Thursday, March 4, 2010

2002


It’s funny how proprietorial I get about this contest, having worked on it – it almost exists in a separate little world of its own for me. I find it very hard to view it objectively, albeit not in terms of the songs.


01 Cyprus
B: Well, the English version’s better than the Greek one.
A: Decent enough song, which they completely failed to repeat a year later. Goes on a bit.
V: Shouty, bug-eyed performance that comes across too mechanically to be alluring. They look (and act) like the cast of some Cypriot gay drama.

02 United Kingdom
B: The play on words in “What can I say / That will make up for letting you down” is good.
A: Probably the best British entry of the last 10 years. It’s an acoustic treat. It’s interesting that when you place them side by side, there’s not much separating this and Hold on to Our Love, but the gulf between them in terms of what works and what doesn’t is huge. I’m glad they rejigged the ending to give it more oomph, even if the original downplayed version was more in tune with the lyrics.
V: Charmingly performed, with lots of passion, if a little wonkily in places. The backing vocals are brilliant. Why’s it so hard for the UK to come up with something like this every year? I love the amber/honeycomb backdrop it’s given, and the shredded cowgirl look is on point.

03 Austria
B: Why do I suspect that “If you feel like losin’ your pride, I’ll be there to give you a place where to hide” would translate directly, and perfectly, into German? The chorus is spectacularly bad, given that there are a million words that rhyme with ‘there’ apart from ‘care’.
A: This suits Manuel’s voice down to the ground. I’ve always loved the bassline driving it along, and the bridge and key change are perfect.
V: 
Ooh ’e were goooorgeous!”, to quote Little Britain. Tiny little thing he was, too, not that it registers on screen. This sounds fantastic live with the bass booming. Pity about the missed note in the second verse.

Claim to fame #1 – The big reveal of the backing vocalists was my idea. The daft Austrians were just going to have them standing there like numpties.

04 Greece
B: Say!
A: In just three minutes, this manages to bring together everything that was wrong with so much about Greece before they finally got a clue. And why can’t the majority of Greek Eurovision artists pronounce /æ/?
V: Mr Rakintzis has something in his eye, clearly. This is the ESC equivalent of a behind-the-sofa moment: a total disaster from start to finish. Off-key and (ironically) lacking any kind of energy. On the plus side, the colour scheme’s nice, the guitarist at the back is hot, and the whole thing’s good for a laugh.

05 Spain
B: I still don’t really get the point of this. Were we all supposed to be excited about the arrival of the euro? Perhaps it should have been called The European Central Bank’s Living a Celebration. The deluded expectations with which the Spanish delegation entered the competition with this are neatly summed up in the line “Y nace en mí una ilusión”.
A: This is another one I preferred before they remixed it*, but the music’s pretty together for something so trashy, and it’s perfect Eurovision fodder. The little boop-boop thing in the background gets on my nerves though.
V: Everyone was on tenterhooks as to whether Rosa would manage this, but I thought she did well. The backing lot look like they’re working out to a boxercise video for most of it. The final broadcast was the first time that the one in the middle that’s not Gisela actually managed to get the choreography right. It was hardly that challenging.

Claim to fame #2 – I suggested Frankenstein as the most appropriate postcard for the juggernaut that was the Rosa press machine ;-)

06 Croatia
B: It’s nice to see that the ‘incomplete and insecure’ girl Vesna’s left behind has transformed into a cat-o’-nine-tails-wielding temptress with a withering come-hither expression and a love that
s so real it very probably leaves you scarred for life.
A: *Ditto here, although they basically turned this into a different song, so I suppose that makes it OK. As remakes go it arguably takes the best bits of the original and improves on them. The guitars are great, again, but it loses focus after a while.
V: Around the time of the Playboy interlude, in fact. I’m always amazed that there’s virtually no trace of an accent on any of the singers.

07 Russia
B: Generally good.
A: Well-produced, as with most Russian entries, but it tries a little bit too hard to pass itself off as something other than the pop confection it so obviously is.
V: Lovely backdrop. The delegation were fuming that this didn’t do better and looking for excuses everywhere but where they should: the performance, by and large, is a mess. The sound mix doesn’t help, but still.

Not a claim to fame #1 – No coincidence that ‘freedom’ was chosen as the postcard for this!

08 Estonia
B: As ever with a set of Jana Hallas lyrics, I haven’t got a clue what they mean.
A: Originality in abundance (…not) but it gets it over the line. Which tells you something about the quality of the rest of the field in Eurolaul that year, given that this version is many magnitudes better than the original. The jury must have seen its europotential, which brooks no argument.
V: I was fuming about the sound mix on this. Still, it’s an assured [Swedish] performance of a by-the-book [Estonian] pop song and works perfectly. From the key change to the final note it
s sublime, and it must qualify as one of the most feel-good home entries from the off. The atmosphere’s brilliant, and it’s a real testament to the way Sahlene won everyone over before the contest that we all adopted her as one of our own. Says he.

09 FYR Macedonia
B: Sheer poetry, in Macedonian and in English.
A: Brilliant, although it too benefitted enormously from the remix. It’s probably the first Macedonian entry to truly showcase the country’s talent for complex backing vocals which are invaluable to the overall feel and effect of the entry.
V: Live, Karolina’s constantly almost but not quite off-key. (See also: 2005, 
Shiri Maymon.) But when this hits its stride there’s no stopping it: it just works.

10 Israel
B: I sympathise fully with the sentiment that “Lif’amim nidme she’en tikva” when it comes to Israeli Eurovision entries.
A: Beautiful strings, but Israel can go light a candle under its sanctimonious arse.
V: “No, not THAT camera angle!” [The HoD was obsessed about avoiding shots of Sarit in profile, for some reason 
Ed.] Nice outfit. Good hair, too.

11 Switzerland
B: Pretty lyrics. It’s interesting, for want of a better word, that Francine betrayed her German roots in the original version of the song by mispronouncing ‘Éden’ in French.
A: The two slowest students in the class sharing a desk at the back. The composition is delightful, but Francine, charming little pixie though she was, comes across as aphid killer at times with a voice that
 shrill.
V: And armpits that sweaty. 
(See also: 2002, Laura Voutilainen.) The organic feel to the backdrop made this by far my favourite staging of the night.

12 Sweden
B: “Forgettin’ all the words of advice” probably wasn’t a good move for them, in hindsight.
A: This is as reliable as most Swedish pop – without actually sounding essentially Swedish for a change, just retro – and again brings the orchestra to the disco very successfully.
V: How did it all go so wrong? Perhaps it was just too overbaked. It descends dizzingly quickly into a mess of screaming and shouting.

13 Finland
B: There’s nothing special about the lines “When you’re far away [I] fantasize / That you’re in my arms and I jump when I hear the phone” per se, but they sound great in context.
A: The ad break strikes again? One too many ’70s numbers in a row? Whatever the reason, I’m blinkered to its shortcomings as a song. Finland really thought they were on to something here, and I thought they were as well. Its use of three minutes is as efficient as anything the Netherlands might come up with.
V: Maybe it just works better as a song than a performance, when it’s not quite so brash and garish in its presentation. And to be honest, she is pretty slappable: the prima donna she acted like off-stage bleeds through here.

14 Denmark
B: There’s a wonderful sense of impending doom in that opening verse. It’s that whole thing about quicksilver: if you hold onto it too tightly, it shoots out of your hand; if don’t hold onto it tightly enough, it slips through your fingers.
A: In studio, this is really rather stunning.
V: On stage, its grown-up richness just isn’t in evidence. Perhaps it was never going to translate. For someone who was in hair, make-up and wardrobe for an hour, Mahlene looks like she just crawled out of bed and threw on whatever she stepped over in the process.

15 Bosnia and Herzegovina
B: I’d love to see lines like “Ja imam ono što se zove srce” get the whole LaMaja treatment, all pursed lips and uh-uhs and Ru Paul hair. The finger waggling and diva head wobble seem unfairly constrained in a BiH context.
A: Not a hope in hell, but given 
– literally – where it’s coming from, I can understand why they went for it. Its synthesisers and sassiness certainly won me over.
V: The three backing vocalists have the best frocks (if not dance moves) of the night. Maja, on the other hand, looks like she just stepped out of the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant she works at. But she sings well.

16 Belgium
B: There’s something almost misogynistic about these lyrics that I don’t like.
A: Pushing a song on the basis of it needing to stand out between Bosnia and France proved somewhat flawed as an approach, however much it fulfils the remit. And indeed however good it might be: it comes together very well by the key change. It
’s all very Belgian though.
V: Sergio comes across as a bit of a twat. Talk about mid-life crisis.

17 France
B: The epitome of rousing.
A: This is French balladry at its best, even if it’s actually an anthem. Same difference. If it was in Hebrew I’d probably scorn it, but France does it superbly. Sandrine is the perfect choice of vocalist, fragile and vociferous by turns.
V: The voice of the contest, despite the wobble in the first verse. I actually prefer the abridged version to the original.

18 Germany
B: As cheesy as songs about how much people love music are, everything rolls along here perfectly harmlessly – until the bridge, when Ralph & Berndt can’t stop themselves and go off on a peace tangent that sees you reaching for the sickbag at once.
A: Fittingly, Germany were blind to the fact that they had another stinker on their hands with this. Colouring book pop that not even the stabbing, swirling strings can save.
V: This made sense in the national final, but when it hit the European stage its shortcomings were only too obvious. The backing vocalists are super annoying, and not very good; Corinna herself is strong. She’s also enormous, so I’m not sure the Gestapo overcoat was a good idea.

19 Turkey
B: It’s lucky the poor sod she’s pleading with is a fan of lilacs rather than, say, market gardening – a title like ‘Carrots Decomposed in Your Heart’ (Havuçlar bozdu kalbinde?) wouldn’t have been good for much. “Mutsuzum, suskunum, durgunum / Yorgunum sensiz ben” was the favourite couplet of everyone in the OB van: they sang along to it every time. Which is to say twice.
A: Only the second entry out of basically 20 with some true national flavour. At first I railed against its lack of identifiable structure, but I’ve since come to love it. (Well, alright, I always loved it.) The opening pan across the woodwind and acoustics is magical. And then we get some strings. Turkish scene-setting is rarely this accomplished.
V: Buket tries hard to look like she’s having fun, but her voice tells us otherwise. The sound mix is awful. Hilariously crap choreography, and the bits in English are even more stilted here than they are in the studio version.

20 Malta
B: These lyrics – while teetering on the edge of a sugary chasm – work well enough. Bit heavy on the 7s maybe.
A: This sure makes the most of its three minutes, and then some.
V: Another Maltese entry I
d written off before the final, to my shame. Ira’s voice and demeanour suit it perfectly. And her pants are fabulous.

Claim to fame #3 – I recommended to director Marius Bratten that the camera pull in tight on Ira so as not to spoil the surprise of the glitter thing. They never quite managed it, but still.

21 Romania
B: As an opening line, “We’re behaving like two strangers in the gloomy night” makes it sound like this is going to be an ode to cruising. And not on the high seas.
A: Unbendingly old-fashioned, but the tarting up they gave it makes it work. The guitar almost sounds like it’s being played by someone in the same room as you, and by the end the whole thing
s making perfect sense.
V: Second vocal powerhouse. And scratch what I said about Switzerland: this is my favourite backdrop. It’s more or less the same colour scheme, so no surprise there.

22 Slovenia
B: It’s easy to smile at lines like “Ko me gledaš, vidiš to kar si” given the mirror you’re looking into, but there’s no disguising the fact that this is as solid and positive an anthem as any Eurovision has given us.
A: This was my ex’s very man’s-man dad’s favourite, and who can blame him: it’s an overlooked, oh so slick little triumph – visually, musically and lyrically.
V: Poor sound mix again, alas. The vocal effects are a great touch, as is the choreography, and the outfits. They’re like a really bad drag act that’s entertaining for all the right reasons. No, they are a really bad drag act who are entertaining for all the right reasons!

Claim to fame #4 – Guess who it was that suggested Sestre be trailed by ‘so many beautiful women’? ;-)

23 Latvia
B: Load of bollocks, but still an improvement on the original.
A: This is perhaps the worst song ever to have won the contest.
V: That said, the performance is genius.

24 Lithuania
B: Tsk, Mr Stepukonis should have listened to his grandmother: red sky in the morning is the shepherd’s warning. He can hope all he wants that the day will never end, but when it’s marked out by an omen like that, you know there’s going to be tears before bedtime.
A: Bright, breezy and slightly kooky, as so many Lithuanian things are. There were some simple touches given to the final version that lifted it way above the original, which was hardly different but much harder to take. As it stands, it’s 100% inoffensive but still rather superfluous to needs.
V: Knitted tops!


And so to the points…

1 point goes to Finland

2 points go to Denmark

3 points go to Estonia

4 points go to Croatia

5 points go to Slovenia

6 points go to Romania

7 points go to the United Kingdom

8 points go to Turkey

10 points go to France

and finally...

12 points go to...


FYR Macedonia!


The wooden spoon goes to Greece.

No comments:

Post a Comment