Eurovision 2021

  There's two kinds of crazy in the world. There's the crazy that you let babysit your kids knowing that they will howl with laughter and have a blast. And then there's the kind of crazy where you feel uncomfortable giving them access to cutlery. The Roop are the latter. "On Fire" was one of the highlights of the 2020 No Eurovision Song Contest. The band is made up of long boy, long girl, man bun, Dave and the accountant. The song is super catchy with a drop that will have you "do do do"ing to supplement the "la la la"ing already covered in the lyrics. The video is pretty much what you get if you let your kids loose in the mirror section of B&Q and the dance moves are taken straight from Arnold "Psycho" Robinson's book "How to Exorcise the Spirit of a Chicken". Despite their inability to use chairs, The Roop would have almost certainly brought a strong, somewhat unhinged but compelling performance to the competition....

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OK, I thought I'd been clear when we covered Israel but clearly Latvia did not get the "No Leotards" memo. We'll forgive Samanta here though because of the inclusion of the visors. The visors take me back to school trips to Thorpe Park where we spent all our pocket money on visors and hackysacks. Good times! In a world where visors are part of our protection against this seemingly endless pandemic, it is comforting to be taken back to a time of banana sandwiches, grazed knees, bouncy balls and hypothesising about who will vomit on the rollercoaster. Power to the visors! To supplement the visors, the Head of Props has also thrown in potatoes, brocolli, irons, window cleaner, weights and toy pushchairs. A job well done, Mr prop man! And to top it off we have Samanta devouring a chocolate cake. Everything is better with chocolate cake. While potatoes and brocolli are all good, what separates Eurovision from Tescos is the music and sure enough Latvia have done a song. And...

All Israeli Eurovision acts have to be measured against the world's most famous chicken,  Netta . And they will all fall short, but how does Eden do? She may not speak Chicken but Eden sings in 5 different languages in "Feker Libi", including one imaginary language made up just for this song. Imaginary languages deserves oodles of kudos for oddballicity. Some lyrical credits removed though for writing the song about your boyfriend and having the bulk of the lyrics meaning "my love, I love you".  It's impossible to know if it was leaked to Eden but yellow is my favourite colour and so there's a lot of love for the outfits and staging. There's a good amount of energy in the performance which is good to see (cf.  Bulgaria 's tutorial for "Sitting on a bench doing nothing"). It probably would've been quite enjoyable on the night but, if I'd felt a slight urge for a wee, I probably wouldn't have stayed on the couch holding it in....

Ah, it's Ireland, our friends from just across the sea (or from just the other side of the border if you're in Northern Ireland). Ireland are the most successful nation in Eurovision history which is surprising to someone like me who had to witness Dustin the Turkey in 2008. Last year, Lesley Roy would have brought us "Story of my Life". This is a celebration of diversity and of overcoming adversity and being yourself and loving life. It's all good and positive stuff and the video serves as a kind of LGBT Gap advert.  There's some "na na na"s and "hey hey"s thrown in for good measure but it could have done with some "to be sure to be sure"s as well just so we remember it isn't actually Kelly Clarkson/Pink/Katy Perry etc. It's the kind of song that would finally get uncle Trevor to unleashes his inner disco animal on the dancefloor at your cousin's wedding. This song could have helped Ireland out of the semis but I don...

"Think About Things" may well be the best song ever to come from the Eurovision stable. And just before all you grannies start bleating on about "Waterloo", let me explain something for you...  ABBA are really annoying. Really, really, very annoying. Dadi and his band Gagnamagnid (I was planning to make a joke about what "Gagnamagnid" means but it genuinely means "Data Plan" which is already funnier than anything I could come up with) produced 3 minutes of perfect fun. Firstly, you can't hear the song without it inducing at least a modicum of head-bopping. Secondly, it has a superbly geeky dance routine which is perfect for those of us who struggled with the complexities of the Macarena. Thirdly, it has constant comic touches- the instruments, the jumpers, the hair blowing, the disapproving family, confetti... Iceland was robbed by last year's cancellation. This song would surely have even beaten 2006's  bald, dancing, Lithuanian man...

In 2020 Greece brought us Stefania and "Supergirl". The song itself ticks some catchy pop tune boxes with a slight "mmm nice" factor for a little Arabian influence. But the narrative of the video is what grabs you- a teenage girl with some telekinetic powers working out high school and relationships. While proficient, she is clearly still getting accustomed to her powers (otherwise she would surely be stopping planes crashing rather than tying boys' shoes together and would have a much cooler superhero suit).  As she strives to avoid her powers being found out, it's crunch time. A cat is stuck in a tree. As always with such moments of feline peril, a large group of teenagers gather and start filming. Everyone is acutely aware that the safety of the cat relies solely on finding someone with an ability to levitate (Greece famously lacks ladders and, while someone could clearly give someone else a leg up to get the cat, this would require putting down their pho...

For Christmas a few years ago, my wife bought me a bottle of "Le Male" perfume by Jean-Paul Gaultier. As you can imagine, it all kicked off pretty quickly from there... "What's this?" "It's just some perfume." "French perfume?" "Well....yes...I guess it's French..." "My English scent not good enough for you then?" *The kids glance at each other before quietly sneaking upstairs with their Lego "What's wrong with smelling like a Frenchman?" "You mean a French 'homme'?" "What?!" "Tell you what....let's see what's in these other ones...oh look Italian shirts......flamenco dance shoes.....ooh, a German board game!! You want me to play like a Ger-mon?" "A German?" "GER-MON!" "...." Tornike understands and he wrote an excellent song about it last year. A bit rocky and screamy without being all " Hard Rock Hallelujah ". Some...

I think we may need to start a support group for Eurovision singers whose relationships have broken down and now can't stop themselves writing horrible pop songs about it. Sat next to Vincent Bueno at "Dumped Anonymous" we find Uku Suviste. Let's look at where it all went wrong.... Firstly we have "What Love Is". This is very much the Eurovision equivalent of ordering a salad from Deliveroo. If I'm paying someone on a scooter to risk life and limb ignoring all relevant traffic laws to get me my dinner, then I will be seriously miffed if I find any beetroot or quinoa in it. If your thermal cube of culinary wonders does not contain a giant pizza with 17 differents meats on it or a stack of profiteroles or an entire honey glazed ham then don't bother opening it, just dig a hole, set it on fire and then bury it along with this song. Estonia, we ordered pyrotechnics, fire, tigers, crazy hats, drones, confetti, monkeys, knife-throwing, CGI dinosaurs and Fr...

In 2018 I fulfilled one of my life goals when I was accepted as a contestant on Countdown. Despite believing myself to be a highly talented Countdowner, I ended up locking alphanumeric horns with a man worthy of any gameshow's teapot. Every round he had the edge. If I got a six letter word, he got a seven. I got an eight, he got "INTESTINE". Behind the polite and serene facade, I was raging. It was clear that I would lose and with two rounds to go I was already too far behind. But the final numbers round gave a target of 471. He was one away but I had it! With great glee I shared my solution before Rachel Riley uttered the 5 words that will haunt me for the rest of my life. "You've used the 8 twice." My opponent let out the tiniest snigger and I exploded. I snapped my pencil, threw Susie's dictionary at him and yelled "You think you're better than me?! Who the heck do you think you are?" "I'm Benny Cristo and yes, yes I am better t...

Some people have had really hard jobs to do over the last 12 months. Health care workers and all NHS staff providing incredible care while stretched to the limit. Teachers learning new skills in online educating while often also providing in school classes to key worker children. Bus drivers putting themselves at increased risk to ensure people can travel when needed.  Obviously not everyone has had a hard job to do this year but, by some distance, the easiest job this year surely fell to the Bulgarian Eurovision committee. All they had to do was find a song that was in some way better than the utter yawnfest that was "Tears Getting Sober". What does it even mean for tears to get sober? I'm not looking up the lyrics to find out just in case they bore me into a coma. For those wise enough not to play the video below, Victoria sits on a bench and sings and there is occassional lightning. Here is some of the cutting criticism levelled at "Tears Getting Sober" by ou...

In the early 2000s a Belgian friend introduced me to Hooverphonic via the brilliant  "Out of Sight" . I became such a huge fan that I continued to listen to that song a number of times each year and every time I thought "I like this song, I'm glad Damian put it on his mix CD."  And then in 2020, lo and behold, that band with the song I liked had only gone and done another song and were bringing it to Eurovision! "Release Me" has made me rethink my Eurovision scoring system. While we will never know what they would have done with the live performance, it seemed likely that "Release Me" would score badly in the categories of "Computer Graphics", "Nonsense" and "Danger". It was one of my favourite songs from Eurovision 2020 and not just because I could act all pretentious and hipster-like giving it the whole "Yeah, I knew them before they were in Eurovision and they were easily like 12 times better than they ar...

 I have a soft spot for Efendi's 2020 tribute to late 90s RnB girl group "Cleopatra" (I believe the lyric "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo", seemingly performed here by Hades himself, is a direct translation of "Comin' atcha!"). As part of a virtual Eurovision event last year, my wife was assigned Azerbaijan. I was living away from my family (due to covid) but remember fondly the videos of my wife and daughter singing "Cleopatra" and also rubbishing the chances of my Georgian song. (In our virtual Eurovision, Azerbaijan came 4th so may be one to watch out for this year?) This year efendi returns with "Mata Hari". Mata Hari, as we all know without needing to resort to Wikipedia, was the stage name of Margaretha MacLeod (nee Zelle; 7 August 1876 - 15 October 1917), a Dutch exotic dancer who was executed by a French firing squad after admitting to spying for the Germans in World War 1. Efendi, if she is to be believed, is just like Cleopatra a...

Vincent Bueno is the 2020 metaphor that neither you nor I nor Eurovision need right now. I think it's safe to say that, since last year, Vincent's partner has either left him or murdered him. The optimism of 2020's "Alive" ("You make me feel like, yeah, oh-oh-oh....you make me feel alive") has been flipped on it's head with 2021's "Amen" ("No, I never thought you'd bury me and you"). With a global pandemic still wreaking havoc, Vincent has decided what we all need is a good dose of dreary, melodramatic heartbreak. The thing is I like him. "Alive" was fun. A solid bass line, a bit of funk- it's all good. Not good enough for him to strut round his warehouse like a wannabe Bruno Mars but deserving of a few points here and there. And "Amen" is not the worst thing we'll hear at Eurovision. Possibly the best thing it has going for it is that it's not one of the many "chin up, it's a bit r...

OK let's start with the koala in the room. Australia is not in Europe. Australia isn't just not in Europe, it is so many timezones away that the Saturday night Eurovision final is shown live on TV in Australia on a Wed morning sometime in August. Technically Israel, Cyprus, Armenia and Morocco are also not geographically in Europe but have all competed in Eurovision so where do we draw the line? Do we welcome our antipodean musician friends as we did with Kylie and Jason (and Holly ?) or shun them like we did with every other ex Neighbours star who thought they had a God given right to pop stardom just because they once petted Bouncer. The answer is that Eurovision is more than a European song contest. Such an event would be fun but would doubtless echo X-factor, The Voice, Bhutan's Got Talent and others in a mindnumbing search for who is the winner of singing. Eurovision is an experiment and exploartion of the diversity of human ridiculosity. Yes, it has its ballads by the...

 In 2013 Emmelie de Forest of Denmark won Eurovision with the song " Only Teardrops ". In 2020 it was only teardrops again as the song contest joined  Shetland Boat Week ,  The London Petanque Championships  and at least a dozen other events across the globe cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic . Celebrating Denmark's 2013 victory, the continent reconvened in Copenhagen in 2014 with Austria's Conchita Wurst crowned champion performing " Rise like a Phoenix ". As 2013's Danish teardrops gave rise to 2014's Austrian phoenix, so 2020's teardrops will see the Eurovision phoenix rise from the SARS-CoV-2 ashes! And there is much to look forward to this year! If  Daði Freyr put  Iceland on the Eurovision map then Will Ferrell coloured in all the glaciers and drew round the border with a Sharpie. But can  Daði bring it home this year?   With 2020 scheduled acts allo wed to perform again in 2021, I will be keeping an eye on Efendi (Azerbaijan), H...