["Satellite" by Lena, obviously. Alas, it doesn't seem to be available on iTunes in the US as it is here in Germany, but you can see a replay on Eurovision's site]
A year or so ago, I heard through a US podcast (Rachel Maddow Show) about some crazy European singing contest. I had not head about it over here, so I figured it was some one-off thing. Au contraire. The Eurovision Song Contest is a big deal and has been going on for over 50 years! It has featured (spawned?) such acts as ABBA, Celine Dion (one must assume for France?) and Julio Iglesias. And this year I was invited to a viewing party at my neighbor's place last night. Awesome.
This year's contest was held in Oslo. It apparently started with 39 countries, but there were only 25 artists/acts remaining in the finals that were shown last night. One of which was, naturally, Germany. "Our" contestant from Germany is a girl named Lena. She just turned 19 and is in the midst of completing her finals in high school. Apparently she had limited experience with music and no formal vocal lessons, though she had taken dance lessons. And even before the finals, her song was one of the top downloads in Germany. I had heard it several times on the radio, but didn't realize the history behind it all.
The way the show progresses is each of the final acts performs in a pre-determined order and with no commercial breaks. There was slight variation last night because while Spain was performing, a spectator apparently got up on stage during their song, so they got to do a do-over at the end (without the spectator). Anyway, as each act performs, their number is flashed on the screen and viewers can then send text messages to vote for their favorite candidate. At the same time, there are professional judges in each o the 39 participating countries who also vote.
After all acts are done, there is a live report-in from each of the 39 countries in which they give 12, 10 and 8 points for, respectively, their first, second and third place picks. This is apparently a combination of both the popular vote and the votes of the professional judges. The countries cannot, however, give any points to their own country's act, if applicable. It was interesting to see some of te political dimension, though, with neighboring countries tending to vote for each other, the countries from the former Soviet Union tending to stick together, et cetera.
Some of the acts were pretty good, but some were seriously awful. It was fun watching them with a group of about 15 Germans to see how/whether my perceptions aligned with theirs. (For example, we all agreed that the dresses of the act from Iceland were wretched and, in particular, the red hue clashed quite horridly with the hair color of their singer.) As the countries started reporting in, I got this big sense of national pride each time a country assigned points to Germany. And what was particularly charming was someone at the party had brought a kind of grease pencil with the three colors of the German flag combined and she applied the German flag my face just like everyone else. I was honored.
In the end, Germany won!! We had 246 points, followed by Turkey with 170 and Romania with 162. I thought Spain might get higher ratings since they played twice, but they came in 15th with 68 points. See www.eurovision.tv for full results and more coverage. I thought Lena did a really great job of representing Germany and was very humble and normal in her comments both before and after winning. Though I admit I was a bit horrified that she let the German flag touch the ground, but apparently there are different flag-handling rules here than in the U.S.!
Great and fun experience. And a great warm-up to World Cup Soccer!!
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