Eurovision Song Contest

It was the jury vote that killed Russia actually, which indicates that the only reason Russia made it to 2nd is the large number of Russian minorities in some countries, thus meaning it got a ton of the popular vote.

edited 14th May '16 4:10:11 PM by Silasw

Ukraine's song had a couple of English verses at the beginning, but the majority was in Crimean Tatar. Also, Austria sung entirely in French, for some weird reason.

Honestly, having grown tired of so much English in this contest (and this year, even Spain disappointed me), I'm very glad a song like Ukraine's ended up winning, even if I was initially rooting for the Netherlands.

Ukraine was boring as fuck. I'm sure they won on anti-Russian votes. Not that I mind all that much; none of the songs competing this year would have made my top-10 in any of the last 10 years or more, so it was the perfect year to go full political.

My favourite was Austria, and I was glad that Finland didn't make it to the Final. They sure didn't deserve it. Ukraine wasn't in my top-10, even for this year, but I suppose this was a year when it was all about opposition rather than support, so it was a decent result.

Australia was way better than Ukraine, IMO, but I'm still not sure what country I wanted to win. I mean, probably Austria, but it would not have been in my top-10 last year...

edited 14th May '16 5:44:51 PM by BestOf

Ukraine did very well in the jury vote so I think it's entirely possibly that they did win based on song quality, some of the popular vote probably was anti-Russian based, but I'd be surprised it it effected the juries that much outside of perhaps Poland, in the end the popular vote tends to favour Russia due to minority groups.

Also speaking of Austria, the singer is 19, holy shit!

edited 14th May '16 5:54:36 PM by Silasw

/r/polandball◊ wastes no time.

And I call that justified.

So I'm catching up on Poland's entry.

Is it just me, or is the guy lisping? Anyway, it's understandably better than the butter churn porn and pig squeals we sent two years ago...

But... but... their tracts of land!

Doublepost, because /r/polandball: The Winning Song◊.

edited 15th May '16 6:54:44 AM by Quag15

Any comics about Ukraine's victory being one of Russia's tricks to bankrupt them?

Nah. The use of 'xaxaxa I trick yuo' is not common nowadays, after the mods told people to use them with restraint and only in really great situations.

There◊ are◊ quite a◊ few◊ others◊ about the general event, in any case.

edited 16th May '16 7:37:25 AM by Quag15

What's with all the Gratuitous Japanese?

Have you seen Germany's performance? I'm sure you can find it on YT.

Our candidate, to my not-even-remotely endless shame, was essentially a German Kawaiiko (well, according to The Other Wiki she's more interested in The Korea that is not Best Korea, not as much Japan) which is why she is looking like she's a Düsseldorfer Japan-Tag reject.

WELCOME TO THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST IN... Wait. Where's this year's EVSC?

Stockholm? It was in Sweden. Hammerfall and Sabaton were on the music montage they showed of bands from Sweden.

edited 24th May '16 5:44:53 PM by TheOneWhoTropes

Well, another edition is coming, and we already have some political controversy: Kremlin says Kiev tarnishing Eurovision with ban on Russian entry.

I'm considering throwing up a Discord server for ESC for shared live commenting

Would anyone be game?

First Semi-Final just finished. The Finnish media had been building up Finland as some sort of favourite around Europe, but of course we didn't make it through the Semi. (Not that I wanted us to get through: our song was very boring and generic.)

My favourite in the first Semi was Moldova, who brought back their epic sax guy band. They did go through. Most of my other favourites failed to go through, and most of the ones I guessed would pass because I think Europe has poor taste did, indeed, pass. (Portugal, I'm looking at you. Poland, you, as well.)

I always expect Cyprus to bore Europe with a ballad sung by a very young girl, but this time they sent out something like a one-man boy band. I was worried they'd be punished for diverging from their formula, but fortunately they made it. Belgium also tends to bore me, but this time they had something a little bit different.

Australia, Sweden and Greece were the three countries I thought would surely go through even before I had heard any country's song for this years, and they all did go through. Greece had the best show of those three.

Full list of countries that are through the first Semi-Final:

Sweden, Australia, Greece, Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Armenia.

The second Semi-Final is on Thursday.

The big sponsors and host are also in the Final: Ukraine, Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Spain.

I'll join the fray when the finals take place; this year all the impeding deadlines force me to skip the semi-finals.

Heh, the song is ok, even if a bit too old-fashioned. His physical tics threw me off, though (even if it's meant to represent a sort of "old people's love" type of thing).

And, hey, we're in the final. Guess we're not total shit, this year.

Besides, at least it's not "Generic English lyrics #325".

At least it's still better than Azerbaijan, who brought a stupid horse's head mask.

edited 9th May '17 2:36:55 PM by Quag15

Credit for singing in your own language, but I just can't stand ballads. (Well, except if they're rock/metal ballads.)

Fair enough.

To be fair, though, the first semi-final actually didn't have as many ballads as you'd usually see in a Eurovision Semi-Final. In that sense, one of them passing through is more tolerable than it normally would be (because it wouldn't be another in a string of 15 ballads in the Final). I hope the second Semi-Final will also have a fairly limited number of ballads.

Obviously, when I talk about what I like in the Eurovision Song Contest it's all about my personal preference, but one point that's general enough that I feel I sort of don't have to claim or own it is that the music that gets to the Final tends to be very monotonous, in that there are a couple of categories of contestant that make up a huge majority of the participants each year.

Most years, ballads would be one such category, and that's why even if I was a fan of ballads, I wouldn't want all of them to go through.

You can say the same about the sort of non-specifically "ethnic" rhythms that appear in otherwise completely mainstream dance songs, or about songs with a very predictable modulation, or songs about world peace. I like some of that stuff, but I'm unhappy if there are 5 songs in the final of any one of those categories.

So, yeah. On second thought, it's nice that a non-English song broke through, and it's fine that it's a ballad and I didn't like it. Let's just not have 10 other ballads in the Final, because if there are too many, every single one of them will become more annoying for it.

Epic Sax Guy is back!