Tag Archives: Finland

Movies & TV, Music

At Least we Didn’t Come Last…

2 Comments

Another Eurovision, and another block vote spectacular!

_42917943_scooch_afp203b.jpg

For a long while it looked as though the UK was heading for a repeat of their ‘nul points’ performance by Jemini in the 2003 contest. In the end a grand total of two out of the forty-two voting countries actually gave us points – the two countries that most often give us points, 7 points from Ireland, and top marks, a 12 from Malta. Ironically it was the Irish vote that relegated their own entry to last place.

Ironically, considering the mess when our song was selected, when Scooch ultimately won, the second placed song was a big ballad, and that is what won – a big ballad from Serbia. Having said that, whatever we would have put forward, I would have been surprised if we had come that much higher. Most of the western European countries were knocked out in the semi-final, and those that remained, including the big four who automatically qualify – the UK, Germany, France and Spain – were all in the bottom six.

There was a real eclectic mix of styles this time around, with glam rock from Sweeden, a German swing number, and traditional Irish folk (that came last with only Albania giving them any points at all). There was a definite Lordi effect though, with a noticeable increase in the more hard rock numbers.

However what I suspect will garner most complaints this year as in a number of recent years will be the block voting. Whilst in the past, it used to be quite amusing that Greece and Cyprus would always vote for each other for example, it didn’t seem to have that much of an effect. With the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, large parts of the voting appeared to be being affected by these block votes tonight – indeed even the UK votes were from our traditional block with Ireland and Malta. However it was noticeable that on several occasions the audience in Finland booed 12 point votes that appeared to be blatantly political. Short of changing the voting system though, there is not really anything that can be done. Perhaps the only way we in the UK can increase our chances is to enter as four separate countries – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – rather than the United Kingdom – then at least we can all vote for each other to increase our votes…

Update: A couple of related news items. Firstly, Malta have all but accused some of the other countries of cheating in the phone vote, plus parts of the German media are unhappy and demanding that Germany withdraw from the competition, and secondly, British MP’s are demanding changes to the voting system, or that the BBC withdraw from subsequent contests. Certainly it will be interesting to see quite what will happen if two of the big four broadcasters who bankroll the competition pull out…

Music

Temporary Blip – Or a Total Change?

2 Comments

Now on the basis of all the pre-publicity, thanks to the number of Finns complaining about their entry, I thought that Finnish Rock Band Lordi would probably do fairly well. However, they pretty well walked away with the whole competition, beating the second place song by almost 50 points. Considering that Father Mitro Repo, who appeared on the BBC complaining about the band said that he thought it was a protest by youngsters annoyed that Finland had failed to score highly in Eurovision the previous year, perhaps the youngsters seem to have a better idea of what would go down well than the rest of the country!

In terms of the competition as a whole, Lordi stood out mainly because they were something a bit different. Indeed one of the old ladies at church today commented that she thought they were entertaining as a band – which did slightly surprise me. It did also help that Finland is in one of the many Eurovision voting blocks, which gave it a boost over and above the Russian entry, which as usual was helped by big votes from all the former Soviet Republics (which of course all have large Russian minority populations). Ireland made a big improvement by sending Brian Kennedy, who I first came across supporting the Corrs on tour a few years ago. Their song was really the kind of thing that won them the competition a number of times a few years ago, however with the block votes of the Balkan countries, the former Soviet republics and the Scandinavian countries they ended up in the middle running – enough to keep them in the top flight next year. The UK finished well down the rankings again – better than last year, but still in a spot where if we weren’t paying a large part of the costs of the competition we’d be relegated to the semi-final next year.

So the real question will be whether this is just a temporary blip, or whether the win by Lordi will result in something a bit different next year from the pop numbers and ballads that usually get performed. The thing is that they are not the first to try something different. For example the UK entry this year was a rap number, which didn’t do overly well, and the Germans put in a Country and Western song, which didn’t do much better either. Of course whether it is a change or not, trying to win against the block votes is getting increasingly difficult – and largely it won’t change much until the EBU come up with a voting system that can negate the effect of the block voting.