Disorganised chaos rules......and we love it!! (Eurovision Song Contest)

Member Name: paulie1975

Product:	Eurovision Song Contest
Date:	16/05/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its unintentionally funny and is one of the few events we can really be European

Disadvantages: Dodgy voting and dodgy presenterst

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual contest held in May in Europe, its a song contest which every European country can enter, the show was first shown in 1956, it is most famous for bringing Abba to the notice of the unsuspecting world with their amazing song Waterloo. It is less well known for Daz Simpson's awful rap song which was a nadir in British participation and marked the moment we realised we should perhaps take it more seriously again.

Eurovision has recently had a marked change, where it used to be an amateur competition countries now put in their best acts, last years winning entry for Russia was in fact written by Timbaland and this year an entry for Denmark was written by Ronan Keating.

Historically the contest gives us a chance to see our European neighbours exhibit their wacky side, highlights including the Finnish Emo rock winner a few years ago and Sebastian Tellier's hilarious song for France last year, it is also well known for the poor voting structure with the russian and slavic countries having a virtual monopoly by simply voting for their neighbours.

This year the public can also vote, although not for their own country, this has shown a marked change with a variety of nations being in the top five, rather than the usual ex russian states. This year the contest has lacked its usual air of amateurism and in a way its weaker for it, all of the acts are polished and almost uniform in their desire to be famous, there are pop acts, glamorous ladies but nothing eccentric and fun which is a real shame.

The contest has traditionally been commentated on by Terry Wogan and a bottle of baileys. This meant that as the night moved on his commentary got more and more funny with digs at all sorts of acts, this year Graham Norton has taken over as Wogan quit due to dodgy voting systems. Norton has had his moments and may grow into the role and has done a decent enough job this year.

The winner this year was a Norwegian entry which is full of charm and has a very nice chorus, the British entry did really well getting into the top five which has been beyond our reach for many years, we have seen some interesting pop acts, some really poor songs like the German version of Mambo Number 5 featuring Dita Von Teese!! for no discernible reason.

The contest has lacked its usual charm, it is becoming too professional and we do risk countries disguising their national identity to follow a pop formula when the contest is really at its best when we see how odd some countries really are.

Overall its a hugely popular event and one watched by many people throughout Europe, I remember seeing Thom Yorke of Radiohead on Jonathon Ross once say that he'd love Radiohead to represent the nation in Eurovision, now that would be something incredibly special if we really wanted to show Europe how good we really are.

Summary: Disorganised chaos rules......and we love it!!