Thread: Eurovision 2011

It's Eurovision tonight. Is anyone watching?
Just a thread for anyone who wants to complain about political voting, the trashiness of the contestants or anything else about Eurovision.

Who do you think will win?

I haven't heard any of the songs apart from Belarus' (it's not bad, but it won't win because it's called "I love Belarus" - not enough people will vote for a song about loving another country, especially a country that Western European media is constantly critisizing.)

I thought it would be nice if Portugal won, because they have never won and have been in the competition from the beginning. And they had such a tough year there.

And isn't it a shame that most of the contestants are singing in English and not in their own language. Much of the lyrics is in pretty bad English, but the texts are written by non native speakers.

Why in general are so many songs sung in English? Do other languages sound bad?

I think it sounds silly for them to sing in phony US English that they've learnt from watching TV series. I.e. "I ain't gonna come back no more..." and so on. One of the main points of being European (which is the theme of the competition...) is to have your own national identity. Not to speak in another language and imitate another culture! If it's just a competition about singing a pop song or a ballad in English, then it's not really in the spirit of the original idea.

I suppose singing in English means that about half of the viewers are able to to roughly understand what the song is about. So that is probably the main reason why they do it.

But it's not like the songs usually have any deep or meaningful lyrics....!

A few years ago when I watched it, they tried to interview one of the contestants, who had been singing in English. It turned out that he literally didn't speak a word of English. He had just memorised the entire song.

When I watched it as a child, I am pretty sure that everyone was singing in their own language. But slowly the trend moved and now most are singing in English.

I have to laugh at Sweden were everybody takes Eurovision SOOOOOOO seriously.
I had forgotten about it until I checked a Swedish paper online.... people are obsessed with it.

I think it would be very interesting if they all sang in their own languages. I don't even understand what Eurovision is for.

I'm going to watch it. Belarus didn't make the finals, I'm afraid. Except for our German song I don't know any yet.

As I know one of the most remarkable Sweden win in Eurovision is when ABBA sang a song "Waterloo" in English they won with outstanding breakaway, that wasn't surpassed so far. But obviously ABBA was a culture phenomenon and modern participants can not be rivals.

Originally Posted by WhiteKnight

As I know one of the most remarkable Sweden win in Eurovision is when ABBA sang a song "Waterloo" in English they won with outstanding breakaway, that wasn't surpassed so far. But obviously ABBA was a culture phenomenon and modern participants can not be rivals.

That's a good observation. Yes, maybe it all started with them.
I can only remember it from the 1980s and onwards, but back then, most of the singing was not in English.

Originally Posted by Marcus

I don't even understand what Eurovision is for.

It's a tradition. All my life, for example, it's been there. Eurovision is not just the singing competition though, it's the old organisation that all the state TV channels had (have?), for broadcasting big European events together. Back when most countries had only a couple of channels or so. I don't think Russia was in the competition prior to 1990s, so it might not be a tradition for you, so much. I watched it absolutely every year with my friends and family in my childhood.
Also, earlier, each country made a presentation about their own country before their song. That was part of the show, and could be quite interesting, and the voting itself was a bit of a spectacle too.

Eurovision's traditional melody and logo. You sometimes hear it before sports events and other events:

I never watched Evrovision. Is it worth to watch this? I've checked winners in the wikipedia now. I only know Lordi, ABBA, Celine Dion and Dima Bilan (since he is Russian and appears sometimes on TV). It is very interesting, since I was pretty sure that in this contest only pop music is presented. But Lordi! Is a winner! Hm... it seems that some good music might be there.

upd:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Since 2000, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain have automatically qualified for the Eurovision final, regardless of their positions on the scoreboard in previous Contests.

Very fairly...

upd:
Very fairly...[/QUOTE]
Its because they contribute MUCH more to the Eurovision organisation than the smaller countries. If their contestants did not qualify, then they might not want to pay, and the whole competition would be in jeopardy. I have no idea why Russia is not included in this group, sounds like it ought to be.

Hehe!

Gosh, the political/neighbour voting was worse than ever this year!
I missed the actual singing, i just saw 2/3 of the voting.

Although Azerbadjan has participated several times, I bet many people don't know where it is, and wonder whether it's in Europe at all.

The European Broadcasting Union EBU includes many more members than just European ones:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...EBU_Member.svg