We're only a few weeks away from the biggest event this country has seen in decades!
No, not the Coronation - the Eurovision Song Contest (being held in Liverpool)!!
For no particular reason other than I want to, here are just fifteen of my personal favourites from the world's largest, shinest and campest music festival (now in its 67th year)...
The Eurovision Song Contest final will be held on 13th May 2023.
I can't wait!
There are earworms so powerful that they begin playing on loop in your head simply by reading their names. Find out which:
Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex, 1995
A cash-in to the line-dancing craze then sweeping the world that killed the line-dancing craze sweeping the world, Cotton Eye Joe is a terrifying glimpse of life in the Deep South by way of Swedes doing a Eurodance makeover. You are already hearing it. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of your hypothalamus it never stopped.
Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, 2011
The artist involved made a valiant effort not to be a one-hit wonder. But when your song has a hook this weaponised it will inevitably be all anyone knows you and hates you for. You’re humming this song already, as is someone who just walked past, and by 4pm it will have been transmitted to 40,000 people.
Baby Shark by Pinkfong, 2016
Has been watched on YouTube more than ten billion times. There are fewer than eight billion people on Earth. Do the maths; Baby Shark is more successful than humanity. Not many songs can put ‘used to psychologically torture prisoners in an Oklahoma jail!’ on the cover. This can.
The Great Escape theme by Elmer Bernstein, 1963
Whistled by office workers trapped in a nine-to-five who dreams of forming an escape committee, doing pommel horse exercises in the staff canteen while colleagues tunnel out, and dribbling soil out of their trousers as they nonchalantly walk to and from the office printer. This will now be playing all day in your mind, even tonight as you fall asleep.
Barbie Girl by Aqua, 1997
Another Scandinavian pop horror worldwide hit, fondly remembered by a generation of adolescent boys who fancied lead singer Lene Nystrom and ignored the bit where her arm falls off. The lyrics ‘kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky’ are never forgotten once heard, and in 2048 will be the last thing that goes through your mind before you die.
Of course.
Given the current news headlines, this one is mine...
As I have said before, this song may ostensibly be an uber-camp, incredibly catchy, "nonsense song" - but Verka knew exactly what she was doing, as the lyric "Lasha Tumbai" does sound very much like she's singing "Russia Goodbye"...
Coming on after an evening of glitz, kitsch and Australians wobbling on huge sticks, Madonna seemed to find it difficult to read the room. The result was a turn that felt skittish and which, for all its ambition, never truly connected.Ouch.
It didn’t help that her voice didn’t quite hit the peaks we know it can. Nor at any point did she appear to be be enjoying herself. Her trip to Israel had been condemned by pro-Palestine groups. Madonna had responded by saying she would “never stop playing music to suit someone's political agenda” and would pray “for a new path toward peace”. She certainly presented an unbowed figure on the night. But had the criticism unmoored her slightly?
The idea that Madonna could turn up at Eurovision dressed as a one-eyed space pirate, surrounded by humming monks, yet fail to add to the camp quotient obviously sounds absurd. Nevertheless, she did slightly suck the heat out of the room as she kicked off with a scary goth version of Like A Prayer.
She appeared at the top of a stairs that seemed to have been pinched from the set of Game of Thrones. This in itself was a distraction. Madonna and steps haven’t had the happiest of histories and her tumble at the 2015 Brit Awards will have been on the minds of many watching at home (you can bet it was on Madge’s).
But, to her credit, she made it all the way down. There her treat was an appearance by two further singing monks carting huge styrofoam battering rams.
The excitement wasn’t over (actually it hadn’t really begun) as she segued into her new single Future, for which she was joined by rapper Quavo [in an interview beforehand Quavo revealed he was delighted to be at Eurovision despite seemingly having learned of the existence of Eurovision five minutes earlier].
Here Madonna abandoned any pretence at trying to win over the Eurovision audience. This was a grim, auto-tuned number that wanted very badly to be a Soundcloud rap banger. Her dancers were obviously now wearing gas-masks while the video screens projected images of flames and grim-looking world leader types. It takes a lot to reduce a Eurovision audience to a mass of restless moochers. But Madonna managed it.
Perhaps the crowd was fed up from all the waiting. All evening we’d been teased about an exclusive Madonna appearance. We knew she was in the building, having arrived in Tel Aviv earlier in the week on the private jet of Israel-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams.
The expectation was that once all 26 singers were done, we’d cut to a mad-for-it Madge and her monks. Instead the slightly seat of its pants production forced us to watch the “one of the world’s greatest mentalists” and to then applaud a woman dressed as a banana singing about bananas.
This was weird but not nearly as weird as Madonna in the contestants’ green room. She was in full intergalactic corsair outfit and being interviewed by one of the terrified hosts. When she failed to laugh at one of his jokes and instead glared at her trousers you could almost see his soul leave his body. It got stranger – of course it did – as Madonna forced the Eurovision hopefuls to sing the chorus of her 2000 quasi-hit Music, in furtherance of world peace. Even with world peace on the line they didn’t really seem into it.
All of which led up to the actual performance. Madonna, her monks and gas masks having creeped out 200 million viewers at home, will have concluded that she at least got our attention. The organisers may have wished they’d asked Kylie instead.
"Eurovision is a cultural phenomenon we have admired from afar for years," cable TV channel Logo general manager Chris McCarthy said. "We are thrilled to bring the event to U.S. audiences and cheer alongside the rest of the world."For the uninitiated (and, unlike Australia, where fans have been going wild for Eurovision for years, there will be plenty in the States where it is never usually shown), CNN has provided a handy guide that includes this rather understated description:
It's quite theatrical. Think the Oscars, Grammys, Tony Awards, "American Idol," "The X Factor" and "America's Got Talent" all rolled into one - and then triple that.Hilarious! Yet true.
Ukraine has announced it will not be taking part in next year's Eurovision Song Contest due to limited finances.Oh dear. We'll just have to do without such musical campness as these Ukrainian gems...
"We don't want to do something badly, and we don't have the money to do something well," said Zurab Alasania, of the state broadcaster NTU.
Mr Alasania said the broadcaster had to "optimise" its funds given the unstable financial and political situation caused by the conflict in east Ukraine.
