NEWS ANALYSIS: Freshness won in Eurovision, ethnic music and retro lost

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By Pirkko Kotirinta
     
      Germany’s 19-year-old Lena Meyer-Landrug weathered the pressure facing the advance favourite and grabbed victory in the Eurovision Song Contest. She appeared genuinely surprised on the stage, as if asking “So, does this mean that I really have to sing it again?”
      The singer says that she had previously performed on stage only once in a school play. Now the audience was slightly bigger than that of a school gym - 120 million.
     
Among all kinds of retro pieces, this fresh and very personal performance was in the spirit of the times, and is a good winner, even if she did not dazzle with her singing skills. She got some help from a quickly edited YouTube video, whose audience doubled in the weekend of the finals from less than five million to more than ten million.
      One pleasant surprise was the second-place finish of the Turkish rock piece, and why not also the tenth-place finish of Alyosha from Ukraine, who had a very good voice. The androgynous figure of Serbia’s effeminate male singer Milan Stankovic seemed to be a bit too much for the Balkan neighbours, because the performance got surprisingly few votes from the neighbouring countries. For the West, the use of instruments was too strange, resulting in a 13th place finish.
     
The ballads ate away at each other. Israel had to make do with 14th place, while Ireland did even worse - 23rd place. The host country Norway was 20th.
      As was expected, the UK brought up the rear. Although it had every possibility to produce Satellite-type list hit music for Eurovision as well, but for some reason it just can’t seem to manage. What about British ethno? Apparently, nobody has tried Morris dancing.
      There would be nothing to lose.
     
Azerbaijan put great efforts into composing its pop melody, its production, performance, promotion, management, and who knows what else, taking up a shockingly huge portion of its GDP.
      The performance ended up being clumsy and external, but it did make it to fifth place, thanks to its hit material. The Drip Drop production team came from Sweden.
     
Sweden is now likely to need some national crisis counselling.
      The strong performance of Anna Bergendahl did not make it past the semifinals, but the Danes made it into fourth place with their old-fashioned Abba clone Made in Sweden.
      The same piece happened to have been rejected by Sweden’s own jury when that country’s Eurovision piece was being chosen.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.5.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish Eurovision song fails to reach finals (26.5.2010)

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