Eurovision 2023

Eurovision 2023

Trying to process my thoughts about last night in the form of a tumblr post...

Firstly, which songs are stuck in my head today? Well, Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä (Finland), natch, but also Promise by Voyager (Australia), and Who the hell is Edgar? by Teya and Selena (Austria)

Positives

Croatia's Let 3 made it to the left of the board! Yesss!

I'd normally be the first person to criticise the BBC, but I actually feel they did a good job considering. Admittedly my expectations going into this were kinda low, but they didn't make it too, erm, BBC 😅

Also, Hannah Waddingham. New favourite Eurovision presenter. Clearly feeling very protective of Julia Sanina. Presence, crowd control ("We don't boo in this house"). Queen.

Abolishing the jury vote from the semi-finals was a big success. Not all of my favourites got through (sorry Iceland 😢 ), but we had some amazing performers reach the finals that I'm not convinced would have in previous years.

Negatives

There were a number of artists whos performances in the final were not as good as in the semis... I'm thinking particularly Serbia and Australia, which were two of my favourites coming into the final.

Why did Germany and Spain score so badly? I keep telling myself that part of the answer to that is the old thing about the way the points work, if a song is everyone's 11th favourate out of the 26 entries, it'll get zero points, but still... I feel these were objectively two of the best performances of the night, both technically and in terms of everything else. Still very annoyed by this, they were two of my favourites. At least no-one got nil points this year.

On a related note, who was voting for Israel and Poland?! I know that musical taste is a personal thing (believe me, I know :D ) but Poland's song had no energy to it, and the highlight picked for Iceland was the dance break, with no singing...

?????

I'm not sure what else I can add about the winner/second place that hasn't already been said. We love out green cha cha cha-ing blorbo. Europe loves him. The legend of Käärijä will live on!

Related, I felt that Loreen's performance in the reprise was much better than during the main part of the competition... what happened?

Norway put in a very technical performance, and I really want to like it, but as I've been saying all week, there wasn't enough texture, not enough light and shade to the song as it was peformed. We were also missing the growl in Alessandra's vocals from the semi.

Where was the audience interaction? I get that the focus is always going to be getting votes from home, so a lot of the staging will focus on that, but it's still a live music event, and it was disappointing to only notice Belgium and Germany playing to the crowd.

I've yet to listen to the recorded versions of the songs yet (that's my lunch time listening this week), but from what I hear from @itseverydaybear some of the songs that didn't make a great impression in the semis sound much better. I suspect there will be some sleeper hits in there...

Anyhow, catch you later, just going to listen to The HARDKISS and Jann (Poland televoter's choice to represent them this year - once again for those at the back, time to abolish juries...!)

As a bonus, here's Lord of the Lost covering Queen of Kings (they have even more covers on their youtube chanel, it's worth a look!)

Portrait Of An Enemy.

Lucia Heffernan

“What is this sorcery?”

(via)

She's like the child of Cher and Predator

Scheduled this to reblog the day after the final so I understand all the references...

Eurovision Class of 2023 Dream Covers

So a recent fixture of the Eurovision promo circuit is the Home Concert. To pad out your set, the discerning Eurovision artist needs an appropriate Eurovision cover song to whip out between renditions of their big song for May. Here is what I want to hear:

La Zarra 🇫🇷 - we're talking poise and camp, we're talking disco, we're talking French. She's got to cover Parlez Vouz Français surely.

Lord of the Lost 🇩🇪 - It would be satisfying but a bit route one for them to do Wig Wam's In My Dreams. Alternately, if we're going for a German pick I've always thought that you could easily metal up Glorious. (Almost any schlager floorfiller has the appropriate rhythmic quality to metal up, please book my schlager metal band for your upcoming event)

Marco Mengoni 🇮🇹 - Just do L'Essenziale Marco.

Let 3 🇭🇷 - A full Fuck Putin medley is possible here, if we can have Dancing Lasha Tumbai and We Don't Wanna Put In as some sort of mash up with a tracktor I'm sure our Croatian art dads are the ones to do it.

Wild Youth 🇮🇪 - Anyway, here's Euphoria (I am calling them basic)

Sudden Lights 🇱🇻 - I thought about this one a lot and I think I would want them to tackle one of the other artistic high points of Latvian Eurovision - Love Injected. Imagine that with big post rock guitar solo. Nice.

The Busker 🇲🇹 - They're fun, light hearted and they're in on the joke. We'll have a Rockefeller Street from you boys.

Alessandra 🇳🇴 - This calls for a huge over the top Ukrainian banger with impressive vocal moments? I will take Gravity.

Mimicat 🇵🇹 - Let's have a Bem Bom, but reinterpreted as a world-weary piano song, with Mimicat giving us knowing looks down the camera.

Luke Black 🇷🇸 - Seeing as you've already put the leather kecks on Luke, why don't you give me an industrial take on Minn Hinsti Dans? Yeah, do a verse in Serbian because that would be cool.

TuralturanX 🇦🇿 - Intense acoustic version of Heroes.

Vesna 🇨🇿 - They want to talk to us about pan-Slavic sisterhood so it's My Slowianie but in full choral folk-orchestra style. If they don't want to do that I'll have Wild Dances.

Käärijä 🇫🇮 - Oh! Maybe actually Käärijä should get a go at Wild Dances seeing as Cha Cha Cha is about dancing and is wild?

Noa Kirel 🇮🇱 - Ahhhh, let's go for another Israeli girlie bop with a confusing extended metaphor, let's have Same Heart

Pasha Parfeni 🇲🇩 - Confuse absolutely everyone and do Tornero.

Mia Nicolai & Dion Cooper 🇳🇱 - They see themselves as being quite sophisticated so I think they should give us a Fiumi di Parole. I am not letting them off with A Monster Like Me, no. They could do Chanee and N'Evergreen if they really want to show off their chemistry.

Loreen 🇸🇪 - Do you know what, I would want to see what she could do with something like City Lights. Like Tattoo, it's a mood and it builds, and I'm simply not going to ask her to do Euphoria.

Remo Forrer 🇨🇭- Wars For Nothing so he has another opportunity to think about the semiotics of his big clunky song about not wanting to be a soldier.

Blanca Paloma 🇪🇸 - I bet Blanca could take the slightly lightweight Amanecer by Edurne and turn it into a mystical epic with layers of handclaps etc etc.

Mae Muller 🇬🇧 - Where Are You? please Mae, this should really work for you and it's also a UK host country entry so very thematic.

Tvorchi 🇺🇦 - Stripped down cool af electro take on Razom Nas Bahato anyone?

Brunette 🇦🇲 - Qele Qele, I don't care if you think this is a basic choice.

Gustaph 🇧🇪 - Belgian floorfillers is a surprisingly populous genre, so I'm going to discount the slightly obvious What's The Pressure in favour of a Gustaph take on Kate Ryan's endlessly robbed Je t'adore. I think it's more his era (affectionate, also I'm basically the same age)

Andrew Lambrou 🇨🇾 - If we want to remind everyone that he's Australian, he can do Tonight Again and if we don't he can do Alter Ego

Reiley 🇩🇰 - Delicate twinky take on Fly On The Wings of Love please

Alika 🇪🇪 - Big emotional ballad. Let's go Ukraine. Let's go for a bit of a deep cut. Let's go Sweet People.

Victor Vernicos 🇬🇷 - The only other artist who has gone Full Sheeran is Schulte, so Victor can give us You Let Me Walk Alone (see, i'm not just recommending songs that I like)

Diljá 🇮🇸 - So many iconic Icelandic solo female songs, but I think we'll take an Is It True? from Diljá

Theodor Andrei 🇷🇴 - I want nothing more than to see Theodor absolutely demolishing perspex piano classic Playing With Fire. He is singing both parts. He is stripped to the waist. He is very intense. He somehow keeps his glasses on.

Albina & Familja Kelmendi 🇦🇱 - I'll have Mall just because I really like Mall.

Voyager 🇦🇺 - I deliberately didn't give I Feed You My Love to Lord of the Lost so that I could give it to Voyager. One of my all time faves and I think they could do a 6 minute intensification of it.

Teya & Salena 🇦🇹 - I think these two would be tickled pink by the message behind Beautiful Song. The Mick Jagger bit would make Salena corpse and then Teya would be gone too. The first verse would now have to be about how they were born in distant 1998 or 2000 (the years that Dana International and Charlotte Nilsson won), I hope that's ok with you and it doesn't make you crumble into dust.

Iru Kechanovi 🇬🇪 - She's already done Rise Like A Phoenix and Euphoria on The Voice and she's also got her JESC winning song, so I think she should do a vocally impressive and expressive winning song. Let's have In Your Eyes.

Monika Linkyte 🇱🇹 - I was looking for a slinky Lithuanian language bop to reflect what Monika does outside of Eurovision, so it has to be Sentimentai. The Monikas have a mutual stanning thing going on, so it makes sense to me.

Blanka 🇵🇱 - The first one where I'm drawing a complete blank(a). Oh, I know, let's have another straightforward pop song over which the suspicion of corruption hangs. Sugar. I dare you.

Piqued Jacks 🇸🇲 - I was looking for a ho anthem and then I remembered I Want Your Love so they can make that sound like Maroon 5 too.

Joker Out 🇸🇮 - They've already done Disko from 2022, which is absolutely lovely. One of their great strengths is the ability to smoulder down the camera, so they can get another Eurovision Sexyman song, Zitti E Buoni. Oh no, Bojan already did that. Well shit, let's have an indie-pop swoonworthy No Prejudice then.

Also if any of these actually come true, I'll add in the links to the actual versions.