Fecund we are with musical joy this half. Many manners of pop noise stroked our lugs, and here’s a couple of quick relations as to their worth.
Armenia didn’t really grab me. All accounts suggest marvelousness, but I thought kind of OK. She’s one of those gals doing one of those songs and it didn’t poke me in a way that suggests winner.
Hind, while being possibly the best Dutch entry this century still didn’t manage to sound anything other than a qualification straggler. A nice looking girl in fabulous blue shiny short shorts she may have been. But, well y’know, it was alright but no vote sponge.
Finland are indeed the lovelies. Proper metal done proper. Our pal over the way at ‘All Kinds of Everything‘ suggests that rock in a language other than English is wrong. I suggest he is exactly incorrect, at proper METAL should only be sung in Norwegian, Finnish, Portuguese or, at a push, Czech. And this Finnish sounds extra spesh. Just saw their press conf, and not a soul knew quite what to ask ’em. Nice geezers, mind – although I’m dismayed to discover that they reckon they won’t be doing a gig while here. Bah!
Greece is at it now, and look like they’re trying to repeat their success of a couple of years ago, with a very similar dance routine, but a considerably weaker singer. She just squeaked out the cutesy platitude “Oi loiv yooo!” and the whole press room guffawed. A surprise non qualler, I may posit.
Ooh yes, Romania, I forgot them – and you may too. The geezer looks like a cross between Ian Curtis & Adrian Chiles (Oh look you know don’t know ’em, that’s what Wiki is for, curse it), and she was wearing a horror show of a shirt/corset mash up. Not much happens but they do it very emotionally and really rather shinily. I fancy doomed, but who can tell.
Russia & Greece have swapped slots. I wonder if the Bilan boy has been being difficult already?
Have I missed anyone? I think I probably have. But they can’t have been much cop if I did.
Oh, and to the reader who claimed on another medium that we don’t know what we’re talking about because we all have different opinions on the songs… this isn’t communist Russia you buffoon! We here at On-U Ssound system hand pick our critical serfs specifically because not a dang one of us knows what we’re talking about – and every one of us likes something different. Just like you people in real life!
The Russians had to give it another run through as they forgot to put the kitchen sink on stage …
Heavens to betsy they’ve overplayed this. They’ve got an ice rink that’ll take an age to get onto the rostrum – especially after the difficulties of getting the pop up garden feature from Greece off the tump – expect a very long view from the back of the hall between these pair! They’ve got a ladder that sort of goes up a bit – but not enough to look anything other than a broken prop from a Benny Hill skit, and they’ve got three other blokes doing violin, skating and, erm, ladder hanging – although the lighting was such that you could hardly see a single on of ’em.
Bilan himself was awash in blazing white, but kept doing that rock’n’roll wrenching the mic away when he sang a loud bit that all them good souly singers do. Although his voice isn’t strong enough to merit actually doing that – which frustrated the sound wallah greatly.
I still fancy this’ll qualify easily, curse it – but it’s very messiness could well count against it in the final shake up. Hmm, I still don’t think we’ve seen a winner – although as I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think a single one of the 43 is going to do it!
Hmm…