Sunday 25 May 2008

Pokusaj

Eurovision Song Contest 2008

Venue - Belgrade, wherever Belgrade is. Serbia?

Intro - ridiculous apology announcing last year's fuck up - BRILLIANT

8.00 Last winner appears to have turned into Hiro from Heroes. I don't remember it sounding anything like this. Sounds like it says "shiny crysteal teary spoon" Megalesbian. Is this two songs? It's turned into a sub 'Don't Speak' rock ballad.

8.05 "Welcome to Big Eurovision Party!" Zeljo, Servbias most stylish man, has an unbelieveably goatie. He also plays the accordian and wrote the Serbian entry!


Romania - Massively overblown yet underwhelming power ballad, which for no reason merges into a duet where one of the backing singers mysteriously becomes a cross between Lynn Scully and a Debenhams mannequin. Her parts are slightly more 'sassy'. Absolutely zero chemistry betwen the two parts.


The United Kingdom - Almost certainly going to be forgotten becaue it's second. Hadn't heard this before tonight. Absolutely abysmal opening twenty seconds, that turns into a pathetic Lighthouse Family cast-off remixed by Phats and Small. Bassist looks like he's trying to take a shit on stage.Sickening display of disco-floorl lights. Andy gets way too much into the 'Break it down' bit and starts hugging the backing singers. Terry describes it as 'our best entry in years'. I beg to differ.


Albania - Olta Boka. Backing music soungs like 2090 by Yeasayer. She looks like Joss Stone before she went insane. Lyrics translated incredibly badly. Either this is the worst song ever written, or Albania has about twenty-five different words for 'clock'. One line translates as 'the clock has gone mad'. This is quite likeable, but her voice is far, far too loud and too high and over the top of the music.


Germany - Slags! First good song of the evening, although the stage show and costumes are revolting. The song, a fairly standard electo ballad that sounds a Hot Chip, but has a strange whooshing noise that sounds like a backfiring firework every twenty seconds or so. The 'No Angels' are all reassuring severe and masculine.


Armenia - Subtitles didn't even bother to translate this one. Sounds like most Shakira songs
do after being given the Gay Club treatment, only of course, with superfluous use of traditional instruments. Terrible back dancing typical of Eurovision. Derivative beyond description.


Bosnia and Herzegovina - Tim Burtons remake of The Magical Singing, Ringing Tree. Suspiciously similar to Of Montreal. One of the best Eurovision entries OF ALL TIME.


Israel - Written by Dana International, of course! First man who sounds like a woman of the night. Nice power chord torch song, which would normally excite me, but it followed such a ridiculous Bosnian song. I don't like songs that mix two languages other, fuck that.


Finland - Utterly ridiculous headbanging heavy metal obviously trying to re-create the success of Lordi. Lots oh "hoo! ha!" although the necessary topless men, tight leather trousers and chest thumping goes, it's all present and correct. No tune to be found, mind, and Bruce Dickenson (of which this is a direct imitation) would wipe his arse with it


Croatia - Absolute shit. The whole debacle looked and sounded like an advert for Olive Oil, and just involved a man who looked like Van Morrison singing 'Year in Provence' rubbish, and a man who seemed to be wearing a cricket umpires outfit, literally shouting out nonsense like "they say I'm down in the dumps!" and "I was the first internet!" and then started scratching on a gramaphone. Terrible.


Poland - Given Poland's excellent pedigree in integrating the culture of Western Europe, you'd expect better than this. This is sung by a bizarre experiment to create the least realistic looking women possible out of wax and clay. The song itself is a power ballad so sweeping it could span oceans, and will probably win. It also sounds oddly like the sort of B side that indie bands with singers with high voices used to peddle in the late nineties. Possible winner,


Iceland - group are called 'Euroband'.Supertotalmegaultramassivegay. It's even called "this is
my life!" Female singer appears from nowhere, and hey presto! Jemini! Only in tune, with probably the most advances sounding elecronic sound on show so far, Not particularly impressive.


Turkey - Band have clearly heard more than enough Muse records. Singer looks like a perfect cross between Dave Gahan, Brian Molko and Job from Arrested Development, Really bad lyrics that don't translate well either. I liked it when they all jumped around in the air for the last five seconds, although that didn't save this dangerously average rock song.


Portugal - Baffling looking woman who has tried to encorpoate every single genre of music in living history into her general appearance. Rubbish enough for me to turn off and watch Bosnias entry again on youtube, where they did a completely different 'act' on stage, without the washing lines, and had people digging onstage with large sticks instead.


Latvia - Song is called 'Wolves of the Sea'. Band are called 'Pirates of the Sea' and involves a collectiive of absolute idiots dressed as pisspoor pirates singing songs about being pirates. This is not dissimilar to our song from last year, or indeed, 'Cotton Eye Joe' only with the theme of debunkery on the high seas instead of cowboys or air stewards. The chorus goes "with a hi hi hey! and a yo ho yay!" and you don't need me to tell you it's completely brilliant,.


Sweden - usually good, but this is diablocal. I particularly hated the use of grey filter during the opening verse which was thoroughly unnecessary. The song was massively forgettable, and the singer looked cross-bred with a wild cat, and appeared to have eyes the stretched beyond her ears. Unpleasant.


Denmark - Singer looked like Colin Farrell. Band dressed as English fops completely with trilby, and it sounded like a totally shit Rod Stewart cast off. Singer tried at almost every turn to liven up what was a terrible sing-along that nobody knew the words to, although looked most of the tiime like he was dancing and strutting to an entirely different, more exciting song.


Georgia - Another crap song wih 'Peace' in the title (see also: Croatia). Morbidly dull, that sounds like a funerial chant put to a tacky backing track. I spent the entire of this song listening to Latvias song again, I'm finding it hard to believe that the Latvia song hasn't been written before, it's so obviously catchy!


The Ukraine - This was introduced as song number 18, which it surely isn't. This had some incredibly weird special effects at the beginning with mirrors and lights that reminded me of a scene from The Prestige, and the female singer has borrowed her entire outfit, it seems, from the Armenian entry, only with less of it, and this seems to be a whole load of bombast, but absolutely no tune whatsoever.


France. I'm aware of the brilliance of Sebastian Tellier already, and this was an almost perfect
spectacle of stupidity, involving a group of backing singers male and female dressed as Sebastian himself, and then he came on in a golf cart, holding a plastic globe. The song was really quite good, although quite obviously not suitable for this, considering it was like watching The Flaming Lips perform in a scout hut. Excellent.


Azerbaijan - First ever entry to Eurovison! Absolute nonsense, soprano mentalists singing in angel constumers in glass shattering tomes, and a random lookalike of Gavin Rossdale sat in a black chair. Clearly some kind of good vs evil mess that sounded equally like a mess, but another one chalked up on the 'sounds like Depeche Mode' board


Greece - I hated this the precise second it started. For one thing, the production sounded way too professional, too slick, too out-of-place. It was like listening to a Timbaland produced pop it. It really hacked me off actually, how credible this seemed Fuck this!


Spain - Looks pretty idiotic. Sounds like 'Gasolina.'. Actually stupid, and quite clearly a joke, and designed to sound like Reggatron, a music scene that people tired of three years ago. It had good strobe effects, but really this was like entering Jasper Carrott to sing a pastiche of a Dizzee Rascal song, and was a waste of everyones time.


Serbia - Typically, the host nation follows up their win with something shit. This is no exception ,going down the sweeping route of trying to sound a bit like riverdance or that Norway song that won but shouldn't. This was massively boring,


Russia - This is a complete rip of a song that's already been written, but I can't quite place what. It might be another Rihanna rip off. The singer. who looks like a stray dog having been kicked into a skip, seems incapable of standing up. Oh wait, now he has, and he can't dance any better on his feet. This actually needed something like a baffling rollerskater or a violinist to liven up it's sub A-ha ballad, but it actually didn't improve it in any way. One of the worst. Oh wait, his shirt just fell open. Next!


Norway - I can't think of anything good to say about this at all. It was a very very boring self-righteous female-a-ballad, the sort of which shitty soap stars release as their second single, and moan about it not topping the chart. Awful.

0901522006

Interval - tedious basketball shit. Unwatchable. I voted for Bosnia. Inexplicably, the front runners were Greece ("I hated this the precise second it started"), Armenia ("Derivative beyond description") and the overall winner, Russia ("looks like a stray dog having been kicked into a skip")





I think this was one of the most run Eurovisions of recent years.

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