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I know, The European Song Festival is one of the biggest jokes in the history of music. I'd personally rather be in a hardcore streetfight with Cactus Jack but since he wasn't available that evening, I decided to give it a shot. Besides, one of my friends is gay and he told me it's a bit of a gay tradition to watch that thing. So I made him sit through it with me and my wife. And boy, we had a blast. We laughed our asses off.
Before going a bit deeper in this cesspool of musical excrement, I have to mention that I started watching when the show was already halfway through. Journalistic integrity is a beautiful thing but I have my limits. I didn't see the song from Sweden live, but I saw a bit of it before the votings and well, I don't feel like I really missed anything. Actually, I could have missed the entire thing and instead tried to see the bats flying outside.
I didn't get the little clips between the performances, at all. They all show a box being delivered to the artist. In the box was something that made them smile and then they would go on some fun activity. Some very creative person must have been behind all this, that's for sure.
Anyway, welcome to Europe's biggest Barbie convention.
95% of The Eurovision Song Festival is made out of reusable plastics. The rest is voices, lightshows and a laptop to play the next song. All the women look like the same sex shop mannequin, except for a different wig or tattoo. Most of them wearing the same dress too, making sure their biggest talent is well visible.
I saw a lot of Mariahs, Britneys and Celines. At one point I found myself wondering if the children who made these women are being well fed in the sweatshop. Greece, Germany, Poland and Russia sent an army of clones to Vienna. This was one long mix of bad 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' rip-offs.
On a positive note. Latvia and Belgium came up with pretty good songs. Very modern electronic music with some great vocals. Latvia felt a bit like an Indian version of Björk and I really liked that song. Our own Belgian contestant did pretty well but the 'Ratata' thing is quite typical for our K3-admiring country. If you don't know K3, check 'm out on YouTube if you dare. It's sad, it's very very sad.
Before going a bit deeper in this cesspool of musical excrement, I have to mention that I started watching when the show was already halfway through. Journalistic integrity is a beautiful thing but I have my limits. I didn't see the song from Sweden live, but I saw a bit of it before the votings and well, I don't feel like I really missed anything. Actually, I could have missed the entire thing and instead tried to see the bats flying outside.
I didn't get the little clips between the performances, at all. They all show a box being delivered to the artist. In the box was something that made them smile and then they would go on some fun activity. Some very creative person must have been behind all this, that's for sure.
Anyway, welcome to Europe's biggest Barbie convention.
95% of The Eurovision Song Festival is made out of reusable plastics. The rest is voices, lightshows and a laptop to play the next song. All the women look like the same sex shop mannequin, except for a different wig or tattoo. Most of them wearing the same dress too, making sure their biggest talent is well visible.
I saw a lot of Mariahs, Britneys and Celines. At one point I found myself wondering if the children who made these women are being well fed in the sweatshop. Greece, Germany, Poland and Russia sent an army of clones to Vienna. This was one long mix of bad 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' rip-offs.
On a positive note. Latvia and Belgium came up with pretty good songs. Very modern electronic music with some great vocals. Latvia felt a bit like an Indian version of Björk and I really liked that song. Our own Belgian contestant did pretty well but the 'Ratata' thing is quite typical for our K3-admiring country. If you don't know K3, check 'm out on YouTube if you dare. It's sad, it's very very sad.
Speaking about sad. Italy, I'm really sorry but you really suck in mainstream music. Forget about the whole castrato-opera thing please. Your doom metal is a lot better. Also sad, they didn't stop Azarbeidzjan's performance. The dancers were suffering severe spasms and the show just continued. Is this what our society has come to?
They should actually call this 'Euro Visual Artists Who Support Crappy Music Content'. The projections were awesome, especially in the German performance. It reminded me of Lustmord. The music was the same level of rancidity as most of the other songs. Albania was the only country whose visual artist still worked with Windows 95.
They really needed this visual aspect too because there was absolutely nothing to see on stage, except for the strange walk of the Belgians and the burning piano of the asshole who set a piano on fire. The rest were statues, well, most of them were. They just got out of their box I think, or were the batteries flat?
The sheer overload of 'boehoehoe' emotion in this contest is sickening. In that department Russia won, sending a crybaby with puppy-eyes who scared the shit out of me. Georgia sent something even scarier. It looked like Diamanda Galas and Edward Scissorhands' meth-baby. Gothpop, it doesn't have to get any stranger than this.
Austria wins the price for 'biggest cunt' of the year, just for setting a piano on fire. The song was horrible too but, again, most of them were. Romania tried with a song 'with a message' but also failed miserably in the songwriting abilities.
Red Riding Hood got stuck to something and suddenly turned into a stripper, dancing with a half naked gay guy. That's what I remember of Spain's entrance. There were a lot of gay guys there by the way, which is perfectly normal in that environment. I asked my gay friend why and he said many gays like the glitter and glamour and the showbizz atmosphere. As far as I'm concerned, they can have it.
The votings were stupid. You could vote on an app or computer or something for about seven years. At least, it felt like seven years when I had to watch some percussionists and trumpettists completely destroying everything that was ever credible about percussion as a musical genre. Even when the votes were in it was a mess. They lost the live stream with several countries. It's 2015 dammit, get your shit together and hire decent technical people. This should simply not happen. Hey, here's an idea, download Skype!
Then, suddenly, they announced that Sweden had won before going back to some ugly representative who read the eight, ten and twelve points. Yes, all the representatives of all the countries giving those points were ugly and the final few were completely useless because Sweden had already won. They were also Barbie-lookalikes but some of them looked like they melted somewhere along the way. Except for Australia. They had the coolest representative ever, and she didn't give a flying fuck about the whole thing.
In a strange way I enjoyed watching this pile of recycled waste. If anything, it reminds me how much I respect and admire the scenes of 'real' music, where artists drive thousands of kilometers for a 45 minute gig, some food and maybe some merchandise-money, where producers spend countless hours behind complicated machinery to make something they can relate to and where volunteers work very hard to make every show special. Thàt is music, these were lullabies for the damned...
They should actually call this 'Euro Visual Artists Who Support Crappy Music Content'. The projections were awesome, especially in the German performance. It reminded me of Lustmord. The music was the same level of rancidity as most of the other songs. Albania was the only country whose visual artist still worked with Windows 95.
They really needed this visual aspect too because there was absolutely nothing to see on stage, except for the strange walk of the Belgians and the burning piano of the asshole who set a piano on fire. The rest were statues, well, most of them were. They just got out of their box I think, or were the batteries flat?
The sheer overload of 'boehoehoe' emotion in this contest is sickening. In that department Russia won, sending a crybaby with puppy-eyes who scared the shit out of me. Georgia sent something even scarier. It looked like Diamanda Galas and Edward Scissorhands' meth-baby. Gothpop, it doesn't have to get any stranger than this.
Austria wins the price for 'biggest cunt' of the year, just for setting a piano on fire. The song was horrible too but, again, most of them were. Romania tried with a song 'with a message' but also failed miserably in the songwriting abilities.
Red Riding Hood got stuck to something and suddenly turned into a stripper, dancing with a half naked gay guy. That's what I remember of Spain's entrance. There were a lot of gay guys there by the way, which is perfectly normal in that environment. I asked my gay friend why and he said many gays like the glitter and glamour and the showbizz atmosphere. As far as I'm concerned, they can have it.
The votings were stupid. You could vote on an app or computer or something for about seven years. At least, it felt like seven years when I had to watch some percussionists and trumpettists completely destroying everything that was ever credible about percussion as a musical genre. Even when the votes were in it was a mess. They lost the live stream with several countries. It's 2015 dammit, get your shit together and hire decent technical people. This should simply not happen. Hey, here's an idea, download Skype!
Then, suddenly, they announced that Sweden had won before going back to some ugly representative who read the eight, ten and twelve points. Yes, all the representatives of all the countries giving those points were ugly and the final few were completely useless because Sweden had already won. They were also Barbie-lookalikes but some of them looked like they melted somewhere along the way. Except for Australia. They had the coolest representative ever, and she didn't give a flying fuck about the whole thing.
In a strange way I enjoyed watching this pile of recycled waste. If anything, it reminds me how much I respect and admire the scenes of 'real' music, where artists drive thousands of kilometers for a 45 minute gig, some food and maybe some merchandise-money, where producers spend countless hours behind complicated machinery to make something they can relate to and where volunteers work very hard to make every show special. Thàt is music, these were lullabies for the damned...
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