An Hour of My Life I'll Never Get Back

I stumbled across the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest tonight on TV, and wound up watching it in awe for nearly an hour. Are you kidding me? Essentially, the contest pits 24 countries (at least for the finals, I can't imagine how many preliminary rounds exist) against each other to determine who has the best, uh, song. The countries are tied by their national broadcasters' membership in the European Broadcasting Union, but otherwise have little in common (the UK performance was followed by that of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, for example).

Partly due to the format, each performance goes one step further in reinforcing all of your bad stereotypes about European pop music. The singers have 3 minutes to deliver a memorable, moving performance, and viewers across the world have only 10 minutes at the end to cast votes for their favorites. Because of this, the songs are delivered with more drama and cheese than you could ever imagine. Even for Europe. A typical performance includes no less than 15 people dancing frenetically on stage, 3 costume changes (in 3 minutes, people), 2 back-up choirs for the climactic key change toward the end, and at least 1 person emerging from the stage during the bridge (Russia had a ballerina rise out of a grand piano and spew rose petals, and Moldova had a scantily clad woman breaking through the stage backdrop). And you think I'm kidding. The only outlier appears to be Finland, which sent a band to the finals dressed as a cross between klingons and extras from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. They sang a song called "Hard Rock Hallelujah". Awesome.

In addition to the painful songs, each country airs a 1-2 minute promotional clip to lure tourists to their homeland prior to performing. The funny thing is, each of these clips is exactly the same. Evidently tourists are only interested in the following: sweeping aerial views of historic cities, sun-drenched beaches, drinking fine wine at a luxurious restaurants, and watching children play innocently in the street. I didn't even know some of these countries had beaches. And you know that kids should not be playing in the street in many of these locales. Then again, I couldn't point out Moldova on a map if my life depended on it. But that song was tiiiiiiight!

All of this comedy reminded me of when a friend of mine in college returned from studying abroad in Denmark. She came back with a penchant for blaring this one Danish song - "Fly on the Wings of Love" (or "Smuk som et Stjerneskud" for you Danes). I remember her mentioning that the song won some type of competition in Denmark. After some strategic googling, I discovered that the song actually won the 2000 Eurovision contest. And we both know I found that isht on YouTube for you. The two old guys are the Olsen Brothers (Jorgen and Niels). I particularly like the key change at the end. Listen to that crowd go wild.

Update: Evidently the klingons wound up winning the whole thing last night. The band is actually called Lordi, and you can check out their winning performance here. Love it.

Another Update: The Russians are pissed.