It's occured to me that since the Eurovision final on Saturday night, I haven't actually written about it. Of course that wouldn't really be a problem, except I've written about the semi final so it would be wrong to leave it at that.
So, just to sum up what happen in Helsinki, Finland, the United Kingdom was crap. No sitting on the fence here. Just plain crap, although it was marginally less crap than when we came last. This year we came second from last with a whoping 19 points - 6 less than last year!
There wasn't really anything wrong with the performance other than a microphone or two sounded a little quiet, and the singing could have been a little stronger. The problem was the dominant style of music this year was not the cheesy pop of old. And to make matters worse, the other country that did REALLY cheesy pop was the Ukraine who put on an excellent and visually memorable performance right before our song which I would imagine meant it got overlooked slightly.
Anyway, Charlie came over for an Indian meal whilst the show was on, and this year we scored each act using a scoresheet from the BBC website, with Charlie, Kate and myself each allocating a score of 1-4 for each of the categories: song, performance, dance routine and outfit. So once we'd allocated our points, each category would have a score out of 12 which I would then add up to give that country a score out of 48.
Using this system, we came up with the following for the top 10:
01= Sweden (36pts)
01= Germany (36pts)
02. Ukraine (35pts)
03. United Kingdom (32pts)
04= Belarus (31pts)
04= Finland (31pts)
04= Turkey (31pts)
05= Moldova (30pts)
05= Georgia (30pts)
05= Greece (30pts)
06. Russia (29pts)
07= FYR Macedonia (28pts)
07= Ireland (28pts)
08. Latvia (27pts)
09. France (26pts)
10. Hungary (23pts)
Quite a close run thing really. We decided to vote for Sweden once the songs had been recapped due to it being a better tune than Germany. Our top 10 however was completely different to what was announced by the end of the evening:
01. Serbia (268pts)
02. Ukraine (235pts)
03. Russia (207pts)
04. Turkey (163pts)
05. Bulgaria (157pts)
06. Belarus (145pts)
07. Greece (139pts)
08. Armenia (138pts)
09. Hungary (128pts)
10. Moldova (109pts)
Well we got Turkey right at number 4!
The results are certainly dominated by those countries which fall into the Eastern block. You have to ask the question now whether any of the western nations will come close to winning the contest again, let alone the UK.
Personally, I think it might be time to reform the way the contest is run to make it a little more fair and I have a rather simple solution. All songs are sung in the same language, which would be chosen by a draw each year but must be different to that of the previous 3 years so that no one language can dominate the contest. Each song is performed, but it is not announced which country that performance is for until after the vote has closed. Then each country announces the vote as is done now, but as a simple top 10. Non of this 7pts, 8pts, 10pts, 12pts rubbish which I've never really understood the purpose of.
This sort of system would make political voting more difficult and limit runaway lead scores whilst ensuring small countries can issue their scores on an equal footing with the larger countries.
Of course it would mean that the song for each country would have to be kept secret until the performance which would mean a change to the way the UK at least chooses it's song. A panel would need to be appointed to choose rather than a televised phone in poll, but that could well mean that a better quality of song goes through to the contest rather than the rubbish which we've had lately.
So, just to sum up what happen in Helsinki, Finland, the United Kingdom was crap. No sitting on the fence here. Just plain crap, although it was marginally less crap than when we came last. This year we came second from last with a whoping 19 points - 6 less than last year!
There wasn't really anything wrong with the performance other than a microphone or two sounded a little quiet, and the singing could have been a little stronger. The problem was the dominant style of music this year was not the cheesy pop of old. And to make matters worse, the other country that did REALLY cheesy pop was the Ukraine who put on an excellent and visually memorable performance right before our song which I would imagine meant it got overlooked slightly.
Anyway, Charlie came over for an Indian meal whilst the show was on, and this year we scored each act using a scoresheet from the BBC website, with Charlie, Kate and myself each allocating a score of 1-4 for each of the categories: song, performance, dance routine and outfit. So once we'd allocated our points, each category would have a score out of 12 which I would then add up to give that country a score out of 48.
Using this system, we came up with the following for the top 10:
01= Sweden (36pts)
01= Germany (36pts)
02. Ukraine (35pts)
03. United Kingdom (32pts)
04= Belarus (31pts)
04= Finland (31pts)
04= Turkey (31pts)
05= Moldova (30pts)
05= Georgia (30pts)
05= Greece (30pts)
06. Russia (29pts)
07= FYR Macedonia (28pts)
07= Ireland (28pts)
08. Latvia (27pts)
09. France (26pts)
10. Hungary (23pts)
Quite a close run thing really. We decided to vote for Sweden once the songs had been recapped due to it being a better tune than Germany. Our top 10 however was completely different to what was announced by the end of the evening:
01. Serbia (268pts)
02. Ukraine (235pts)
03. Russia (207pts)
04. Turkey (163pts)
05. Bulgaria (157pts)
06. Belarus (145pts)
07. Greece (139pts)
08. Armenia (138pts)
09. Hungary (128pts)
10. Moldova (109pts)
Well we got Turkey right at number 4!
The results are certainly dominated by those countries which fall into the Eastern block. You have to ask the question now whether any of the western nations will come close to winning the contest again, let alone the UK.
Personally, I think it might be time to reform the way the contest is run to make it a little more fair and I have a rather simple solution. All songs are sung in the same language, which would be chosen by a draw each year but must be different to that of the previous 3 years so that no one language can dominate the contest. Each song is performed, but it is not announced which country that performance is for until after the vote has closed. Then each country announces the vote as is done now, but as a simple top 10. Non of this 7pts, 8pts, 10pts, 12pts rubbish which I've never really understood the purpose of.
This sort of system would make political voting more difficult and limit runaway lead scores whilst ensuring small countries can issue their scores on an equal footing with the larger countries.
Of course it would mean that the song for each country would have to be kept secret until the performance which would mean a change to the way the UK at least chooses it's song. A panel would need to be appointed to choose rather than a televised phone in poll, but that could well mean that a better quality of song goes through to the contest rather than the rubbish which we've had lately.
This years Eurovision is now well under way, with the semi final having just taken place in Helsinki, Finland.
Due to 42 countries taking part in the Song Contest this year, tonight's semi final was a chance to eliminate 18 of them ready for the main event on Saturday. Just like the final, each country performed it's song and the opportunity was given to vote at the end of the performances.
As always, there was a strange mix of songs ranging from those that sounded pretty good, those which were downright awful and those that were just plain weird. The line up of countries was as follows:
Only ten of these countries would make it through to the final, and throughout the performances I decided to list the countries in my prefered order. The top ten of which were:
As you can see, I've put some comments against some songs just to highlight the type of music being played. Unfortunately, out of my list only 2 made it through to Saturday's show - FYR Macedonia and Hungary.
Oddly, the favourites Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands all failed to get through. Those countries that did succeed are all Eastern European.
What does that mean for our entry then? If Eastern Europe is going to dominate, we'll probably end up right down the board again. My big concern is that there are a fair few good songs from the automatic qualifiers on Saturday, and we have a cheesy pop song, so we probably won't even get the Western vote.
It could be bad news for the UK in two days time!
Due to 42 countries taking part in the Song Contest this year, tonight's semi final was a chance to eliminate 18 of them ready for the main event on Saturday. Just like the final, each country performed it's song and the opportunity was given to vote at the end of the performances.
As always, there was a strange mix of songs ranging from those that sounded pretty good, those which were downright awful and those that were just plain weird. The line up of countries was as follows:
- Bulgaria
- Israel
- Cyprus
- Belarus
- Iceland
- Georgia
- Montenegro
- Switzerland
- Moldova
- Netherlands
- Albania
- Denmark
- Croatia
- Poland
- Serbia
- Czech Republic
- Portugal
- FYR Macedonia
- Norway
- Malta
- Andorra
- Hungary
- Estonia
- Belgium
- Slovenia
- Turkey
- Austria
- Latvia
Only ten of these countries would make it through to the final, and throughout the performances I decided to list the countries in my prefered order. The top ten of which were:
- Montenegro
- Belgium (Great 70's disco style)
- Netherlands (Sounded a lot like Anastacia)
- Denmark (Draq queen - and that's not just the name of the song)
- Norway
- Switzerland (Something weird about vampires)
- FYR Macedonia
- Hungary
- Andorra (European rip off of Busted or McFly)
- Poland
As you can see, I've put some comments against some songs just to highlight the type of music being played. Unfortunately, out of my list only 2 made it through to Saturday's show - FYR Macedonia and Hungary.
Oddly, the favourites Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands all failed to get through. Those countries that did succeed are all Eastern European.
What does that mean for our entry then? If Eastern Europe is going to dominate, we'll probably end up right down the board again. My big concern is that there are a fair few good songs from the automatic qualifiers on Saturday, and we have a cheesy pop song, so we probably won't even get the Western vote.
It could be bad news for the UK in two days time!
Another year, and another Eurovision. Finland won this years show held in Greece. Their song was very bizarre. So was the act. In fact I think my exact words were "The Klingons have invaded Poland!". The UK song was better than previous years. Performed by Daz Sampson, the song "Teenage Life" sounded like a pop rap song right out of the 90's.
Now I've looked at the results of the Eurovision Song Contents since 2003 when the UK got no points (they don't say it French anymore) and I have a theory. 2003 was the year that Blair took the UK into it's illegal war with Iraq. Europe didn't like it so we scored nothing in Eurovision. As the years have progressed, we have scored more than the previous year. Therefore Europe must be starting to forgive the UK. Based on that, I reckon we may have half a chance of winning in, say, 2025.
Now I have plenty more to say. The only thing is that right now I'm being nagged by the other half to taste some pasta dish to see if it's ready. I'll probably forget what I want to say now :-)
Now I've looked at the results of the Eurovision Song Contents since 2003 when the UK got no points (they don't say it French anymore) and I have a theory. 2003 was the year that Blair took the UK into it's illegal war with Iraq. Europe didn't like it so we scored nothing in Eurovision. As the years have progressed, we have scored more than the previous year. Therefore Europe must be starting to forgive the UK. Based on that, I reckon we may have half a chance of winning in, say, 2025.
Now I have plenty more to say. The only thing is that right now I'm being nagged by the other half to taste some pasta dish to see if it's ready. I'll probably forget what I want to say now :-)
Making Your Mind Up is on BBC One at the moment. It's the programme that will decide what song will represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in May.
Unfortunately I missed the first song so I can't comment (yet) but as for the second song, sung by Kym Marsh (of Hear'Say fame), well it wasn't anything special. It's a bit of a ballad (but that is not necessarily a bad thing) but it wasn't anything special. It would probably make the UK Top 10 thanks to the 10 year olds buying it. I just don't think it would stand out in Eurovision.
The third song is starting now and immediately I don't like it. There's some kids singing for the first 30 seconds and then along comes the rapper (Daz Sampson). Is rap really something that will work in Eurovision? Okay it's pop-rap but still. It sounds like it's from 1995 and reminds me of "C U When U Get There" by Coolio.
On to song number four by the City Chix called All About You. It's started okay, but maybe not the strongest singers in the world. It's got a key change for the chorus - that's always a winner but It sounds like it should be a bit faster than it is. I don't think it's a good choice based mainly on the singers. They're not strong enough and are slightly off key on occasions.
Number five now, by Four Story with Hand On My Heart. In a word - crap, crap, crap. Yes I had to say it three times. I don't like this at all. It's a boyband song taken straight out of the late nineties or early noughties. I was hoping based on their little "about the group" clip before the song that it might be a nice upbeat pop song. This trash must not be voted to represent us. It's very boring, and has no flare.
The final song is by Antony Costa called It's A Beautiful Thing. This bloke used to be in Blue so he's got some experience of a successful group which will probably go in his favour. It starts of well, nice and upbeat. The chorus is nice and uplifting with lots of colour of stage. The only thing that may let him down is he doesn't seem overly animated. A lot of the time he's at centre stage, although he does move around on occasions. Out of what I've heard, that one is the best.
So I've placed my vote for song number 6. Hopefully it'll do well. Listening to the clips before voting, song 1 seemed okay, so this is my order of preference:
I'll update this entry when the winner is announced.
Update: 04/03/06, 20:17
So the results are being announced in true Eurovision style, splitting the UK into regions. It looks like Antony Costa is going to get second place to Daz Sampson. They've just got to announce the mobile votes which could change everything however...
Update: 04/03/06, 20:35
Well it's all over. Here's the final order:
I'm not to sure we can we with the rap song from Daz Sampson. I don't really like it, but it could appeal just because it's a bit mad and will stand out. Eurovision does tend to be a bit mad, so who knows. Maybe we'll get into the top 10. I don't think we'll win though.
Roll on 20 May for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Unfortunately I missed the first song so I can't comment (yet) but as for the second song, sung by Kym Marsh (of Hear'Say fame), well it wasn't anything special. It's a bit of a ballad (but that is not necessarily a bad thing) but it wasn't anything special. It would probably make the UK Top 10 thanks to the 10 year olds buying it. I just don't think it would stand out in Eurovision.
The third song is starting now and immediately I don't like it. There's some kids singing for the first 30 seconds and then along comes the rapper (Daz Sampson). Is rap really something that will work in Eurovision? Okay it's pop-rap but still. It sounds like it's from 1995 and reminds me of "C U When U Get There" by Coolio.
On to song number four by the City Chix called All About You. It's started okay, but maybe not the strongest singers in the world. It's got a key change for the chorus - that's always a winner but It sounds like it should be a bit faster than it is. I don't think it's a good choice based mainly on the singers. They're not strong enough and are slightly off key on occasions.
Number five now, by Four Story with Hand On My Heart. In a word - crap, crap, crap. Yes I had to say it three times. I don't like this at all. It's a boyband song taken straight out of the late nineties or early noughties. I was hoping based on their little "about the group" clip before the song that it might be a nice upbeat pop song. This trash must not be voted to represent us. It's very boring, and has no flare.
The final song is by Antony Costa called It's A Beautiful Thing. This bloke used to be in Blue so he's got some experience of a successful group which will probably go in his favour. It starts of well, nice and upbeat. The chorus is nice and uplifting with lots of colour of stage. The only thing that may let him down is he doesn't seem overly animated. A lot of the time he's at centre stage, although he does move around on occasions. Out of what I've heard, that one is the best.
So I've placed my vote for song number 6. Hopefully it'll do well. Listening to the clips before voting, song 1 seemed okay, so this is my order of preference:
- Antony Costa (song 6)
- Goran Kay (song 1)
- Daz Sampson (song 3)
- City Chix (song 4)
- Kym Marsh (song 2)
- Four Story (song 5) [CRAP CRAP CRAP]
I'll update this entry when the winner is announced.
Update: 04/03/06, 20:17
So the results are being announced in true Eurovision style, splitting the UK into regions. It looks like Antony Costa is going to get second place to Daz Sampson. They've just got to announce the mobile votes which could change everything however...
Update: 04/03/06, 20:35
Well it's all over. Here's the final order:
- Daz Sampson
- Antony Costa
- City Chix
- Kym Marsh
- Four Story
- Goran Kay
I'm not to sure we can we with the rap song from Daz Sampson. I don't really like it, but it could appeal just because it's a bit mad and will stand out. Eurovision does tend to be a bit mad, so who knows. Maybe we'll get into the top 10. I don't think we'll win though.
Roll on 20 May for the Eurovision Song Contest.
It was Eurovision night again last night. This year the contest was held in Kiev - the capital city of last years winners Ukraine. As usual most of the acts seemed a little crazy, with plenty of mad outfits and bizarre music, and of course the political voting at the end.
This year the UK came third from last with 18 points. Quite poor considering the song (Javine - Light My Fire) wasn't too bad.
It was a fun event though, something I watch every year, and Charlie came over for a beer too, but no Chinese this year.
It was Kate's birthday last Thursday, so I've had a long weekend taking both Thursday and Friday off from work. We went to London for the day and visited the London Dungeons. They were good but they were not scary, unless you're a 10 year old maybe. After that we spent the rest of the day mainly sightseeing, taking a visit to St Paul's Cathedral, the Cutty Sark at Maritime Greenwich, walking under the Thames and back just because we could, taking a boat to Embankment and taking a good look at the Palace of Westminster whilst peering in to all the cars coming in and out of the grounds to see if we could spot any famous politicians (we didn't).
We were going to go for dinner that evening when back in Chelmsford but considering we didn't get back until 9pm and the restaurant closed at 10pm, we postponed that until Friday when we went to Tucano's at about 7pm. It's a Brazilian style restaurant where you pay a set price of around £15 and you can eat all you can. There is a salad bar which you can visit as many times as you wish, and the waiters bring over meats on large skewers which you can either take or pass on. There are about 13 different meats and they will keep coming up until you tell them to stop. It's certainly not a restaurant you would visit if you're a vegetarian. I'm not though and neither is Kate so we both liked it. Although I do have one criticism about it - the music was too loud and bassy. It made the waiters quite difficult to understand some times.
I spent a lot of cash at E-Buyer and Quiet PC yesterday getting the following:
The motherboard, processor, cooler, RAM and DVD will all go into my new machine which will be fitted with the 60GB hard drive, 128Mb graphics card and the 3 sound cards from my current 1GHz Duron, which will receive an old 32Mb graphics card and the new 250Gb hard drive. The old machine will then be put to use as a server, holding all files and operating the web server, therefore replacing the AMD 400MHz PC which is currently fulfilling that role.
These parts should be with me by Tuesday so I will have lots of fun putting the computer together.
This year the UK came third from last with 18 points. Quite poor considering the song (Javine - Light My Fire) wasn't too bad.
It was a fun event though, something I watch every year, and Charlie came over for a beer too, but no Chinese this year.
It was Kate's birthday last Thursday, so I've had a long weekend taking both Thursday and Friday off from work. We went to London for the day and visited the London Dungeons. They were good but they were not scary, unless you're a 10 year old maybe. After that we spent the rest of the day mainly sightseeing, taking a visit to St Paul's Cathedral, the Cutty Sark at Maritime Greenwich, walking under the Thames and back just because we could, taking a boat to Embankment and taking a good look at the Palace of Westminster whilst peering in to all the cars coming in and out of the grounds to see if we could spot any famous politicians (we didn't).
We were going to go for dinner that evening when back in Chelmsford but considering we didn't get back until 9pm and the restaurant closed at 10pm, we postponed that until Friday when we went to Tucano's at about 7pm. It's a Brazilian style restaurant where you pay a set price of around £15 and you can eat all you can. There is a salad bar which you can visit as many times as you wish, and the waiters bring over meats on large skewers which you can either take or pass on. There are about 13 different meats and they will keep coming up until you tell them to stop. It's certainly not a restaurant you would visit if you're a vegetarian. I'm not though and neither is Kate so we both liked it. Although I do have one criticism about it - the music was too loud and bassy. It made the waiters quite difficult to understand some times.
I spent a lot of cash at E-Buyer and Quiet PC yesterday getting the following:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000g S478 I865PE ATX Sound GIG LAN USB 2.0 FSB800 SATA100 Retail Box
- Processor: Intel Celeron® D320 2.4GHz Skt478 FSB533 256KB Cache Retail Boxed CPU
- RAM: Crucial CT6464Z40B 512mb DDR 400MHz PC3200 CL=3 Memory Module
- DVD: LG 16x52 DVD-Rom Drive - OEM Biege
- Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache- OEM
- CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS6500B-ALCU Pentium 4 S478 Flower Cooler
The motherboard, processor, cooler, RAM and DVD will all go into my new machine which will be fitted with the 60GB hard drive, 128Mb graphics card and the 3 sound cards from my current 1GHz Duron, which will receive an old 32Mb graphics card and the new 250Gb hard drive. The old machine will then be put to use as a server, holding all files and operating the web server, therefore replacing the AMD 400MHz PC which is currently fulfilling that role.
These parts should be with me by Tuesday so I will have lots of fun putting the computer together.