Eurovision Song Contest 2004

[Guest Museite]

Last night was the Eurovision Song Contest. A barbaric attempt at bringing Europe closer 'culturally & musically' together. It's basically a big song competition where most European Countries present a song which they think will win, then it is performed at the concert and all the entering nations hold televotes to decide which song should win.

 

Each country gives out points to their favourite songs - 1pt 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 12pts (best). They cannot vote for themselves. In theory each nation should give the most points to the songs which are the best.

 

Half the fun of eurovision has come from the highly biased and predictable voting which reflects most rivalries/friendships from the last 50 years. E.g. Portugal will always vote for Spain, Cyprus will ALWAYS give Greece 12 points, Turkey will NEVER give Greece many points, all the Baltic states will give each other 12 points, all the former Yugoslav states will give each other the high points and NO COUNTRY will give the UK any serious points ever again because of the Iraq war (a la 2003 when the UK got nil points (nothing)).

 

However this year, the voting just got beyond a joke. Countries weren't even hiding the heavy political voting. Because of expansion to include more countries and a Semi-Final concert (to allow several countries to enter the Final competition) ALL entering nations were allowed to vote for the Final winner. This meant that ALL the Baltic states were able to vote even if they weren't in the final. The winner Ukraine was able to guarantee points from all its neighbouring countries Estonia/Latvia/Russia/Lithuania/Poland/Finland.

 

Did anyone else watch it and think it was terribly biased? Its a great laugh to watch though especially with some of the terrible songs. My picks were Germany and Netherlands who had two great songs, sadly they didn't do that well. Once again though, the people of Eastern Europe have stuck together and gone for the cheesy song with the scantily clad women (which isn't a bad thing). But its no coincidence that the winners in the last few years have been (2001: Estonia, 2002: Latvia, 2003: Turkey, 2004: Ukraine). Hmmmmm......

[k thx 0]

To be fair, Turkey aren't a traditionally Eastern Block country, unlike those other former Russian States.

 

My picks were Malta, Netherlands and Ukraine. I think the right song one, as it's not a great song, but it was a fucking tight performance.

 

If nothing else, Eurovision makes for a fucking good drinking game. We had a Eurovision party last night and everyone was very drunk. Except me. I drew Ireland...

[Guest Museite]

You drew Ireland so you stayed sober...after watching Westlife...errr I mean their song I would've thought that would have been more of an excuse to not only get drunk, but absolutely hammered!

 

I just read my post, boy I was ranting! The eurovision isn't that bad, I also had a medium party at my house. Should have heard our cheer when we (UK) got our first point! I imagine it was the same for you unless you're Irish Chave?

 

In retrospect the Ukraine song was much better than the 'gregorian chanting' of Serbia & Montenegro, also who wants to have a eurovision in the middle of a freaking warzone. Kiev is a nicer city apparently anyway.

 

I still can't believe Netherlands didn't do better than they did and Germany. Mind you there are always songs which are too sophisticated for Eurovision.

 

I think we should annexe off Cornwall, Devon & Somerset, get them to enter songs, and they can be the UK's answer to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

[DCMaximo 0]

I think you're overlooking the only good thing about Eurovision- listening to Wogan get more enraged as the event goes on. Let's face it, the songs are always unbearable (and who in Ireland decided on a shitty ballad written by Fat Bryan from Westlife), it's only the Wogan commentary that carries the damn show. This years show was great, just because you could sense Wogan's angry comments coming a mile away.