by Alix Nunan
Another year, another exciting four hours of campy delight from our friends in Europe. On Saturday, Düsseldorf played host to the Eurovision Song Contest. This year featured more boy bands, more hair product, and more monocles than any other Eurovision. You read that right. Monocles.
If you’re tragically unaware of the Eurovision Song Contest, the basic idea is this: participating countries in Europe and vaguely Europe-adjacent areas submit a song that has not been used previously for commercial purposes. Everyone performs, and Europe picks their favorite by a combination of popular vote and jury panel. You cannot vote for your own country, which means that voting quickly morphs into a bizarrely political popularity contest. Someone could teach a class on European Politics using Eurovision voting as the main source material. The final outcome of the contest rarely seems to have anything to do with singing.
So why would you care about such a competition? Well, mostly, because it’s hilarious. Take the classic entry from Ukrainian cross-dressing personality Verka Serduchka shown above. That was Europe’s second favorite entry in 2007. This shit is golden. Let’s see what 2011 had to offer the world!
Most Insane: Moldova
The performance that everyone will remember from this year is Moldovan entry Zdob şi Zdub, “So Lucky.” This was the monocle song. Also included: cone hats, mad unicycle skills.
Biggest Upset: Jedward
Former X-Factor contestants Jedward were the most talked about entry of this year. In the week leading up to Eurovision, these Irish identical twins consistently topped Google’s Eurovision Predictor Gadget, based on search data. Granted, there was no quality check on those searches, so the high count could very well have been thanks to searches like “Why are these psycho twins invading Europe?” or “How flammable is Jedward’s hair?” Jedward is notoriously polarizing, featuring both huge entertainment value and extremely irritating personalities. Their song “Lipstick” will almost certainly get stuck in your head, and their performance, described by UK commentator Graham Norton as “fueled by a heady mix of sugary drinks and hairspray fumes,” is not something that anyone will soon forget. So after all the hype, it was pretty surprising when they finished a mediocre eighth in the final.
Biggest Disappointment: European Voting
As usual, Europe’s voting defies logic, with Azerbaijan coming first, Italy second, and Sweden third. Winner Azerbaijan was… dull. In fact, their performance was only noteworthy as “the duet where they kept caressing each other.” Upon rewatching, the song is sort of generically catchy, but there were several equally catchy songs this year. For instance, the UK’s Blue sang a similarly genred “I Can” and finished 10th despite an established fan-base. Since Azerbaijan is not a juggernaut of European politics, it’s unclear why this song was singled out as the best, especially since Azerbaijan may or may not be in Asia. Also strange: the female lead came out for the encore carrying neighboring Turkey’s flag.
Sweden’s “Popular” was the only remotely memorable entry of the three, largely thanks to the lead singer shattering a pane of glass during his performance. But even that mark is on tenuous ground since they had compete with Greece, Russia, and the UK for the title of “Now which boy band was that?”
Lastly: Italy. Italy has been absent from the competition since 1997, and returned with a vengeance to come in second. Unfortunately, their song begs the question, “you had fourteen years and that’s the best you could come up with?” Will Arnett said it well in a tweet during the broadcast, “thanks for the intermission Italy.”
Most Offensive Portion of the Night: Moldovan Window-Washer
Before each act performs, there’s a little bit of filler about the country going onstage. Only, this year, host country Germany decided that it would be a good idea to use these segments to showcase how emigrants from elsewhere in Europe are supporting its economy and culture. Russia contributed a prima ballerina to the great country of Deutschland, the Danes compete against them in sailing, and Lithuania generously teaches German children how to ski. But the only Moldovan they managed to find was a window washer. This is like the US hosting the (sadly fictional) Amerivision Song Contest and showcasing a field of migrant workers picking vegetables in our clip on Mexico. Worse still, the Moldovan feature and performance was immediately followed by the German segment, which highlighted the emcees getting glammed up for the night. I imagine that back in the dressing rooms, Moldovan window-washers were polishing mirrors with old toothbrushes.
Most Magical Performance: Estonia
Because there was a magic trick! Ok truthfully, I only included this because apparently this girl played Sharpay in the Estonian High School Musical. She looks like an Eastern European Rachel Berry — fitting, because everyone knows that Rachel Berry is the Sharpay of “Glee.”
Overall Outcome/Most Promise for Next Year:
Despite Europe’s best efforts to be boring with their voting, 2011 had some of the best entries of recent Eurovisions. The costumes were tackier, the songs less substantive (you’d be amazed how many numbers prominently featured the lyric “da da dum” or some similar variant thereof) and the voting more baffling than ever before. And ths heightened level of insanity brought more American attention to the competition than usual. Maybe this means we’ll finally get our own broadcast of the contest instead of being forced to stream it online. Will Arnett even offered this via Twitter on Saturday: “if someone can figure it out, David Cross and I are offering to host next year..for reals…let’s make it happen.” For the love of tacky outfits, European politics and psycho twins, someone please get on this.
Alix Nunan is a human being who lives in Washington, DC. She writes the blog The Importance of Being Alix.
