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When asked, I always say I’m a fan of Eurovision – but what I really mean is I’m a fan of everything that goes with Eurovision.  Picking a team, dressing up, getting drunk, tweeting along with the internet – it’s like being in on a big private joke!

https://twitter.com/SincerelyTumblr/status/602236489028669441

I’m not particularly engaged/interested in the music – some songs are great, most are forgettable, and some are laughably, cringe-inducingly bad.  But therein lies the fun!  So this year my friends and I had a live-tweet Eurovision party, complete with snacks from participating countries (spain – salsa; france – bread and cheese; russia – vodka).  As one tweeter put it, Eurovision is one of like the top five things Twitter was invented for, and this year Twitter did not fail to disappoint.

After the excellent news of Ireland passing the same-sex marriage law earlier in the day (what a great day for gays!), Kirsty was certain that they had the competition in the bag.  Except… they didn’t quality this year. 🙁

As the show began and we inspected our scorecards, a heated discussion took place as to whether it’s ok for non-European countries to be in Eurovision:

But of course there were other controversial interlopers this year.

A few songs in, we were greeted with the UK’s tragic entry (Electro Velvet – Still in Love with You).  This drew criticism from the group, as we noticed that the lyrics were a bit creepy and possessive.

https://twitter.com/catherineelms/status/602197836697055233

https://twitter.com/GoggleboxQuotes/status/602206570013970433

Bad job, UK.  It was no 2007 Ukraine.

Though personally, I don’t think anyone will ever beat Finland in 2006:

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There was a surprise entry from Lithuania with 2 same-sex kisses live on stage!  I can’t remember anything about the song, but we all cheered at the kissing.

Next, a creepy entry from Norway:

Then, our favourite of the night, Serbia.

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Oh Serbia.  We were so certain that you were going to win.

The first half ended with what turned out to be the winning song, Heroes by Måns Zelmerlöw (Sweden).  It was a good song with the best staging of the night, though a lot of people were tweeting about how homophobic Måns was following his comments about gay sex being unnatural.

https://twitter.com/catherineelms/status/602202755999084544

I later discovered that he apologised extensively for his comments, and in a winners press conference he addressed the controversy, and thanked his gay fans for looking past his comments.

Next: Australia.  She doesn’t even go here.

https://twitter.com/sheikyerbouti_/status/602204250882605056

To be fair, it was a good song – although much more serious than we were expecting, like they were really trying to win.  Who does that?

It all went a bit downhill after that, with the second half dominated by ballads and boring songs.

Poland had a disabled singer which is really badass in terms of representation, but the song was dull, and sadly they did really badly in the votes.

I loved Latvia’s entry (Aminata – Love Injected).  It was one of the only entries this year that I’ve listened to since the show.  Wailing lady singer with a prominent piano accompaniment – what more could I want?

And with that it was all over!  We agreed that it was a decent year, but not as strong as previous years.

Now for the results.

It immediately became apparent that the UK’s score wasn’t going to hit double figures.

And we were devastated that our favourites (Serbia, Latvia, Belgium) were snubbed, while a homophobia country like Russia was close to winning.

https://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/602234726687059968

In the end, we were ok with Sweden winning – we had to concede that it was pretty good.

 


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