Eurovision 2011: The Best of the Rest (Part 5)

(Pardon the brief hiatus...I just started a new job, and I took a quick trip out to New York to see some family and friends. But now I'm back in full force!)

Lithuania: Evelina Sašenko shocked quite a few people when her dramatic ballad "C'est Ma Vie" qualified for the Finals.  (You could have heard a pin drop in the arena when the Lithuanian flag emerged from its little digital envelope the night of its Semifinal!)  Without a doubt, this was one of the true surprises of the 2011 Contest. 

There were a few other songs from Lithuania that I was hoping to see in Düsseldorf, with some being more guilty pleasures than others.  Donny Montell (real name: Donatas Montvydas) has tried many times over the past few years to represent his home nation, and he even had two entries in the National Final this year (including a duet with 2009 representative Sasha Song).  Donny's solo entry this year, "Let Me", came in 5th place this year, despite his attempted channeling of Justin Timberlake:


For fans of sweet throwback entries (like Serbia's "Čaroban"), Liepa Mondeikaitė's breezy "Laukiu (I'm Looking Forward)" might have done the trick.  This sixth-place finisher was the only song in the finals sung in Lithuanian (and I might be the only one who see this, but I think Kim Cattrall might have a doppelganger in Vilnius...)

More new versions and videos released!

As expected, Albania has revamped their entry for Düsseldorf.  What was once Aurela Gaçe's "Kënga Ime" is now "Feel the Passion":

I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I loved Aurela's song the first time I heard it, and this revamp only solidifies my position.  Aurela is this year's diva, and whether she wins or not, she is making this her show.  (It's funny, though; I was talking with my friend Slavi yesterday before we saw the new video or heard the translation, and I told him how I imagined that the clip would somehow involve Aurela standing on top of a mountain or other high point, a wind machine fluttering around some epic dress, and an eagle soaring.  I should have placed money on it!)

It's Glen Vella for Malta!

The last song to be selected this weekend for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest came from Malta's Preselection.  A highly competitive National Final with many experienced performers, including two-time ESC participant Fabrizio Faniello, "Malta Eurosong" was definitely packed with a number of strong performances.  After sixteen songs and a close finish, the winner was Glen Vella with "One Life":



Vella, who will turn 27 on the night of this year's Eurovision Final, came in second place after last year's Malta Eurosong with "Just a Little More Love" (which, if you close your eyes, you could easily imagine being sung by Michael Jackson).  "One Life" is a catchy, danceable number, quite a departure from the inspirational ballads that TVM has given us over the past few years.  Malta hasn't sent a solo male singer to Eurovision since Fabrizio's 2006 performance (which, incidentally, came in last place in the Finals that year).  In fact, in Malta's 23 Eurovision appearances, they've sent songs performed by solo males only seven times, with two of those performances bringing up the rear of the leaderboard.  However, three of those male-driven performances ended up in the Top Ten.  That hit-or-miss track record for Maltese men makes Glen's chances hard to predict this year.  "One Life" is positive and energetic, and they have the benefit of having the United Kingdom (the closest thing the island nation has to a Bloc voting ally) casting their ballots in their semifinal.  But will it stand out enough?  We might have to see what other nations send before a prediction can be made...

The Weekend Preview, 2/10

We've got another busy weekend ahead of us, so let's dive right into what we can expect from all over the Eurovision world over the next few days!

On Friday, Azerbaijan will finally make their decision on who they'll send to Germany this year.  Their preselection process started back in mid-November with 77 candidates, and they've finally been narrowed down to five final performers: Aynishan Qulieva, Ilgara Ibrahimova, Eldar Gasimov, Ilhama Gasimova, and Nigar Camal.  It's still a bit unclear how the song will be selected; last year, the top three candidates sang three different songs, and while the winning performer was selected the night of the finals, the winning song wasn't confirmed until over two weeks later.  Considering Azerbaijan's penchant for flexibility on their preselection processes (their dates have been moved around many times, for example), who knows what answers we may find tomorrow night, or what questions will remain!

Also on Friday, Ireland will pick the artist and song that they hope will bring the nation to the top of the Eurovision heap for an eight year.  Brief snippets of the songs were released last week, but they were heard in their entirety for the first time just today.

Don Mescall - Talking with Jennifer (written by Ronan Hardiman, Don Mescall)
Nikki Kavanaugh - Falling (written by Christina Schilling, Camilla Gottschalck, Jonas Gladnikoff, and Hanif Sabzevari)
Bling - Shine On (written by Patrick Mahoney)
The Vard Sisters - Send Me an Angel (written by Liam Lawton)
Jedward - Lipstick (written by Dan Priddy, Lars Jensen, and Martin Larson)

Ironically, "Lipstick" is the only song that has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons.  Why ironically?  Well, first, as its considered the frontrunner in tomorrow's competition, and second, as a portion of the song was "accidentally" released on Amazon.com too early, prompting RTÉ to make the decision only one third in the hands of the audience's vote, rather than fifty percent.  The remaining part of the decision will be in the hands of regional juries throughout Ireland.

The Weekend Update, 1/23

Another day, another update...Semifinals have continued this weekend in Finland, Iceland, and Norway, and Croatia's preselection has kicked off, as well.  There are also further updates from Azerbaijan, Portugal, Moldova, and Malta!  And away we go...

Finland:
Three more acts have moved on to the Finnish Final after this Friday's semi.  After a public vote, this week's winners are:
Paradise Oskar - "Da Da Dam" (Reminds me a bit of Belgium's Tom Dice from last year, don't you think?  If Tom were a member of Greenpeace Suomi, this might have been the result.)
Milana Misic - "Sydämeni kaksi maata (Two Countries of my Heart)" (Milana is the daughter of a Croatian father and a Finnish mother who actually represented her nation fifty years ago in Finland's debut ESC entry.)
Father McKenzie - "Good Enough" (Yes, they're named for the character in "Eleanor Rigby"!)

Knocked out at this round of the competition were Jimi Constantine's "Party to Party" and Soma Manuchar's "Strong".  An interesting point of trivia, courtesy of reader Stefanos in Finland: Soma's outfit was designed by Mert Otsamo, a finalist on the first season of "Muodin huipulle", the Finnish version of "Project Runway".  According to Stefanos, "I liked his work on Muodin Huipulle more than I did Soma's outfit."  I haven't seen any of Otsamo's work, but after seeing Soma's outfit, I'd be hard-pressed to imagine I'd disagree.

Next, we move on to Iceland:
It's been a week of highs and lows for Iceland this week.  On Tuesday, we heard the sad and sudden news of the passing of Sigurjón Brink at the age of only 36.  He was supposed to sing in the third semifinal next week, and it has been decided by both the network and his family that his entry, "Aftur Heim (Back Home)" would be performed as a tribute by a group of his friends and fellow musicians, and will therefore remain in the competition.  Next week's semifinal heat is sure to be an emotional one.

In the second semifinal, which aired last night, we had five songs competing for two slots in the final.  The victorious tunes were:
Yohanna - "Nótt (Night)" (As I mentioned last week, Yohanna came in second place back in the 2009 competition with "Is It True?"  I try to stay as neutral and impartial as I can, especially during the preselection phase of the Eurovision year, but I honestly think that Yohanna might, in fact, be the personification of a Disney princess.)
Matthías Matthíasson & Erla Björg Káradóttir - "Eldgos (Eruption)" (I speak no Icelandic, but I'm pretty sure I recognized the word "Eyjafjallajökull" at the start of the song...is this a tribute to the epic volcano that covered half of Europe in ash last year?  Any Icelandic readers wish to comment?)

We've got more news after the break!

The Best of the 2010 Preselection (Part One)

I don't know about all of you, but all of this talk recently about the 2011 ESC season has really kicked my Eurovision appetite into high gear.  It's sort of like how a person might say that they're not hungry when dinnertime is coming up, but once they walk past a kitchen and detect the tiniest wafting scents of meals cooking, they realize that they're absolutely famished.

Yep, that's me.  Now that we know where Eurovision 2011 will be held, and we're getting a better picture of which nations will be participating and how their entries will be chosen, I'm getting really excited to see how Düsseldorf will compare to Oslo (and Moscow, Belgrade, Helsinki, etcetera, before it).  But since it will be another few months before we get to hear the lion's share of candidate songs, I thought I'd give you all a blast from the not-so-distant past, and serve up a list of a few of my favorite Preselection songs from last year.  These are the ones who didn't quite make it to Oslo, but they made a bit of an impression on me, at the very least.  (By the way, I'm specifically skipping mention of the fantastic Albanian and Estonian preselections, as I had made pretty heavy mention of them in their nation's individual postings...but feel free to backtrack and check them out!  Estonia, in particular, put on a fabulous National Selection this year, and there are about a half-dozen songs from Eestilaul 2010 on my iTunes right now.)

Anyway, in no particular order:

From Greece: "Enjoy the Day" by Katherine Avgoustakis.
Katherine, who is actually a Belgian citizen born to a Greek father, was strongly favored to go to Oslo with this danceable summer song, but a clause in the national preselection banned any of the candidate songs from being released to the public before a specified date, or else risk disqualification.  A remix of "Enjoy the Day" was leaked to YouTube early, and Katherine was left out in the cold.  There are rumors that she's going to try to represent Greece again, and if she can duplicate the popularity of her 2010 song, I wouldn't count her out of the running to go to Düsseldorf.


Fom Denmark: "Breathing" by Bryan Rice.

Coming in second place in this year's Dansk Melodi Grand Prix was this modern ballad, which always seems to remind me a bit of Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love".  I personally preferred this entry over Denmark's eventual winner, Chanée and N'evergreen's "In a Moment Like This", but since I can't vote, I can't complain!  In a way, it's almost a good thing that Bryan missed out in 2010, as Denmark's 2008 and 2009 entry, Simon Mathew's "All Night Long" and Brinck's "Believe Again", respectively were both male-driven, mid-tempo numbers, and maybe it was time to switch things up a bit.

From Malta: "Save a Life" by Wayne Micallef.

Although I know that Malta is more or less obsessed with Eurovision, I am generally not a massive fan of many of the songs that the island nation submits (Sorry!  Nothing personal, I promise!).  However, I really liked Micallef's entry this year.  It has the hopeful, positive message that many Maltese ESC songs tend to have, without sounding like a track ripped from a 1995 Disney film.  His voice is strong, and "Save a Life" kind of reminds me of something that Snow Patrol or The Fray would come out with, and it might have stacked up pretty well against Tom Dice or Jon Lilygreen this year.  He also gets points from me for performing his own song, as only three self-penned tunes made it to the Maltese final this year, out of 20 songs.  Wayne came in 6th place in the 2010 preselection, and 7th the year before that.  If he keeps writing songs like this one, we might see him on the big stage sometime soon.

From Moldova: "Amintirele Dor (The Memories Hurt)" by Leylla
When I first introduce Eurovision to my friends who aren't quite familiar with the contest, many imagine imagine a contest full of ethno-techno-disco pop like this.  The Moldovan preselection this past year was packed, with over 80 songs vying for a shot at Oslo.  Those 80-some-odd songs were all released to the public, but only 30 made it to the semifinal level (25 picked by a jury, and 5 by local SMS voting).  When the dust settled, Eurofans from all over were stunned to see that Leylla had missed out, especially considering that crap like this went through.
But, on the bright side, if Leylla had gone to Oslo, the would never would have gotten to know the glory of the saxroll.  Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

From the Ukraine: "Emotional Lady" by Dazzle Dreams.

Ok, this one is a total guilty pleasure.  I love it when songs in other languages randomly slip in a line or two in English, and combining that with Depeche Mode-inspired synthpop makes me a happy Samantha.  Granted, though..."Dazzle Dreams"?  The band name sounds a bit like something that a five-year-old girl would come up with while trying to name her pink My Little Pony.  Great song, though...


From Russia: "Dlinnaya-dlinnaya beresta i kak sdelat' iz nee aishon (Long-Long Birch Bark and How to Make a Headdress From It)" by Buranovskiye Babushki  (whew!)

This song is an obvious departure from any other tune in this year's contest (or almost any year's contest, for that matter).  It's sung in Udmurt, which is a minority language more closely related to Finnish and Estonian than Russian, and was performed by the Buranovskiye Babushki (literally, "The Grannies from Buranovo).  Believe it or not, this was a serious contender to go to Oslo, coming in third place in the Russian national final!
And I don't care what anybody says.  This song makes me happy.  Just try to listen to it and not smile!  I dare you!
...Yeah, that's what I thought.

(More coming up in the next entry!)

ESC 2010 Reviews: Malta

Ah, Malta.  A land known for a film-noir falcon, crunchy chocolate balls (no, wait...those are Maltesers...), and an almost fanatical devotion to Eurovison.  They've had a total of 22 entries in the ESC since 1971, and despite having no shared borders or culture with any other participant, they've come in the Top 10 a dozen times.  They've never actually won the whole thing, but they've had two silvers and two bronzes.  This is even more surprising considering that Malta only has a population of about 400,000 (about half of the population of Cyprus, or 10% of Georgia, or just about 1% of Poland). 

Their first few entries, back in 1971 and 1972, both scored in dead-last place.  I don't think this had anything to do with the quality of the songs presented, but rather that they were sung completely in Maltese, a language that bears a passing resemblance to Sicilian Italian, but blended heavily with Arabic.  As wonderful as it was that their home language was represented, it went over the jury's heads, and every Maltese entry since then has been performed in English (with the exception of one verse of the entry from 2000).  Switching to English was a positive change (and completely permissible, as English is co-official in Malta, and Eurovision used to mandate that all songs be performed in that nation's official language).  After a hiatus from 1976-1991, Malta came back with a vengeance, racking up eight top-10 placements in a row.

However, for all their success in past years, Malta's entries, like Greece's, have generally left me cold.  They seem to have cornered the market on big, syrupy ballads and pop numbers, and that formula has very nearly taken them to the top of the scoreboard on a number of occasions.  It's not that they're bad songs at all; it's just not what I personally listen to on a normal basis.  Frankly, many of these songs sound like they could have been extracted from the Disney songbook of the early-to-mid 1990s.  But ballads and pop tend to go over quite well in Eurovision, so Malta keeps it alive.

One of the greatest examples of Malta's contributions to Eurovision is Chiara Siracusa.  Chiara is one of the rare performers to have made it to the ESC stage three times, and she's come tantalizingly close to victory.  She came in a very close 3rd place in 1998 with "The One That I Love", and came in 2nd in 2005 with "Angel".  Last year, Malta figured that Chiara was due for a win, so they sent her to Moscow with "What if We?".  Sadly, Valetta's plan backfired, and Chiara only made it to 22nd place in the final. 

This year, Malta continues its trend of balladry with 18-year old Thea Garrett, singing "My Dream" (written by the team that put together "The One That I Love" for Chiara twelve years ago).


Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Thea, or with this song.  It's only crime is that it's one of approximately eleventy-billion ballads in this year's competition, and I'm not sure if it can stack up against some of the others.  However, she'll be in the first semifinal, where there are only a few other similar songs (Latvia, Belgium, Belarus, and Portugal), so it's possible that Thea might squeak by, but I can't imagine her placing in the top half of the scoreboard in the finals.

A Note on "Bloc Voting"

I mentioned in my previous note that Croatia is in an advantageous position in the ESC, due to its location in a so-called "Balkan Voting Bloc".  That sounds like a half-decent segue to get more into this topic!

As the Eurovision Song Contest has grown and expanded over the years, going from seven nations participating in 1956 to 42 in the 2009 contest, unofficial "alliances" have been established between nations, often due to shared linguistic, cultural, or geographical histories.  For example, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland will often swap votes with each other, as do the nations of the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia.  More recently, current patterns of immigration have begun to influence expected voting patterns, with Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France often sending votes to Turkey or Armenia, or Spain and Portugal voting for Romania or Moldova.

For some nations, this is a massive boost.  For example, last year's winner, Norway's "Fairytale", sung by Alexander Rybak, benefited from not just a strong presentation, but the fact that Norway is located in the heart of the "Scandinavian Bloc".  Furthermore, Rybak was actually born in Belarus and speaks fluent Russian, so the "Former Soviet Bloc" also stood up and took notice.  Granted, this doesn't take away from the fact that "Fairytale" was a great and charming song, but it makes you wonder what would have happened if it had been presented by a representative from, say, San Marino (who came dead last in their first and only participation, back in 2008, despite a well-produced song).

There are a few interesting anomalies to the voting bloc phenomenon, however.  Since their first participation in 1973, Israel has managed three victories and 18 top-ten finishes total.  So, although they share no borders with any other nation participating in the contest, have no linguistically similar voting partner to fall back on (all of their wins were sung in Hebrew), and many countries have even refrained from joining or continuing in Eurovision in the first place due to Israel's presence in the competition, over half of their 32 entries have merited Top Ten placements.

Malta has had similar success, despite being literally and figuratively insular.  They've participated a total of 22 times since 1971, and have had 12 Top Ten finishes (no wins, but two silvers and two bronzes).  Granted, Valletta tends to send songs in English, but they really have no official voting bloc to depend on.

Why do I bring this topic up now?  Well, if I proceed alphabetically through our little tour of Eurovision Entries for 2010, the next stamp in our passports will be Cyprus, which has directly been affected by the benefits and drawbacks of bloc voting.  But more on that in a bit...

(Graphic taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_at_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest )