The biggest show that’s been on television for the past few years has been American Idol. I enjoy it – sometimes it’s entertaining, sometimes it’s, well… this. But I’ve run across something better – Eurovision! And it’s been going on for years, since 1956.
Every year, eligible European countries submit a songs to be performed by a person or persons from each country. The performers are not necessarily amateurs. Celine Dion (no jokes) won the contest for Sweden in 1988 and it was the springboard for ABBA in 1974. Eventually, 24 countries are in the finals for the big show. After the show, all eligible countries, whether they had a performance or not, vote on their favorite songs through phone voting. Only fifteen minutes is given for voting, and no one can vote for their own country. After the voting is complete, the votes are cast and a representative from each voting country presents their votes. It’s pretty entertaining as you see country’s names flying about on the scoreboard to reflect the real time standings.
This year’s winner was a solo performance by a singer from Serbia. It wasn’t much a visual performance and the singer reminded me of a Chris Sligh with deflated hair. But her singing performance , completely in Serbian, was outstanding. In English the name of the song is “Prayer”. Apparently she is a professional singer and I can see why. She was simply fantasic.
Second place went to Ukraine. The main singer(?) reminded me of Mrs. Doubtfire wrapped in tinfoil with a star on her head performing some sort of demented polka. How they finished second I’ll never know. But you never can tell – last year’s winner was a hard rock group called Lordi from Finland… ugh. They were energetic, I’ll have to give them that.
Third place went to Russia - a rock group of three girls. If they weren’t singers they would be supermodels. Some of the phrases are a little inappropriate, but the performance sizzled.
Two others I really liked was Georgia (I’m a Georgia boy, no matter where Georgia is!) – “Visionary Dream” sung by Sopho. There was also Germany - a crooner much like Michael Buble. If you like that kind of music (and I love it), you’ll really enjoy this.
You can actually see the whole show. Go to Octoshape, load the plugin and watch the show. The quality is remarkable considering it’s a broadcast from somewhere in Europe. So if you’d like to enjoy an evening of something different, check it out.
Never heard of this show…. I’ll check it out though!
This sounds very cool. I’ll have to check it out from home when I can.