Eurovision 2005

Over for another year, the camp-fest that is the Eurovision Song Contest. Most of it was dire. I really liked Denmark's effort Talking To You by Jacob Sveistrup, Malta and Hungary also made good efforts, and Bosnia & Herzogovina presented a poppy, catchy number. Norway, Croatia and a number of other countries made really poor songs, but they did OK as all their neighbours voted for them. The contest was won by Greece with a song with was better than average, but not the best. It could have been a lot worse though.

The voting has been strongly criticised for being political and regional. The bottom four countries were Western European (Germany, France, UK and Spain) with Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands not even qualifying. However, these new bottom four countries are unlikely to be qualifiers next year, as they pay for most of the competition and if their countries aren't in it then they won't back the contest. One interesting outcome is that Dutch viewers consider the politics in Eurovision as typical of what will happen if Holland say 'yes' to the European constitution.

I would probably still watch Eurovision if the UK wasn't in it, but I think that the majority of votes probably come from the densely populated Western European countries, but at the end of the day each country has the same amount of clout as Cyprus and FYR Macedonia, but they have less people sitting at home wondering how Croatia managed to score any points at all, let alone 11th spot.

Full scores here.
Listen to all the songs here.
Proper grown up news here.
Proper bitchery here.