond me.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:40 (twenty-two years ago)

The bloke doing the semi-final was trying hard to be wogan wry.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

haha yeah he apologised at the end for being so crap at it. who was that?

― zebedee (zebedee), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Why am I imagining Patrick Kielty?

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Two classic lines :

"Hey, that's really interesting....." (what was? never found out)
"Oh, here comes my favourite credit line" (which was what? no word)

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"Hey, that's really interesting....." (what was? never found out)

If it had been Wogan you can guarantee that the answer would have been "Wogan" as the smug, pomopous, self-satisfied git really doesn't seem to have had much interest in anything other than himself ( and least of all, of course, music - heaven forfend!) for at least the last 30 years.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the likes of Amy Winehouse and that dead folk singer whose name escapes me would disagree with you there

― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm saying nowt, me.

― Eva Cassidy (mark grout), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't believe that Radio 2's discovery of or subsequent obsession with Eva Cassidy, Amy Whinehouse or indeed Norah Jones or Katie Melua actually began with Mr. Wogan.

He's just an old fraud and a veteran at jumping onto populist bandwagons.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Top 5 from the qualifying were Ukraine, Malta, Albania, Greece, Serbia. Ukraine being miles ahead and the next four rather closer.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Too bad about Switzerland's fish-worm creature being cut. I hope he doesn't breed.

This "multimedia lounge" is the answer to a curious American's prayers.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Yay!!!!! Ukraine won!!!! And Turkey got fourth!!!! And the absolute pants entry from Britain got 16th!!!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Saturday, 15 May 2004 22:33 (twenty-two years ago)

There was one real disappointment tho... That Russian girl with the guitar I mentioned above was somehow kidnapped half an hour before her performance and forced at gunpoint to learn a really crappy acrobatic dance routine with 3 blokes rescued from an explosion at a paint factory!!!! And they anthetised her face so that she couldn't do those great Eddie Vedder style facial ticks from her previous performance on Russian TV!!!! And her singing was flat!!!!!

In fact, there were a lot of flat voices tonight, even the veteran popstar Greek entry!!!! Maybe the hall had crap acoustics!!!! Or maybe most of the pop singers hadn't really properly performed outside videobox-land!!!! Which was probably one thing you couldn't say about the Ukranian lady as she had a big enough pair of lungs on her to suggest a degree of formal vocal training and/or stage singing experience... (See also the Swedish woman!!!)

Anyway, Turkey's finest were quite entertaining, with the lead singer taking an awfully long time to take off his jacket, just enough to display massive CND logos on in the inside lining. There was also some nice looking woman on bellydancing about with "TURKISH DELIGHT" in rhinestones on her T-shirt. And the leader singer shouting "PEACE LOVE AND RESPECT!!!!" a bazillion times!!!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Saturday, 15 May 2004 22:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Other good bit was the audience booing "political" voting (ie friendly votes between Balkans, Baltics, Nordics, Greece-Cyprus, Britain-Ireland, Spain-Portugal)!!!! Although the local crowd weren't above politics themselves, reserving the biggest boo for Greece awarding their 12 points to "The fantastic new talent from... Cyprus"!!!! (Well, she was actually from England!!!) Nothing to do with Turkish/Greek relations over Cyprus I assume!!!!!

― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Sunday, 16 May 2004 10:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I voted for Sweden.

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 16 May 2004 11:01 (twenty-two years ago)

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