From Eurovision with Pop

So, the Eurovision Song Contest is over for another year. I would have written my post-Eurovision report on Sunday but chez Robbing The Dead there were internet problems. Five days without the internet! Can you imagine?

For me, the show itself was amazing, one of the best in fact. But the voting was boring, since it was obvious from the outset that Finaland was going to win. I was quite happy they won though, as Hard Rock Hallelujah is a great pop song. But how did our friends from the former Soviet Union fare?

Thursday's semi-final caused an uproar after the favourite, Belgium, failed to qualify. As expected, Belarus' didn't do very well, they came second from last, despite giving a very energetic performance. Polina looked horrible in nasty red hotpants and plunging necklined top, but danced very nicely. Her vocal performance was great, but her pronunciation of the English lyrics was so bad she could have been singing in Belarussian for all we knew. The whole thing was a bit like Belarus itself - a dated mess (don't worry, home internet access has been banned in Belarus so I won't be offending anyone).



Estonia also failed to qualify. They were represented by Sandra Oxenryd (a Swede) with the brilliant Through my Window. Sandra looked a little uncomfortable during the performance, but overall it sounded and looked great. I voted for it, so was a bit miffed that it didn't make it through to the final.



Armenia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia also competed in the semi, and all qualified for Saturday's final. Armenia, represented by Andre, did surprisingly well. Although the song, Without Your Love, was nice but nothing special, the performance was quite amazing, making use of a coffee table type thing and lots of black ribbon. I found the lighting of the stage and background to be a bit headache-enducing though. Despite being broadcast from midnight until the early hours of the morning, a huge number of Armenians watched their first Eurovision Song Contest, and during the semi-final they even cast more votes than the United Kingdom. Armenia finished 8th with 129 points.



Ukraine turned out to be the dark horse of the competition. In my post "From Eastern Europe with Rubbish Eurovision Entries" I described Tina Karol's Show Me Your Love as being boring. Perhaps that is still true, but the performance couldn't have been further from boring. Tina looked amazing in a short white dress andspangleyy Ukrainian styled boots. Her dancers were kitted out in red Cossack outfits, black boots and tambourines(!). Tina was instantly likeable, and gave the cutest little thumbs up to the camera during the performance. Ukraine came 7th with 146 points.



Moldova had automatically qualified for the final and, as expected, they were dire. Arsenium is quite bummable, but still managed to look like a greasy sleaze. Natalia Gordienko, she's the one who is going to give Arsenium her 'choco', kept walking around behind a screen and emerging in a new outfit. At one point she appeared in a skimpy bikini thing that left nothing to the imagination. Whilst all this is going on there is a black man (I don't know where he came from - they don't have black people in Moldova yet), riding around the stage on a scooter. Throw the dreadful song into the mix and you get a classic car crash Eurovision. They finished 20th (out of 24 countries) with 22 points.



Lithuania were represented by the vile LT United with the piece of shit We are the Winners. I don't even want to talk about it. And the UK gave them 10 points! It makes me ashamed to be British.



Latvia automatically qualified to the final. They entered a shit accapella song and came 16th with 30 points.



However it was Russia that fared the best, finishing at a very respectable 2nd place with 248 points, 44 points behind the winners Finland. Dima Bilan makes weird facial expressions when he performs, and generally looks a bit odd. He always looks like he is performing to a song that is much more uptempo than the one he is actually singing. The girl climbing out of the piano was a bit odd, I didn't really see the point of it, but Eurovision is all about gimmicks nowadays. I really wish Russia had won, as I am going to be in Moscow next May and could have gone to the show; although I suppose Helsinki isn't that far.