That celebration of inanity, that refuge of the talentless, that hive of musical and lyrical cliches, the Eurovision Song Contest, has cult status in our household. Every year we sit down and yawn and groan our way through over 20 mostly insipid performances.
Tonight it was dh and Rowena and Adrian and I (Leo was asleep and Robbie was doing his first professional stint as a babysitter for our neighbours, where he was watching the Eurovision on his own). Watching the results being announced makes for a great geography lesson. Each of the 37 countries who entered the contest gets to vote (people phone in or sms their vote for all countries but their own) for its top 10 of the 22 countries that performed in the final tonight. Our favourite game is to guess in advance, for which neighbour a country is going to give its top vote. For instance, it's pretty likely that Belarus will give its top vote (and 12 points) to Russia, or that ex-Yugoslavian republics will vote for the other ex-Yugoslavian republics. Russia in particular seems to benefit from this as there are many Russians living in various Eastern European countries. Another thing that comes through quite clearly is which countries have a large Turkish population (the Netherlands and Germany) as these two countries voted strongly for the absolutely awful Turkish number.
The clear winner was Finland, though, no favouritism there. Just about every country gave one of their strongest votes to the monster rockers. I don't know if I would use the word refreshing, but it was great to see a group win that didn't have half a dozen sexy female dancers gyrating in the background.
Here are some titbits from interviews with the band's lead singer :
Here are more highlights from Mr. Lordi.
“You know, we are meat eaters in a vegetarian café,” said Mr. Lordi when asked how the band feels to be in Eurovision.
Surely Lordi and Christianity don’t go together? Sure they do. “I am a member of a church and our drummer Kita actually wrote and played some church music.”
“I don’t want to burn in hell, I want to go to heaven.”
When Finnish TV invited Lordi to take part in Eurovision, Mr. Lordi thought that they’d got the wrong number.
“We think we look pretty. We look like monsters.”
“Lordi is actually my nickname. It was given to me by friends.“
“We toured last year through the whole of Europe. And we toured extensively in Germany.”
“Our future plan is to get back to our normal heavy metal routines.”
2 comments:
I only saw saw the girl right before Finland and then only the Finland group. I didn't even get to see all of there act.(my 3 yo woke up).
Maybe next year we will watch and use it as a geography lesson.
Lol, do you mean your 3 year old woke up in the middle of the Finland performance? Talk about perfect timing. That reminds me of the time when my eldest (then 2 years old) woke up while we were watching Bram Stoker's Dracula and walked in during the scariest part.
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