In a way, this might have been the highest standard Eurovision ever. The number of very good or worthy tracks, or ones I liked a lot, was so high, it was hard to follow the judging (i.e. just remembering which performance went with which country). I have a feeling most of the world agreed with me, as there were points being awarded all over the place rather than in the typical heavy clusters.
My two favourites were Germany and Latvia. The former a dancey track in the aesthetic of Berlin clubbing, the latter a big harmonies folk/mythology-inspired all-women performance. Iâm going to talk Germany.
Germanyâs track âBallerâ, by brother and sister team Abor & Tynna, is high pace, mobile, sounds great (Germany havenât sung in German for about ten years) and has a heavy vocal schtick of banging away on a resonant âLAâ syllable in a way that potentially makes me seem a hypocrite (see my past rants about carhorn sound). However my rant is about sounds that are held, not jabbed repeatedly! I also particularly like the little rhythmic emphasis change in the phrasing between the first and second half of each chorus. Maybe thatâs the real hook. The direction of the live performance is cool, creating this fake club set but not hiding or excluding the audience present in the arena.
If this gets in your head, it probably ainât coming out.
Please post any entries you liked, or super didnât like, and why.
My in-laws are Estonian, so I was happy to see Estonia place third. Otherwise I really liked Italyâs Lucio Corsi (5th place) and his David Bowie inspired persona.
This was my first time following Eurovision and I found it interesting how divergent the public and jury scores could be.
Theyâre not actually absent, just geoblocked from users with US IPs. I think the official channel is pretty on the ball about copyright-striking reposts unfortunately, but of course there are ways around geoblocking (not that I would ever endorse such a thing ).
I think my favorite was Latvia, which I saw someone criticize as ânot so much a song as evil elves casting a spellâ and Iâm like, yeah, fair, but thatâs why I like it. Finland was also great, if hilariously unsubtle.
Estoniaâs wobbly dance alone was very entertaining. I liked some of the fast visual gags they did, like one overhead shot where they showed the dancers on hopscotch squares. I admit I thought the song was kind of too aggressively stupid at first, but the verses were wittier and it grew on me.
I liked Lucioâs song, too. Itâs good to have some reliable Beatles-style songs amidst other aspects of the madness.
I liked our performance but I didnât really dig our song
The escalation was great. I mean every time it go to the end and sheâs flying away on a giant sparking microphone, I was laughing.
When I watched the first semi, it didnât have any subtitles. When I watched the final, it did, and the translated lyrics for Finland were revealed to be as unsubtle as the rest of the project. e.g. âGrab my arseâ.
The stream I was watching only subtitled Italyâs song for some odd reason, but I did look up the translation afterward and was like âyeah, these sure are some single entendres.â
From what I gather that was a choice on the Italian side, an after-effect that they specifically chose to put there (a bit like the camera octopus from Iceland). I believe (but am unsure) that the subtitles were part of the broadcast, so I think every country got them in English?
@EJoyce: Why wouldnât you endorse circumvention of the evil that is geoblocking? Honestly, I have to wonder why geoblocking is even legal(and why region locking was legal back in the days of DVDs and non-scam physical video games).
Have no opinion on this yearâs entries as Iâve only known that this yearâs contest has happened for about 24 hours and havenât made any attempt to find somewhere to listen. Did recently skim my rips of the compilation Albums from 07 and 08 though, the only years I have the compilation albums from. Being American, Eurovision tends to be one of those things I forget about unless someone makes a thread like this.
I should clarify. In Australia, the shows are all shown live at 5AM here. Then theyâre shown at 730PM over three days (semi 1, semi 2, final).
If you watch them at 5AM the broadcasts donât have any subtitles baked in, though you can turn on live captioning. When I watched semi 1, I watched my own recording from 5AM.
When you watch the 730PM ones, SBS have now had time to bake in subtitles on all non-English songs.
So, I donât keep that much with Eurovision, I donât really watch it, I usually check out participants and all to see if thereâs someone I might enjoy listening to. That being said, I watched the performances andâŠ
How the hell did Gaja get 24th place out of 26 from the jury? That was an entire show with a wild choreography and Justyna running and spinning all over the place while still singing practically without losing her breath, which is insanely hard to do. What does the jury even want at this point? The show was there, the performance was there, Iâm legitimately confused. Iâm Polish so maybe this is coloring my perception of things but I donât understand what happened here
I donât usually watch Eurovision but I happened to be visiting my sister and her family and they really enjoy it. I missed the UK song so I canât attest to its quality. From what I saw, it was Latvia all the way for me!
What does the jury even want at this point? The show was there, the performance was there, Iâm legitimately confused. Iâm Polish so maybe this is coloring my perception of things but I donât understand what happened here
Without getting personal reasons from all the juries, youâll never know
Thereâs a Reddit thread speculating on this particular song, citing reasons from anti-Polish bias of juries to, paraphrasing, âperformance is overloaded / too much / chaoticâ.
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