One act bears mentioning - France. Admittedly, the torrent of ballads in the first half of the contest didn't help, but when you manage 8th place, as number 3 of 25 performers (not a good position), and from a country with no expats and no "friends" in Europe, something has gone right. What an incredible performance.
I've noticed plenty of English folk thinking that the political voting was far less prevailent this year. Despite England and France's success, I can't help but notice Spain and Germany being rock bottom as always.
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Interesting thing to add. According to the points, it received the highest in eurovision history and even #2 was no where near that level.
"Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with Gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision." ~Norman Mailer
Norway got the most points of any contest by far, but there were also many more participants. If you compare by percent, you see Norway is edged out by UK 1976, and I'm pretty sure Germany 1982, UK 1996, and Ireland 1994 also have marginally higher percents. Still a great accomplishment, though.
It's worth mentioning that not only did Rybak sing and play violin, he wrote his own music. And it's a terrific piece. I don't know how common that is - I seem to remember Lordi and Ruslana wrote their own material too, but their songs weren't as good as Fairytale.
My favorite act was France's S'il fallait le faire. It crept under my skin. I think that and Fairytale were better than pretty much everything else this decade.
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Less Political Voting, Less Style, But Plenty of Snark- the 2009 Contest
I admit that after the shambles that was 2008 and the decision of Sir Terry not to continue commentating, I was planning not to watch what I though would be another whipping for the UK. I did, watch this, however, off-live, with very liberal use of the fast-forward button.
A word about the presentation to begin with. I ignored the presenters, who were largely generic. The vignettes with the hats of architecture were overly fast, hard to follow and not much use in actually identifying the countries pre-on-screen-announcement.
The songs in the final themselves were very samey. I've watched five Eurovisions now and little here stood out as different. It was all big ballads. Britain's entry was well done, but largely forgettable. Lord Webber has earned the right to do this again next year, that's for sure.
Norway had a singing violinist in a night of singers and that proved sufficient to walk away with the contest. He was the best of a fairly uninspiring field.
Other countries of note:
The voting was considerably less political than previously. That's not to say that it didn't occur- the Nordic countries handed their points to Norway. Russia's 10th place would not have occurred under the old system. I was pleasantly surprised at where the UK was getting points from- although I suspect that was more due to the judges liking us than anything in the phone vote.
I'll conclude with a discussion of Graham Norton. I don't consider myself a Norton fan- he does Camp Gay too much for my tastes. That said, the guy provided a good amount of snark. Could have provided some more though.
All in all, a rather mediocre contest. Nothing really stood out (except for Norway) and it felt too generic. That said, roll on 2010.