Eurovision

[schneefink]

Saturday was Eurovision! I still have several of the songs in my head playing in random order at random times, leading to weird combinations.

It's odd, I never used to be very into Eurovision, not even when it was in Vienna. Then the past few years I started watching with LB, but I only really got into it last year, when it didn't happen. There was a virtual Eurovision event by Rusty Quill on Twitch though, which I enjoyed a lot. (Iceland won before Sweden, which I was fine with. My personal favorite was the Ukraine, I also liked Lithuania a lot, and Ireland and Latvia. (Though, I made those notes last year and now watched it again and went… okay, last year was weird.))

So this year DD and I (and LB via Skype for the final, because during the week our internet didn't want him to) watched both the semi-finals too. (I was sad that disco ball man from North Macedonia didn't make it to the final. So shiny.) Turns out that only adds to the experience of watching the final because I'm already invested in the songs. Several of them grew on me a lot when listening to them the second time, like Cyprus and Ukraine. I also really enjoyed Iceland and Lithuania, and also Norway, and France and Switzerland were enjoyable too, but I didn't really care for Greece or Portugal or Bulgaria. Italy also wasn't one of my favorites, but so many people are happy that they won that I'm glad they did.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Lithuania was my favourite, so I'm glad they got such a huge audience vote. I end up watching with a bunch of Italians, so that was fun.

[schneefink]

I end up watching with a bunch of Italians, so that was fun.
I'm sure :D

[jae]

I was Ukraine all the way, but I too am happy Italy won. :)

-J

[schneefink]

I was happy Ukraine got the second-most audience votes.

[myrdschaem]

I'm pretty happy with the results too! If I had to chose a winner, I would have picked Finland because that's the entry that sparks most joy for me. Ukraine was my realistic favourite though! I do like the Italy win too, they are rock which has it hard in the competition, I favoured it over the ballad-ish entries from France and Switzerland and the jury voting got undermined. Honestly, I don't think the national juries have any taste left as they seem to score more on technical pop proficiency vs. most unusual songs.

I admit I had a teen phase of scoffing at the ESC a lot, but the last decade I got back into it just for the queer culture around it and the more fun acts. Even though they didn't win, I don't doubt the Ukraine entry will be remembered for years to come.

[schneefink]

Finland was fun too - and I loved that it came right after Germany, the contrast was great xD

[myrdschaem]

Yeah, that was great planning XD

[nonesensed]

I didn't watch Eurovision this year, but as a Swede it's pretty much impossible to not know it's going down XD So glad you had fun watching!

I think I'll check out a few of the contest entries once I have a calm moment - few things tend to be as cheering as watching the utter mismatch of song styles that Eurovision has going on :)

[schneefink]

I'm unsurprised that Eurovision is very big in Sweden! Yeah, it is very cheerful :D

[nonesensed]

Ooooh yeah, Eurovision (and it's many maaaaany national pre-competitions, aka the Melodifestival) is HUGE here XD It's indeed very cheerful! :)