Oh dear.
I’ve just been watching the first batch of the songs for this year’s Eurovision Song COntest. Oh dear, oh dear. I absolutely love the Eurovision, but, of course, this is not music you can take seriously and stay sane…
Cyprus was what started me saying “Oh dear”, and I must have said it 20 times by the time they reached the first so-called verse. Boy-band wannabes. Dreadful. And the Swedish commentors liked it. Oh dear. Austria’s in with a latino rip-off of a song I can’t quite put a name to. Oh dear. Greece has a synth-80ies-techno-pop-tryingtobehipaboutcomputers song. Oh dear. Russia has a boy-band (!) with a song where the most prominent lines were “Nothern Girl, how can I ….. you” and “Nothern Girl, I want to ….. you”, and it is quite possible that what they were singing was “melt”, which is what the Swedes were talking about, but it sounded like “mount”. It might just be my dirty imagination. Oh, and I wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole – sleazy guys with random facial hair and dress-sense slightly worse than Robert Templeton’s. Oh dear. Croatia’s elected representative looks exactly like Catherin Zeta Jones. Very pretty, with a beautiful full-lenght, full-skirted white dress. Unfortunately she spent most of the time doing wild contortions, making the most of the long slit in the skirt to reveal her left leg and generally looking as if she’d have been more at home on a porn-movie set. Maybe she was trying to distract attention from the song. It might have been the only reasonable strategy. Oh dear. The UK… The best of the lot, I thought, but that’s not saying much. And I’ve already forgotten it, so it can’t have been very memorable. Oh dear. And Estland has a perfectly decent looking young girl who looks like she wants to be the next Britney and whose song was, uhm… Oh dear.
Still, looking forward to the 25th, when the final will be held in Tallin. Isn’t that the same day that the Norwegian princess (Martha Louise) is getting married? Is that coincidental, I wonder?
I do hope BBC Prime shows the Eurovision, it’s not the same without Terry Wogan. The Norwegian commentator actually talks as if he likes the songs half the time, and he always hopes the Norwegian entry will win. Whereas I normally squirm with embarrasment and contemplate applying for citizenship in any country that offers, preferably one that doesn’t participate in the Eurovision, in protest agianst being identified with whatever it is they presume to call music that particular year.
A recent change of rules for the contest to allow any language to be used rather than just the mother-tounge, has resulted in a majority of the entries being sung in English, because that’s the language most people understand. Unfortunately, it means we all understand the lyrics. Thus the unfortunate Russians, and thus last year, where my two favourite songs were Portugal’s and Spain’s, as they sung in Portugese and Spanish and so there were no nasty shocks to the system. On the whole I preferred the Portugese, as the Spanish one had “loco” in the refrain, a word I do understand. Working along the same lines I ought to like the Croatian entry this year, but I have my limits.
Random, favourite idiotic lyrics in English, not from the Eurovision:
“When your body’s had enough of me, and I’m lying flat out on the floor, when you think I’ve loved you all I can, I’m gonna love you a little bit more” (all very well, but would you want him to, considering the “enough of me” part?)
“I’ve waited lightyears for you.” (Do I need to explain?)
“Babe, I’m here again. Where have you been?” (Uhm, couldn’t he have substituted “where” for “how”, kept the rhythm and made a lot more sense?)
And I still don’t know what it is Meatloaf won’t do (still like that song though, so even I am not consistent).
Music in my head: I want it that way (aaaargh, Backstreet Boys, heaven help me! Another idiotic lyric, though – think about it… I’ve gotta go turn the stereo on!)