Only a few more days and all european eyes will turn to Oslo to watch the contest that nobody will admit watching, but everybody does: The annual Eurovision Song Contest.
One of this years favorites, according to Google (and Google should know), is the German entry from Lena Meyer-Landruth singing Satellite. Fed up of coming in last or near to last, the Germans have come up with a new concept to ensure victory this time around. This concept includes a unique cooperation between state TV NDR and the private Pro7.
Behind this concept is TV presentator Stafan Raab, who was behind the excellent, but unsuccessful entry by Max Mutzke, Guildo Horn’s “Guildo hat dich lieb” (“While the song did not win, it is credited with rekindling German interest in the Contest, as well as paving the way for Raab’s own entry two years later with “Wadde hadde Dudde da?”. Following Austria’s “Boom Boom Boomerang” and Belgium’s “Euro-Vision”, it is considered to be the third parody song to make an appearance at the Contest” – Wikipedia) as well as appearing himself in 2000 with the aforementioned song.
But what Germany don’t seem to realise is the fact that with the opening up of the competition to eastern Europe and some of the old russian states, the musical tastes have changed. No longer is the West European watered-down pop song the big deal in this contest – East European states want to listen to East European music, and it is only logical that for instance Bulgaria are going to give their votes to Rumania and vice versa. Claims that this is cheating are not only wrong, they are also completely irrelevant…
And thus once proud musical countries like England (who over the years seemed to think that sending in second class acts would be enough to win – after all England is pop music) and Germany are being beaten. And more than that, they are being humiliated.
Gone are the days when people like Sandie Shaw, Lulu, ABBA, Johnny Logan, France Gall and Céline Dion were stealing the show and starting their careers with this competition. Todays winners are called Alexander Ryback, Dima Bilan, Marija Serifovic (ever heard of any of these people?) and come from Russia, Serbia, Finland, Greece, Ukraine ….
And although I am not one to criticize Lena and her song, I am not as “optimistic” as Google and the rest of the republic… and really, to be honest, I’m not sure that this competition is really worth winning any more. What do you think?
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