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Eurovision
16 May 2023 08:59 pmSo I stayed up far too late on Saturday so I could watch Eurovision (and see Finland get absolutely robbed and Germany get an entirely undeserved last place (bookies had them at 18/26, apparently)). If you don't know, the Eurovision Song Contest is a Europe-wide (plus Australia) contest where each participating country has a song contest, and the winner goes to the international one, and it's a whole big Thing. It's where ABBA got their big start, winning with "Waterloo" in 1974.
I'm not a Eurovision superfan (but I got my mobile provider to unblock short code SMS so I could vote this year), and if you want the super details, they are on Wikipedia (including detailed vote breakdowns by year, where available).
In 2009, the Eurovision people introduced juries of music professionals (though mostly people nobody has heard of, so it's all inside baseball and some shit) to maintain the sanctity and seriousness of Eurovision, because it was getting too weird, or something. But the weird shit is what the viewing public wants (I mean, fucking Dschingis Khan came in 4th place in 1979), so the juries have been very unpopular.
This year, they were extremely unpopular, because Sweden won, with a boring generic pop song, after getting the full 12 points from 15 of 37 juries, for 340 jury points, and then getting 243 audience points, for 583 total points. The clear studio audience favorite (and internet favorite) was Finland, who came in second total (526 points) -- but got 376 audience points (yes, they got more audience votes than Sweden's jury votes.)
And Germany came in dead fucking last again, even though they had a good song with good lyrics and a fun glam rock performance. One theory floated on tumblr was that people who would have voted for Germany voted for Finland instead, because they knew Sweden would be overrepresented by the jury vote, and, you know, fair game.
You can find all the videos (official videos and the recordings of the live performances) on YouTube, but I'll link my favorites below the cut. (I'll use the official videos because they have subtitles/captioning, and they're in approximate order of preference.) Also I'm putting Germany's cover of Finland's song back here, because it was amazing.
( Read more... )
I'm not a Eurovision superfan (but I got my mobile provider to unblock short code SMS so I could vote this year), and if you want the super details, they are on Wikipedia (including detailed vote breakdowns by year, where available).
In 2009, the Eurovision people introduced juries of music professionals (though mostly people nobody has heard of, so it's all inside baseball and some shit) to maintain the sanctity and seriousness of Eurovision, because it was getting too weird, or something. But the weird shit is what the viewing public wants (I mean, fucking Dschingis Khan came in 4th place in 1979), so the juries have been very unpopular.
This year, they were extremely unpopular, because Sweden won, with a boring generic pop song, after getting the full 12 points from 15 of 37 juries, for 340 jury points, and then getting 243 audience points, for 583 total points. The clear studio audience favorite (and internet favorite) was Finland, who came in second total (526 points) -- but got 376 audience points (yes, they got more audience votes than Sweden's jury votes.)
And Germany came in dead fucking last again, even though they had a good song with good lyrics and a fun glam rock performance. One theory floated on tumblr was that people who would have voted for Germany voted for Finland instead, because they knew Sweden would be overrepresented by the jury vote, and, you know, fair game.
You can find all the videos (official videos and the recordings of the live performances) on YouTube, but I'll link my favorites below the cut. (I'll use the official videos because they have subtitles/captioning, and they're in approximate order of preference.) Also I'm putting Germany's cover of Finland's song back here, because it was amazing.
( Read more... )
