Eurovision Song Contest 2010
Easily the most entertaining Eurovision I’ve ever seen with a host of excellent singles. I seriously enjoyed Lena’s winning single. Sure, she’s very cute (and only 19), but it was also a very cute song. But hers wasn’t the only one. The caucasian countries’ entries I enjoyed, as I did Iceland’s and a few others. But what was it with Denmark scoring so well? It was one of the poorer performances.
Lena, after partaking in the national songcontest is rising quickly to stardom. She had three entries in the national final and set a record in her home country by debuting all three songs in the top five of the German singles chart. “Satellite”, the song with which she won Eurovision, debuted at number one in Germany, and has been certified triple gold since. Interestingly, she is the granddaughter of the West German ambassador to the Soviet Union in Moscow for most of the 1980s.
This month, Meyer-Landrut released her first album, My Cassette Player, which debuted at number one in the German albums chart.
Talk about an impressive start.
Also, how could both France and the UK send in such crappy submissions? How reasonable is it that they are automatically selected for next year’s event? And why did Ireland score so badly? Sure, this Niamh wasn’t the looker many other countries sent in, but it was a rather enjoyable performance.
Several Dutchies told me the entry from the Netherlands was horrible. Instead, it was hilarious. The writer, Pierre Kartner, seems to have deployed quite a bit of tongue in cheekness. It’s a pity they didn’t make it to the final. Impressively, Father Abraham, which is his stage name, has written no less than 1600 songs.
Similarly, my favorite entry of them all was Lithuania. We watched streaming video from the Eurovision website and it’s quite amazing that, here in Dar, using publicly accessible (but not free) wifi hotspots, the connection was good enough for long enough for us to get our fix. Lithuania didn’t make it to the finals, but we saw half the second semi final, in which Lithuania was the first to go on stage. Indeed, Lithuania also didn’t make it to the finals.
But the main reason why this was the best Eurovision ever was the way in which the producers integrated events and families from around Europe. Many european cities saw outdoor showings of the event to which, during the show, occasionally the focus switched. But the best were families from all over Europe who were plugged in through webcam.
Then, during the break between performances and the end of the vote, a choreographed song saw everyone, a bunch of people at the venue, those watching at these outdoor events and the families with their webcams, break out in synchronized dancing. Hilarious and fantastic!