Introduction: Analysis Part 1
Azerbaijan. The land of fire, hence this years' contest motto: "Light your fire." (And by extension, the postcards between each song, which were all a variation on "The Land of....".) It seems like every year there some sort of non-existant controversy surrounding the competition, however this year was different. This year the controversy actually had substance. Namely, it was the claims of human rights abuses in Baku and Azerbaijan in general. It's not for me to comment on these accusations, but does it exclude the right of Azerbaijan to host the competition?
I don't think so. They won fair and square last year, and the rules say the winner gets to host next year's competition. Of course, options could have been to exclude Azerbaijan from the competition in years gone by or to host it somewhere else this year, but Eurovision is by far and large removed from politics. As far as I can tell, while there is no official rule about political messages during the contest, it is extremely frowned upon.
All this being said, the fact that the issues were raised at all because Azerbaijan won the competition can only be a good thing, can't it? Now everyone knows about the potential issues, and some progress can be made towards fixing the problem.
But that's enough analysis for now, let's get on to the silliness that was brought to us by SBS, Sam Pang, and Julia Zemiro.
The Road to Eurovision: Julia's Futile Search for the Winning Formula
SBS does a great job of building up the anticipation of the Eurovision Song Contest every year. To ease us in to what to expect this year, Julia Zemiro took a road trip accross Europe, from last year's hosts Germany to this year's host Azerbaijan. Her goal was to find the heart of Eurovision - that special something that makes a song a winner. Her trip got off to a great start when she struggled to get into the van and then couldn't find the keys.
So just how did Zemiro conduct her search? Through interviews with past winners, some performers from this year, and a bunch of clip shows that demonstrated key elements in winners. She interviewed the first ever Eurovision Song Contest winner, who won all the way back in 1956. She interviewed Mr Eurovision, Johnny Logan, who gave her some sage advice: "Bring food with you when you get to Baku because I'm not sure what'll be there." She interviewed the U.K.'s entry for this year, Engelbert Humperdink. Twice. (Once over skype, and then again in person.) He thinks its a pity the orchestra is gone, but I disagree. The lack of an orchestra has given the contest a means to modernise itself and give us the cheesy pop we know and, uh, love. It's also meant that more contemporary, universal songs end up in the show. Humperdink did get something else right, though: "It's not a talent show, it's a song competition." These two points have never been more aptly demonstrated than the past few years. More on that a bit later.
As for the clip shows. Well, we got to relive some Eurovision classics, including reminders of Lordi, and DANCING. A certain sax solo was also discussed. Julia claims it was looped for ten hours and then uploaded to Youtube, generating 16 million hits. I'm not sure about those numbers, but there certainly seem to be about that many different remixes on Youtube. And then there was one of the most bizarre clips I have ever witnessed. Possibly even more bizarre than DANCING. France once had backup singers dressed as mimes. Full on street theatre, white -face makeup mimes. What the hell?
At the end of it all, Julia has her dream come true of starring in a video clip of her favourite Eurovision song, and then attempts to picksome winners based one what she has learnt. All I've learnt is that there's no clear-cut way to win Eurovision. So let that be a lesson to possible entrants: your gimmicks don't always work.
Semifinal 1: Visions of the Present
Our hosts for the three nights were the Charlie Pickering of Azerbaijan (who was one part of the duo who won last year), and two women, one of which was a lawyer.
Semi One kicked off with Montenegro sending Death himself to-- oh, no, wait. Sorry. It was just some bad hip-hop artist in a huge cloak who then took it off. He rapped about the economy, complete with monetary break dance. Really. Austria also gave us bad hip-hop, influenced by Eminem and Lil Wayne. It also featured pole dancing, because what Eurovision really needs is pole dancing.
Greece, unsurprisingly, did not sing about the current state of the economy in their country, instead choosing to focus on sex with a song called "Aphrodisiac". There wasn't a lot of material on the singer, though, and so she showed a lot of leg. Greece made it through to the final. Montenegro did not.
Belgium and Finland gave us forgettable power ballads, and were thankfully culled from the final. One thing Finland did have, however, was all the material meant for Greece's costume. The Swiss gave us rock that died out ten years ago.
The Israeli band apparently featured on Triple J. Julia and Sam suspected that it must have been Kingsmill that gave them the run, and I tend to agree. Only Kingsmill would have tastes this odd. San Marino delved into even weirder territory. We've had The Social Network film. San Marino gave us The Social Network Song. It was about cybersex. It was every bit as creepy as you think it was.
About halfway through the proceedings we were treated to Cyprus, an act that made it to the final. Of all the earworms that have been entered into Eurovision, this one is up there with the biggest. I had all of Semifinal 2 to get it out of my head, and then I got it stuck back in there during the final. Watch it if you dare. You won't be able to get it out of your head, I guarantee it. But let's face it. Cyprus, in giving us a lead singer who looked like a cross between Anne Hathaway and Liv Tyler, also gave us eye candy.
When Hungary hit the stage I was surprised to see that the Grim Reaper had made another appearance, momentarily, as keyboard player. Then he also turned out to be a regular person. Ireland made us sit through Jedward last year.
Ireland made us sit through Jedward again this year. How dare they. Europe decreed that we had to sit through it again in the final. How dare they.
Semifinal 2: Europe's Version of Schroedinger's Cat
If you missed semifinal 2 you didn't miss much. It felt like a long night of Eurovision power ballads. Serbia, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Portugal, Croatia, Estonia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina all gave us ballads or power ballads. By the time Croatia hit the stage I was reminded of the classic Saturday Night Live sketch More Cowbell. More power ballad. Which means Slovakia came as a bit of a shock, when it turned out to be a hardcore punk rock band influenced by the likes of Led Zepplin. The lead singer had a scary amount of Tim Minchin in his face.
There was more dullness in the form of the Netherlands, who gave us a woman wearing a Native American headdress with no explanation that I bothered to pay attention to. Belarus had a nordic metal bad or something. Producing disco, despite the guitars. Classic Eurovision choreography was included in this act, including a synchronised walk up to the mics in darkness.
Bulgaria continued the dull disco theme, and even Norway got in on the act of bad disco with a horrible future version of Justin Bieber if he strayed too far to the dark side of music. Malta tried to be disco, but ended up being closer to the electronic rock end of the spectrum, despite the dancing DJ's best efforts to make it look like it was hardcore disco. He was dancing way too much for that style of music. And he had to dance again the next night in the final.
At the same time as missing nothing, however, you also would have missed a whole bunch of good stuff if you missed semifinal two. You missed some great interviews. Julia snagged an interview with the German woman who is in charge of the wind machine, a vital component of any power ballad Eurovision entry. Apparently she needed seven years of training in order to do that job. Sam Pang snagged an interview with the winner of Eurovision 2010, Germany's Lena, who continued displaying her cute, funny, sweet streak. Apparently she would like to own a farm, with baby dogs, baby cats, baby chickens, baby cows, and baby horses. So if Eurovision went back to Germany next year, the tagline would be "Eurovision 2013: Vote for baby dogs." That whole conversation was insanely entertaining, actually. But what was Lena actually doing there?
Well, that was the second entertaining part of semifinal two: the interval act. The past five winners all got on stage and sang a rendition of their winning song with traditional Azerbaijani instruments added to the band. The exception was last year's winners, who sang a version of Waterloo. And you know what? It was incredibly fun. The singers weren't trying to win a competition, they were there to entertain, so it was interesting to see how they approached the songs. I liked it.
Final: The U.K.'s Final Desperate Act
Sam and Julia really got into the spirit of Eurovision by wearing weird hats for their introduction to the final. Thankfully, the hats were never seen again. The opening act was a mix of modern and traditional music and dance, with the good spatter of obscure symbolism that would be lost if it weren't for Sam & Julia's constant interjecting. After that, we had the traditional rendition of last year's winner. Their rendition of Waterloo the night before was more interesting, even if they didn't quite know all the words to Abba's classic. It also seems to be a tradition nowadays for the hosts to give a shout out to Australia, and this year was no different. Perhaps there is a sense of our overgrowing presence at the competition. Although they also included New Zealand in that shout out, which Sam thought put a bit of a dampener on it.
First out of the gates was England, who were desperate for a good result after many years of toiling towards the bottom of the vote tally. As we know, they sent Engelbert Humperdink to try and woo Europe into voting for England. Did it work? Well, no. The song was well delivered by Humperdink, but it didn't go anywhere, didn't grab attention, wasn't catchy, and as such suffered from being the first song of the night. The poor man finished second last on 12 points. The English press have already started wondering what went wrong and played the blame game, pointing the finger at political voting and the like. Here's an idea people: enter a song worth voting for.
Lithuania gave us a guy who sang half his song blindfolded because love is blind, you see. (Or not, if you're blindfolded?) Sam reckoned the lead singer's name, Donny Montell, was that of a game show host, and I agree. However, his dancing and air guitar was embarrassingly over the top.
And then there was Russia. The singing grannies. From a village that supposedly only has one TV set for everyone, situated in the town hall. They started off singing something that sounded rather traditional, but then gave us one of those weird transitions that Eurovision is famous for and ended up singing a dance song.
Iceland produced a song that would have been better off as the soundtrack to a fantasy film that doesn't exist yet, and then I had to get Cyprus out of my head again. The French thought that acrobats and cheesy pop would be the way to go, but it wasn't. Italy headed further in the right sort of direction. They had a jazzy, nightclubby feel to it. There was a bit too much commercial pop in it for my liking, but the brass element was a plus.
Denmark sent over a busker who was wearing a pretty striking, yet clearly battered and faded hat. It was a mystery until our commentators explained it belonged to a busker friend of hers who had passed away. She decided to wear it to Eurovision to honour his memory. Sweden gave us one of the highlights of the night. A decent song with weird but striking choreography and minimalist lighting to create something that was actually worth watching, especially the striking pan-upwards camera shot as fake snow fell down on the spotlighted singer. It was the favourite to win, and was given a staggering 90% thumbs up vs thumbs down by the Australian audience during the semifinal.
Turkey felt that a mish-mash of indie rock, traditional Turkish music, and a sea shanty would get them over the line. It didn't, but it got them pretty high up the list. Germany sent, according to Julia, the male version of Lena. I can see why. It was a good, slow-paced rock song. Unfortunately, like Lena's effort last year, it may have been one of the best songs of the night but it's not the sort of thing that wins a song contest.
Every year there is a song that defies explanation. It can be something as extreme as a certain Ukrainian effort, or it can be something a bit more subtle but no less baffling. This was that song. It was about a man trying to win over a woman with his trumpet. No euphemism intended. An actual trumpet. The backup singers were dressed in something that Barbie would have worn about a decade ago when doll-making technology wasn't quite where it is today, and the dancing was just as doll-like.
Once all the acts were done and dusted, it's time to vote. And you can only vote.... TWENTY TIMES? What happened to all this "you can only vote once" sensibleness that kept Eurovision from becoming a farce? It was the same rule over the three nights, which meant that since there were only 18 acts in each semifinal you could technically vote for all of them. After the interval act (which started out as something like the soundtrack to Braid and then became a slightly controversial promotion for the president's son-in-law) we got to the voting.
Usually the vote tallying is tedious and boring, so this is the point where I hit record, go to bed, and then spend some time the next day skipping over all the rubbish. But boy was I in for a shock. This year the voting was actually interesting, exciting, and designed to get done quickly. Over 40 countries were covered in about an hour. There was no chitchat, as in the past few years the representative of each country only read out 8, 10, and 12 point recipients (the others just appearing on a screen all at once), and Sam and Julia's commentary added that extra bit of flavour. Oh, and Finland was represented by the frontman for Lordi. In full getup.
The voting itself was a bit of a bloodbath. Sweden and Russia took an early lead and it very quickly became a two horse race as countries like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Albania, and Serbia vied for the other prestigious spots in the Top 5. In the end Sweden slaughtered the competition by over 100 points, proving why she was the favourite to win. It actually became a surprise when Sweden didn't get awarded 12 points. She was also crowned Australia's unofficial winner in SBS's online poll.
Conclusion: The Second Winner is You
Remember what Humperdink said to Julia way back when she was on her road trip? He said Eurovision was a song contest, not a talent show. That was never more aptly demonstrated this year. Sweden and Europe demonstrated that the way to win Eurovision is to just enter a good, seinsible song that is well presented. This was further backed up by being able to relive the winning songs of the past few years. Songs like Satellite and Fairytale (or whatever they're called) are simply just well written, well sung, well presented songs that capture the attention of everyone watching on the night. But there was a definite difference in the way they were sung back then and the way they were sung during semifinal two's interval act.
Since there was no pressure to give the perfect performance in order to win, the singers could sing it however they wanted. They could have a bit of fun with it and engage with the audience in a more direct way. They sang it so that they and the audience could have fun. It demonstrated so well how singers approach Eurovision and a song contest and how they approach a fun gig.
The reason Sweden slaughtered the competition is because it was the perfect combination in order to win an international song contest. It had universal appeal and was interesting to watch, and so it didn't need a gimmick. Yes, gimmicks help, but they don't get you over the line, otherwise Russia would have won. If the U.K. (and anyone else for that matter) wants to know what to do in order to win next year, take a page out of Loreens book, Lena's book, and the violin Fairytale guy's book. Just pick a good song.
Of course, Sweden wasn't the only winner on the night. The other winner was, surprisingly, Twitter and SBS viewers. During the postcards between each song, SBS would display tweets that gave an impression of what people were saying about each act. It was relentlessly sarcastic. It was occasionally cruel. It was guaranteed to be hilarious. It was like being in one huge Eurovision party with the rest of Australia.
Just the way it should be.
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