Eurovision: on to Helsinki, with mixed feelings

Hanna Pakarinen wins spot for Finland in Eurovision competition with more votes than Lordi got last year

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By Pirkko Kotirinta
     
      The victory of Hanna Pakarinen as Finland's entry at this year's Eurovision Song Contest has sparked a good deal of colourful and impassioned debate on the web pages of hs.fi , among other places.
      Many participants would have preferred to see Finland represented at this home-grown contest by the Tampere band Lovex, which already has promising lift in Central Europe.
      The Lovex entry Anyone Anymore is generally seen to be better than Pakarinen's Leave Me Alone. The winning piece was composed by Martti Vuorinen and Miikka Huttunen, with lyrics by Vuorinen and Pakarinen.
      The Lovex album Divine Insanity, which recently reached gold in Finland, has also been released in Germany.
      Naturally, there are also many who support Hanna. Her breathy voice was heard to contain "a depth and raspiness reminiscent of Marianne Faithfull", nor was her pronunciation of English - which was criticised as bad - seen to be such a problem by everyone: "her articulation is as clear as is needed in a rock piece". She was also seen to be attractive and charismatic.
     
Pakarinen herself was in a daze after her victory on Saturday evening. Before the final she would not let her front-runner status cause her any stress.
      "I'm just eagerly waiting to start on my own record promotion tour", said Pakarinen, who recently released her new Lovers album. The record is Pakarinen's third.
     
Supporting the singer in Turku were dozens of fans, most of whom were wearing black shirts with Hanna Team printed on the back. Among the youngest of the fans was Jenni Toivonen, 15, who has admired Hanna ever since her victory in the Finnish Idols competition in 2004.
      The fans were enthusiastic about the win, and also looking very pleased was Kimmo Valtanen, local managing director of the record company SonyBMG, the same company that supported Lordi in Athens last May.
      Valtanen says that the company is benefiting from last year's experience. However, no massive promotions abroad will be needed this time.
      The host country gets into to the finals automatically.
     
The new voting system arranged by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) and TeliaSonera was not to the liking of everyone.
      "It was very bad for me", commented Jukka Kuoppamäki who, at the age of 64, was the oldest ever to take part in the Finnish competition. "Older viewers were not aware that it was possible to vote in advance, and I have not organised any kind of a fan club."
      However, the Eurovision Song Contest, in its present form, would probably not be of interest to the oldest participants.
      Laura Voutilainen said that many artists were critical of the fact that it was possible to vote many times from the same telephone number.
     
However, the director and producer of the Finnish competition, Timo Suomi, does not believe that there was any manipulation of the result through multiple voting.
      "I followed the development of the vote in real time on my computer terminal, and Hanna suddenly got an avalanche of votes. It is not possible to manipulate such a mass", Suomi said on Sunday.
      "I also got enough reports on the advance votes that it could be seen that there were no distortions."
      TeliaSonera says that the total number of advance votes was about 6,000.
      On Saturday evening more than 250,000 people called in their votes. In the "super final", the choice from among the top three, there were 166,543 calls and text messages.
      Eurovision fever was more intense this year than last. A year ago there were a total of about 200,000 votes. Lordi got 42.2 per cent of the vote. This year's winner, Hanna Pakarinen, got 44 per cent.
     
Suomi says that the fact that the TV broadcast went overtime by more than 15 minutes was caused by delays in setting up equipment, and by the desire of the production team to bring to the television audience some of the atmosphere of the event.
      "There were extra seconds along the way when the audience reacted spontaneously to the artists", Suomi explains.
      Suomi insists that the delay is no reason to draw any conclusions about the international broadcasts in May:
      "Of course nothing like that will happen then. At that time we will go straight from the songs to the ‘postcards'. It's a completely different kind of thing."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.2.2007

More on this subject:
 COMMENTARY: I would have chosen Laura
 FACTFILE: Victory with more than 73,000 votes

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Hanna Pakarinen to represent Finland in Eurovision Song Contest (19.2.2006)

PIRKKO KOTIRINTA / Helsingin Sanomat
pirkko.kotirinta@hs.fi