The Saddest Music in the World: The Eurovision Song Competition

Another year has come for the Eurovision Song competition, and once again the most saccharine of songs was announced the winner. This show, which i haphazardly follow these last three years that they've started to put shit on the Internet live, leading to much discussion and youtube-ing about it, is a time where Europe comes together to publicly embarrass themselves through horrible songs. It's basically Karaoke on a large scale. As an example of the quality of music, let me give you the opening lines and the chorus to this years winner, from Norway.

"Years ago, when I was younger
I kinda liked a girl I knew
She was mine, and we were sweethearts
That was then, but then it's true
[chorus]
I'm in love with a Fairytale, even though it hurts
Cause i don't care if i lose my mind, I'm already cursed".

What? What? Alexander Ryback. I realize English probably like your 8th language, but not only do these lyrics not really make sense ( unless you secretly love The Little Mermaid or something, which, if true, I'm totally in the same boat as you. ) but they somehow eclipse cliche and go to some weird dark realm. It's like I'm back in workshop classes. First line repetition of information. If it takes place years ago from your perspective, we know that you were younger. "That was then, but then it's true." that's not a proper statement. I'm not sure how that sentence is supposed to look. He says that the song was influenced by Russian Fairy tales(did I mention the song is called "Fairytale")- which make sense seeing as though those always end so happily and have such sweet characters as Koschei the Deathless and Baba Yaga. I guess that's the cursed part? This is him as he is announced the winner, though i believe that might just be when they announced he was repping Norway. Either way, no photo has ever screamed "Surprise Buttsex" more than his face.

The people who win this don't really win anything, besides arbitrary pride and you would /THINK/ a better chance at international stardom. However- looking at the list of winners I know three. Abba (74 Waterloo) Celine Dion ( 88 "some french bullshit") and Katrina and the Waves (97 "Love Shine a Light"). However, Celine Dion represented Switzerland. How this happened I don't know since she's not... you know...Swiss. I'm pretty sure she barged in and punched out whoever was supposed to represent the Swiss and they are so neutral they just decided to run with it. When i saw Katrina and the Waves I was like "AWESOME i love walking on sunshine." then i saw that they won in 97, a full 12 years after Walkin'. ouch. so they were kinda OLD by the time Eurovision gave them the win. The song and video are kinda sad (skip to about 1:30). Katrina looks every bit what your mom would if someone told her she was singing in a "rock" concert. The leather, the stupid green blouse, the Velvet coat. the hair. all in all very Joyce Summers circa "Band Candy" but not as cool

Apparently one of the big criticisms against the Eurovision contest, besides that the songs are almost all completely horrendous, is the fact that people use tricks to distract the audience from the actual quality of the song. What kind of tricks you might ask, well how about Dita Von Tess, An Ice Skater , or whatever you want to call this hot mess. As for the Russian one, pictured right, I recognize the blond from watching Ice-skating, he's HUGE in Russia but i forget his name. (edit: that would be Evgeni Plushencko, winner of the 2010 Winter Olympic Platinum Medal) Also- is it just me or is that Violin player the Russian equivalent of Richie Sambora.



To be fair though- the 07 Winner Serbia didn't really have much of that going on besides her supportive semi-lesbian Charlie's Angels. She rocked through that song as a proud dumpy no-frills lesbian. Her song sounds actually decent and the lyrics don't make me cry at night( there's a translation on the side). Lordi also couldn't help being a stage act seeing as though they are Finnish Death Metal, but even their offering sounds pretty tame for death metal. I include the official video and not the performance because the live version blew and I enjoy that the hardcore chick Lordi fan is afraid of them herself for most of the video.


Watching these videos and more it appears that you only need 3 out of 6 things to be a fan favorite at Eurovision, and
A. Outrageous Costuming.
B. Dance/Stage show that is completely unnecessary
C. Awesomely sweet (meaning both "oh fucking sweet! i love this" and "ow my tooth hurts") beat
D. Bare Chest/Barely there clothing ( male/female)
E. Nonsensical lyrics in english so that more people that just your country understands the song.
F. Decent looking singer.

Taking all This into account, I don't know how Azis has never gotten into Eurovision on his own ( he did backup once for some bitch). I'll let that photo speak for itself.



My favorite entry ever is from the Ukraine in 2007
From the video alone, I believe the song is about a race of 70's glam space Nazi's who have Verka Serduchka as their Head Matron and are all blind. Someone sent me the lyrics I see that there is also some awkwardly placed anti-Russian sentiment, which is fair since they raped Ukraine for so long and then tried to kill the anti-russian PM candidate with a poison-tipped umbrella. But still, no place for hate in Eurovision.

All in all, I fucking love Eurovision and will continue to support its rape of my ears ( which really negates it as rape since I start watching it. Unless of course I call it "not rape") While I wish that America were able to participate, I fear that it cannot be so. Besides the fact that we aren't actually Europe, we just don't have the minds for it. Our pop can be bad, and even good-bad according to the earlier detailed 6 rules of fan favorites, but not EUROVISION levels of bad. Our people are also to well known for it to be fair. I mean, whose gonna beat Britney Spears (what, you didn't think that was the automatic go to person for Eurovision?) in an international showdown that relies partially on audience voting. We've proven with American Idol that we as a nation are willing to waste countless hours and 1.99 texts for someone we've been manipulated to have a personal connection with. On top of that, I believe as a nation approached any international competition, be it Olympics, war, etc. the same way. We MUST be the best and we will do WHATEVER atrocities we need to to get our end results, even if that means having Kanye West and the lead singer of The Killers combine with the reanimated corpse of Kurt Cobain in order to create a song that is statistically impossible to not like. All you need is this photo to prove that we're more ready than Miley Cyrus to destroy our reputation.