Skip to main content

BlogIlkar Guest Review vol. 4.1

With great pleasure I introduce you a new reviewer John Egan! He has written about the Eurovision for esctoday.com and The Advocate. He lives in Vancouver Canada, and feels a special responsibility to recruit as many Eurovision kweens™ as possible via his legendary annual ESC Final pot luck brunch extravaganza.  

 ESC 2010 Review part 1 – the “Big 5”
While the obvious thing to do would be to start with semi-final one and go in chronological order…that’s rather boring (and overdone). So let’s start with the five songs already qualified for the final: four which have ostensibly bought-and-paid for their spots (the “Big Four”: France, Germany, Spain and the UK), and last year’s winner, Norway.

Spain – Algo pequenito – Daniel Diges
Daniel’s background is musical theatre to a certain extent; it shows in his consistent, solid performances of this retro-schlager song. Don’t like it: too circus music-like, too many “wo wo wo”s, nothing remarkable or memorable. There’s also nothing wrong with it. TVE: whatever you do, please don’t do the “disappearing act” thing like last year: who came up with the utterly stoopid idea of having the singer go off-camera for 10 seconds? Rating 3/5: not bad, not great.

Germany – Satellite – Lena Meyer-Landrut
This is the fourth time Stefan Raab’s driven the German selection—and once again something memorable’s come out of it. The man who brought Guildo hat euch liebt, Wadde hadde dudde da, and Can’t Wait Until Tonight probably tortured his country with a never-ending selection process. But on the big night Germany had two good singers and nothing but good songs. And they picked the right combination: this is instantly memorable, has a great, positive vibe, and Lena’s “unique” accent (I think it’s a put-on of Björk-meets-Lily Allen) all should make it stand out in voters’ minds. Hmm…never been to Berlin myself… Rating: 5/5: top 10 for sure; top 5 likely; possible winner.

France – Allez! Olla! Olé! – Jessy Matador
When I found out France 2 had convinced Patricia Kaas to sing in ’09 I was in eurokween™ heaven. And at our annual ESC brunch (the show’s on at noon Vancouver time), the kweens present agreed: Kaas’ performance was head and shoulders above the rest. 
Hard act to follow. But when the song’s not ever been performed live, the singer’s unknown outside YouTube, and the preview clip is a recycled clip by the same unknown singer…all the World Cup tie-ins in the world probably can’t save it on the night. And it’s not exactly a memorable song to begin with. On the bright side, it couldn’t be as bad as Virginie Pouchain …could it?   shudder. Rating: 1/5: Bottom 5, perhaps last.

Norway – My Heart is Yours – Didrik Solli-Tangen
This is very well performed; in fact, it’s (yet again from Norway) an example of something that can be ported directly from the national final to the Eurovision with only a few camera changes. Didi sings it well, hits all the camera angles, and does a great job with nearly all the notes (great lower range; last chorus a bit shrieky). He’s even kinda cute.
But this is also a total rip-off of: 1.) You raise me up (which should’ve been Ireland’s 8th win, since Secret Garden had already won once for Norway), the Josh Groban version. Rip-off for sure…but an exceedingly good one. Norway won’t be cheering on 30 May, but they’ll still be happy. Excellent for what it is…which is not new or special. Rating: 4/5: top 10.

United Kingdom – That Sounds Good to Me – Josh  
Like France, in ’09 the UK made a serious effort (Andrew Lloyd-Webber, primetime selection series, promotional tour, workshopped the heck out of Jade) and got a top 5 result. This year they…almost did that, screwed it up and ended up with this. Pete Waterman didn’t even give something Kylie- or Rick Astley-ish: this is a pedestrian, generic 80s knock-off. Josh can sing, but he’s not overflowing with charisma. The ESC version was debuted in NL recently: much improved, but not to a standard that will do well. Rating: 2/5: bottom 5…but perhaps 21st rather than 25th!

This was just a little appetizer, more to come so stay tuned, John will be back with the rest. He can be reached at john dot egan at gmail

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ESC 2016 WISH LIST: MARGARET FOR POLAND

Małgorzata Jamroży aka Margaret has also been tipped for Eurovision and apparently she did turn it down but she'd be perfect. She's got a look and persona you can't unnotice nor forget, she's got hit songs, she has been voted or nominated for everything from Trendy artist to the Hope of the Year, Fashion Icon and Glamour Woman of the year besides the usual best video, song, album, debut..... Oh she's also a fashion designer! She's very clever with social medias and would surely use it to her advantage if selected for Stockholm 2016. Her debut album is titled Add the blonde , do we need to say more? Except it includes mostly Swedish written pop tunes like Tell me how are ya , Wasted , Start a fire and Heartbeat . And of course her debut single and internationally noticed Thank you very much that you can enjoy below with all its anti-textil feel. I think she's Eurovision perfection, she's cheeky and fun, can we have her?

SONGS OF THE YEAR 2015: #5 KRISTA SIEGFRIDS - ON & OFF

Krista Siegfrids is delivering nice pop tunes one after another and this one is particularly catchy and soon you will be singing along..... Hopefully her Melodifestivalen entry will be equally good!

ESC 2016 BELARUS: NAKED WITH WOLVES?

Today's funniest Eurovision related story comes from Belarus. Some sources claim Ivan wants to perform on stage naked and with live wolf or wolves. It surely would be a first on Eurovision stage! We have seen some forgotten underwear over the years, and some cardbox animals though..... Is it time to take things a bit further?  No, according the rules live animals are not allowed, and Eurovision being a family show nudity won't do either. (It seems to be ok to be half naked if you are a dancer though..... )

ESC 2016 ARMENIA: IT'S IVETA MUKUCHYAN!

Armenian tv has revealed tonight the name of their artist for the 2016 Eurovision song contest in Stockholm. It's 29-year-old Iveta Mukuchyan. Born in Yerevan she moved with her family to Germany when she was 6. At 23 she moved back to Armenia and continued her music studies. She has taken part in the Armenian Pop Idol finishing 5th in 2010 and she also did The Voice of Germany . In 2012 she was voted the Sexiest Armenian.  Armenian tv has made a call for songwriters all over the world to submit a song for her by November 13, 2015.  Let's see which direction the final choice will go, Freak or her latest release that you can hear below.... Whatever it is it will be an improvement from last year's fiasco.....

Regina Lund - naked and censored

Regina Lund's new video Jag är osynlig was censored by Youtube only minutes after it had been uploaded. In the video she was playing a female Jesus who gets crusified in the end. "I was shocked!" she says. "There's nothing more naked in it as in every church! It's ok to have naked man hanging on the wall but my nakedness is too much on internet? ". Oh well, no comment. She's prepairing a new album Dare Regina Lund and we of course remember her from her Melodifestivalen 2007 adventure with Rainbow star .

CAROLA'S BOOBS STEAL THE SHOW, SVT APOLOGIES

Update! Another thing got Swedes talking last night: Carola's boobs when she was giving away an award. This is not the first time her boombs cause headlines; her misfortunate adventures in the 80's in Japan wer explained with her boobs being too big for Japanese market. Ok.... Or was it the song ? Anyways, Carola apologies and says she thinks the dress is stylish and elegant (even her friends said so) and she's a mature woman in her 40s, not a 16-year-old girl and looks like one. The Swedish Oscars, Guldbagge awards were given out last night. Carola was there as a guest star to sing Barbra Streisand's The way we were when honoring the movie stars who passed away during 2012. However, the cameras were too much on Carola, not on the stars showed in photos in the background and that upset many viewers as that part of the show was to celebrate them, not Carola. Oh well...  The producer of the show tells in Aftonbladet the part of the show was made the sam

MALTA: THE QUEEN OF L-GHANJA TAL-POPLU - CORAZÓN MIZZI!

If The Travellers have proven recently one can do great singing in Maltese there's also someone else doing great stuff: Corazón Mizzi. While in Malta I was looking for some Maltese CDs only to find out they pretty much don't exist, and the most helpful staff in legendary D'Amato - probably the world's oldest record store today - suggested me Corazón's Hawn jien (2014 album). Having nothing else really to bring home I decided to go or it without even realizing it is the Corazón from Maltese Eurovision selections. And what a find it was! Thank you D'Amato! But let's start from the obvious: Eurovision. Corazón has been offering us songs in the Maltese Eurovision selection since 2009, actually making her best result this year with Falling glass , one of my favorites btw. I also liked last year's Secretly but that failed even the final. But Corazón's true calling is singer-songwriter in Maltese as this excellent album clearly shows. We have al

EUROVISION TWEETS REVEAL DETAILS....

Brandwatch, one the world's leading providers of analytics of social medias has summed up the Twitter buzz during the Eurovision 2013 final on May 18, 2013. Over 1,8 million tweets have been analyzed and it's rather fascinating stuff. On top you can see the figure showing topics. Romania and Ireland got the tweeting go wild as did Greece, Belarus, Malta and Armenia. And you can see political tweets took over during the voting..... The figure above is for the emotions. Once again Romania and Greece got it going wild. A lot of love and joy was spread all over during the show while hate & anger increased during the voting. Is someone surprised? But have a look and analize yourself here . And here you can access to country by country details. Did Ukraine's giant get people's attention? or Moldova's outfit? Did Ireland have sex factor? Or Azerbaijan? And what about Belgium's dance routine?

SUMMER SONGS 2015: ANNA TATANGELO - INAFFERRABILE

Anna Tatangelo is back with her kitchiest video to date, I guess. Inafferabile has a video that surely gets your attention but the song.... well, it's summer! Libera this is not for sure. Enjoy the scenery!