THE YAYS AND NAYS OF THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST GRAND FINAL 2015
If you watch the Eurovision Song Contest, read on, however if you don’t, then the following will make as much sense to you as why some people voluntarily drink fermented onions when they feel unwell.
So let’s begin in order, as the several hour entertainment/ordeal commences.
Opening: usual scenes of host country, this year being Austria, with all glamourous shots that make National Geographic look like images taken with a ten year old phone camera. Violin lady, orchestra, blah blah, CONCHITA. As the winner of last year’s contest, she (being respectful here, if I say ‘he’ or ‘it’ I will get shot) looks incredible, purple dress and Kardashian hair and the shaded-in beard. So weird that she always looks more masculine as a woman than as her male self. Moving onto hostesses all singing happily along, big smiles, then choir join in, then a rapper who looks a bit predatory (this is a medley gone totally wrong) then Conchita bellows a little more, and out trot all the contestants, similar to the Olympics where they all smile and wave and migrate to the Green Room. Insert terrible joke about Australia’s participation, then montage of building bridges across Europe with soundtrack of Dina Garapova’s ‘What If’ in the background, blah blah blaaaaah, and then the very clipped-accented hosts yap on with the usual welcomes, this year giving a nod to Chinese viewers. One third of the hostesses, Mirjam Weichselbraun claiming she had been learning Chinese all night, yet she never uttered a single word in Mandarin or Cantonese. Good job. Then we have Arabella Kiesbauer, the second third of the hostesses who thinks herself as sassy as Queen Latifah, and Alice Tumler, the final third who seems deliriously high and finds everything hysterically funny, thus nowhere near as stoic and grumpy as Mirjam.
If you haven’t noticed already by the assortment of contestants and the mix of judges, the theme this year is all about everyone all being equal, accepted, and united. Feel the lurve. In the semi final, Finland sent in representatives who had varying degrees of disabilities, which was hailed as an inspiration for all. While I will not link their performance, I will instead link the lyrics here, written by the artists, just so we can get a feel of what they had to say. Now moving onto tonight’s contestants:
- SLOVENIA: Headphones. WHY? At least do a Mariah Carey and jam a sequined earplug into your ear if you want to protect your hearing for whatever reason. You standing there with gigantic headphones clamped onto your skull just makes us feel like we are intruding in on your private session in your bedroom, even though there is a psychotic dancer contorting away behind you and the piano player happily bashing away in the background. The dancer likes to play Air Violin, which is far classier than that lowbrow pastime of Air Guitar, yet looks very…yeah. You can see why some of the acts had a warning shown beforehand, advising viewers that they just might have a fit and die from all the flashing (something along those lines) as those in charge of lighting got a little overenthusiastic with the strobe lights this year. Maybe it is to distract us from the fact that Maraaya is wearing a giant doily that she stole from her grandmother’s hall table. Thank you and goodbye, Slovenia, make way for…
2. FRANCE: If Dawn French had a younger, more French sister, Lisa Angell would be her. She starts off pretty blandly with N’oubliez Pas, not drawing us in at all, but the show only just began, so we aren’t to the point of waddling off for snacks if the first 5 seconds isn’t attention-grabbing enough. But then she decides to display her rear teeth and tonsils, and really gets into it, gap-teeth and all. Actually a good song, despite the Emo-feel of the set, and the odd nude-coloured drummers appearing. She finishes off with a pose and we then move onto the land of France’s third largest religion…
3. ISRAEL: Nadav Guedej is 16. SIXTEEN. He looks like he is at least mid twenties, which means by the time he is in his fifties we will have decomposed completely. With gold, winged Adidas shoes, he wails a bit to his Mama about how someone broke his heart again, but it’s all okay because he’s just going to dance around a bit, which solves all problems. If all people in his country adopted this attitude, well, the world would be a very different place. Anyhow, the dancing for the chorus is hysterical (think of a zombie leaning backwards and flapping its arms) but at the end of the day, despite how catchy the song is, he isn’t the best singer or dancer, and he sweats a lot, which is why God taught us not to dance when wearing a blazer. Something like that. He ends with a selfie, which is all a bit gross, but hey, he’s a teenager, it’s their thing. Did you know that teenagers spend an average of five hours and thirty six minutes taking selfies per week? They certainly don’t have confidence issues in this generation. The following artists only need to take one selfie and can use it for life, and you shall see why…
4. ESTONIA: These two are as morbid as you can get, and they have just one facial expression each, but more disturbingly…they do not blink. At all. Elina Born & Stig Rästa are actual land fishies, representing the former Soviet country with a shadow each that disturbingly does not move. The fact that Stig has a guitar kind of sets the mood: very busker style. Nobody stops and takes time out of their day to stand staring entranced at a busker, so why send one to the biggest music contest in the world? They still aren’t blinking, nor smiling, but that all changes with…
5. UNITED KINGDOM: These two from Electro Velvet can’t stop smiling. At all. They were tipped to come in at last place (with word that they may not even get a single point), even though the song isn’t THAT bad, but it isn’t that good either. Bianca’s dress does not flatter her at all, and Alex just looks annoying. Each chorus ends with some fluero neon dancing and jazz hands all around, and then a very, very, VERY embarrassing skatting routine that just comes out totally wrong. His skat was just scat. No wonder the odds were so against them. Now we have a country that has had quite possibly the most amount of publicity this year…
6. ARMENIA: Genealogy use their song to further acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, with six singers from six different continents, and the stern words ‘Don’t deny’ (The song name was changed due to heightened controversy about it’s political message, so instead it was called Face The Shadow, which is a little more subtle…slightly). I heard this song a while ago, and although it wasn’t too bad to listen to at the start, it just got too screechy towards the end. Obviously neighbouring Azerbaijan gave no points to the performance and quite possibly sat there denying away. It is a very poignant song, and the mood is suddenly changed when the following duo prance out onto the stage…
7. LITHUANIA: Ugh. This is where the overload of happiness begins. Monika Linkytė and Vaidas Baumila are just sickening. They smile so much that all viewers will instantly start frowning. I was texting a friend who was watching at the same time, in Europe, and we spent probably a minute sending the same word back and forth over and over: NO. I actually started getting violent while experiencing this performance. Too. Much. Happy. Australians would know of a children’s television show called Hi-5, where five idiots bounce off the walls of the set with a severe overdose of Xanax. This performance is Hi-5 mixed with the cast of Glee off their faces on ecstacy. STOP IT. They even pause in the middle of the song to kiss. Not just a peck. A kiss that goes on a little too long, and just to make the song even more controversial, the two male and two female backup dancers kiss one another — THE HORROR OF THE HOMOSEXUALITY OF IT ALL. Lithuania is currently giving Russia the cold shoulder in more ways than one, so perhaps this is another nose-thumbing to their enormous neighbour and it’s homophobic politics? Vaidas yells ‘If you feel the love, raise your hands in the air!’: My hands were squashed beneath my thighs and weren’t moving. No no, no love felt here. Go away, do not win, do not look us in the eye. Make way for…
8. SERBIA: The way needed to be made for her, because she isn’t exactly a wisp of a person. Remember when I said everything is all about equality? Bojana Stamenov wants to tell us that she is different (Because she’s fat) (Look, you can’t get all huffy about it, it is kind of the point of her song, unless she is saying she is different because she likes to mow her front lawn in a criss-cross pattern until all blades of grass are clipped) but it’s okay, so that is a relief. Don’t want to get all freaked out over her being different and it ISN’T okay, good Lord. Dressed as a Viking, sort of, we expect her to have a typical fat lady voice, (Because the bigger one gets, the larger their lungs are, thus stronger voice) but she is a bit…soft. But that all changes once she really lets loose and starts roaring and uh…dancing. The crowd start yelling, either with joy or fear, but she does end on a way better note than she started. She and France have that in common, but the next artists do not share this talent of drawing us in…
9. NORWAY: If I were a corny joker, I would destroy all self respect by calling this performance Snore-way, but I am NOT a corny joker, and shall keep my self respect. Norway has another boring man, Mørland, who is borderline ugly, joined by the grown up version of the girl from the animated feature film Brave. Debrah Scarlett is proof that the Norse invaded Scotland fifty billion years ago, whenever it was, because we simply expect her to start garbling in that distinct Scottish drawl. But no, she just blandly totters about in her stiff tablecloth dress singing in a non Celtic accent, while he displays his forehead wrinkles. She is so redheaded that even her surname is red. Just…ugh. Once they have lulled us into a sleep, we are interrupted by the hostesses, to remind us that they are alive, and that Alice is still very very high, and they say a giggly hi in Swedish to…
10. SWEDEN: Were you expecting me to say Cambodia? Sweden continue their fairly new tradition of presenting only glamourous people to the world. Abba made us all convinced that the Swedes are a tad odd looking, but lately there is more control over what we see. The uglies are kept out of sight, and we are faced with the very big-grinned Måns Zelmerlöw. Somehow, despite wearing a skintight, light coloured, long sleeved shirt and flapping his arms all over the place, he simply does not sweat. At all. Maybe he is related to the fish from Estonia, and isn’t human after all. He begins by simply sitting down, and then begins to trip out, sharing his hallucinations with us all, with a fat animated stick figure (you work it out) joining in with his choreography. Cue lots of CPG effects as he sends comets flying around and makes it rain and all this other shit, and then a whole army of the stick-fatties stomp around behind his as he yells about us being the heroes of our time. Thanks for awarding us all with that honour, but MY GOD DID YOU NEED TO DO THAT SUDDEN CLOSE UP? All was okay until the camera dove straight up inside his snout and scared the living crap out of us (as opposed to the dead crap that we may behold). He is VERY happy though (probably because he knew he would win the contest, yep, there is the giveaway for you all), and makes us wonder why there is not a breeding programme in place to expand the breed of Glamourous Swedes. All clean cut and nothing like…
11. CYPRUS: John Karayiannis is a nerd (It’s not just the glasses, he is actually a nerd) who simply could not be bothered shaving. He moans about ‘’one thing I should have done’’, which is shave. He is so boring that the colour cannot even be bothered, so he just stands in black and white for a while until the colour wakes up (while we fall asleep) and doesn’t make much difference. He tells us that he should have been there for us. Which is fine, thank you, but you do not need to repeat it five hundred and fifty squillion times. God. Choose a new line. Do some British skatting. Do some Christina Aguilera style riffing. Anything. Just stop repeating yourself. Argh. I actually started slumping over in my seat, he was boring me that much, but then I had to sit up straight for…
12. AUSTRALIA: My country, represented by our first Australian Idol winner, Guy Sebastian, who admittedly has one of the best voices in the country, and is sort of liked by everyone. But he really should not have worn the stupid hat. Nor should he have hired the repulsive female backup singer who is just so out of place, so badly dressed, so so so NO. Guy tells us to do what we want, which may not be the best advice for some people out there, and then assures us that we will do tonight again, because somehow he has access to time travel or a repeat button, so thank you for letting us know that Groundhog Day has begun. At the bottom of the screen is a hashtag #AUS which looks a bit like RAUS if you squint, so we are herded out of the building by Germany’s neighbour to the northwest (I hope that word does not trigger off searches for the Kardashian/West child)…
13. BELGIUM: Do not be fooled by how innocent Loïc Nottet looks. First he has backup dancers in white who look like the Von Trapp children gone wrong, but they don’t really distract us much from his high, prepubescent voice and the very sudden pirouette that I am not sure was relevant or not. He suddenly gets dizzy from his spinning, so has a nap on the stage floor, flanked by his ghostly dancers, while he sings and actually twitches about on the floor, just like a corpse before Rigor Mortis sets in. He comes back to life, pulls more faces, rargh, and then…just…wow. Apparently he has gone into total zombie mode, but a zombie that has some form of palsy, and flaps about frighteningly on the stage, wide eyed and smearing his hands across his face, which as we all know is only going to spread germs and increase the likelihood of pimples and acne. Not attractive. Nor is…
14. AUSTRIA: If you like man-buns, then you will be thrilled. If like me, you really really really do not, then you won’t be. Even worse, after the bunned montage showing a snapshot of Austria and things to do there, the lead singer of The Makemakes lets his hair down, and whacks a hipster hat over his head, and proceeds to annoy us all with his really, really, really crappy song, belting away on the piano while a feral straight from the 70s gyrates with a guitar in the middle of the stage and a not-very-bright looking drummer drums (as one does) beside him. It is so crap, that it comes to little surprise that Austria got absolutely no votes whatsoever. None. I mean, the guy looks like he smells stale, and nobody is going to vote for a person who reeks. He sets the piano on fire, which is just reckless, so even less respect from us. Go home, back to the hovel that you are squatting in. He looks slightly as though he could be Conchita’s older brother, which is ironic, because Conchita then appears with Arabella, who makes a terrible joke that nobody laughs at, and this ordeal is ended by the performance of…
15. GREECE: When we think of blonde Greeks, this is what we think of. Maria Elena Kyriakou is the typical statuesque blonde that Greece loves to shove onto the stage, but she admittedly does have a voice, even though she has absolutely no shape to her body whatsoever. Rulers have more curves than her. Her dress is too sequined and she looks oddly like Hillary Duff’s older sister, Hayley, though without the enormous chin that the latter sports. Lots of arm movements and dramatic faces, and eventually we realise she has been watching Celine Dion far too intently and actually turned into the singer herself. We go from tall and lithe, to short and chubby with…
16. MONTENEGRO: This old man, he played one, he played…with far too many Botox needles and now looks like a cross between a Los Angelean real estate salesman and a pizza shop owner. Knez strolls through his collection of hoes, who join in on very severely choreographed hand movements and we get distracted by a very sparkly doily placed on the heads of one of the hoes. Maybe she stole from Slovenia’s grandmother’s place too. They launch into a generic Euro dance, then get super hand-flappy, super-yelly and then we go bye byes and hello to the very very grinny…
17. GERMANY: Remember Gretchen Weiners from Mean Girls? After she graduated, she went to Germany and tried out for Eurovision, and now here she is spending the first sixth of the song trying to display her butt for us to all admire. Over. And over. And over again. Ann Sophie then slithers around a little more, and generally just shrieks and yells, clearly annoyed because she has absolutely no lips whatsoever, which would upset anyone really. Europe was obviously repulsed by the lack of transition between facial skin and teeth, because Germany, like their southern neighbours, got a grand total of Nil Points. Oh. Her backing singers do the usual backing singer dance, which is so dull, but I obviously noticed because Ann Sophie herself was getting so annoying I wanted to look at anything except for her. So it is a relief when she walks away and in wheels…
18. POLAND: With her dress splayed out all around her wheelchair, Monika Kuszyńska strikes a pretty dramatic image. Again, we are using the I Am Different theme, and we all feel sadness when we briefly see images of her performing when she was younger, tottering around on seventy feet tall legs, which are now sort of on display on her wheelchair. You cannot help but hope that the lack of leg-usage is only temporary. Again, okay song, but not spectacular. At least she does not screech like…
19. LATVIA: This Latvian of indeterminate origins (Again, different, accept everyone, blah blah) at first has the squeaky voice of a mouse, but then suddenly the mouse found the volume dial and she sends us all instantly deaf with her siren-like voice. No joke, if she said her day job is as a fire engine siren, I would believe her. As a sea-siren, Aminata would never have lured men into the ocean with the beauty of her voice, but instead compelled them to blow off their own heads to escape from the shrieking. Ironically her dress looks like a red version of Mermaid Barbie. Some hard-of-hearing people clearly liked her performance, because she actually did quite well in the voting later. Unlike…
20. ROMANIA: Voltaj’s song unfortunately was just dull. Sad message, about children of the war being sent away, but just so…DULL. Suitcases standing morbidly on stage represented the harrowing experiences, but still, the performance was a total non-event. His pants were too short for him, which was annoying to look at, and was a relief when onto the stage entered…
21. SPAIN: As Little Red Riding Hood, Edurne carefully removes the hood (to not damage the hurrr) and then begins lots of dramatic hand gestures, which is all she can really do, because a shirtless man is clutching onto the ends of her cloak, thus trapping her, like some hairless wolf. Of course, when we think Spain, we think fiery women and overly sexual men, and they have used both stereotypes here, so it isn’t really going with the theme of being different, per se. Anyhow, so she frees herself from the clutches of wolf-man by stripping off a bit, and then he forces her to dance and be flung about by him, which is all very jolly until he stops suddenly and runs away. Oh. Bye bye. Most artists have a favourite sound to make or line to repeat, and hers is ‘’heeyeahyiyeah’’ which she repeats roughly five thousand times, give or take one or two repetitions. All this gyrating and yelling is leaving me a bit…
22. HUNGARY: Yes, I will go shoot myself now. Terrible joke. This is another political song against war, sung by another lip-less singer, Boggie (Yes, her actual name) whose makeup is pretty good at distracting us from the no teeth-to-skin blending situation happening. Think about it, she would not be amoungst the statistics of women who apparently consume (actually swallow) several tonnes of lipstick per lifetime. She’d be lucky to even find any surface area to fill in at all. Good hair, but the whole performance all a bit dull. She blinks a LOT, while moaning to us to give her one good reason. Right..ummm, just BECAUSE. By this point I started getting distracted by the fact that one of her nostrils sat higher than the other, and spent the rest of the song staring at that, until the gun-tree in the background suddenly turned green and all was happy again. Yay. Her lack of lipstick is certainly contrast to the lips of…
23. GEORGIA: Georgia is represented by a girl who decided to not just raid her local cosmetics outlet, but use every single product, all at once, and seemingly the entire contents of said products. Nina Sublatti continues the drama of her gothic image, and the starkly lighter eyebrows compared to the drab black hair, with some feathery shoulder decorations. It appears as though she slaughtered a pair of ravens and then bolted them onto her upper arms before performing, then completely forgot to put on a skirt/shorts/pants/anything. It’s just black hotpants and then legs that are so long that her torso looks as short as a thumb. This was a performance that included the epilepsy warning, and we can see exactly why. We are lucky to catch glimpses of her between the constant flashing, and we can all feel the froth begin to form at the corners of our mouths. Not a good look. No wonder she is screeching so much, she is probably going blind before our eyes. Her performance finally ends and is followed by neighbouring…
24. AZERBAIJAN: Azerbaijan prides itself on being The Land of Fire, which all sounds a bit Hellish, which may explain why the performance isn’t exactly a chirpy one about rainbows erupting from fields of smiling sunflowers. First I was getting distracted by the lumpiness of Elnur Huseynov’s forehead, made obvious because of the morose lighting, but then he too begins the hand gestures, a la Spain, and grabs things out of the air, possibly a mosquito, which sets off the dancers. You’d expect dancers to be a little more toned, but hey maybe they are trying to be ‘different’. Good job. The female dancer goes all nightmarish and contortion-y across the stage, which is hysterical and horrific all at once, and after a bit of squealing from Elnur (Yes, squealing) she feels compelled to start fighting with the other dancer for no apparent reason. He hits a particularly high note that would impress even the BeeGees in all their testicle-less fame, and then it all dies away, with the dancers flanking his sides, chests rising from floor to ceiling in sufferance. Poor things. We then go north to the land who will always gain votes from it’s neighbours…
25. RUSSIA: Like Sweden, Russia likes to send only the most aesthetically pleasing people to Eurovision, with exception to the Buranovkiye Babushkis, who all looked bewildered as though they weren’t entirely sure what was going on, while singing about everyone’s favourite childhood cartoon CatDog. So this year we have Polina Gagarina, who likes to open her eyes wide while singing, and with this unblinking scare, coupled with her bellowing about One Million Voices (which all sounds a bit overwhelming and deafening really) it creates quite a frightening image. Again, I found something to distract and annoy me, which was a mole just next to her shoulder (Not shown in image below, I spared your eyes). That mole was staring into my soul, just like the host body it was leeching off. Polina’s dress was splayed out all over the floor, so she clearly wasn’t going to go very far. Despite her limited use of the stage floor, she still managed to sway around like long grass in the wind and pretty much look like a younger, more emotional sister of Portia Di Rossi. After a bit of arm flapping, she finished by draining her lungs completely, then sobbed and sputtered out th-th-th-thank-you and spasibo, just in case her Slavic counterparts had never heard an English word of thanks before and were wondering what she was blibbering about. With a bit of panting, she departed and was replaced by…
26. ALBANIA: Who was charming looking in a masculinely handsome way…if that makes sense. Elhaida Dani too got her screech on, and let us know that we are her life, which is nice to know, even though we shut down her dreams, but it’s all good because at the end of the day we are still her everything, thank goodness for that. Screech screech, yell yell, and then she was no more. We went across the Adriatic (not LITERALLY, we aren’t that lucky) and were joined by…
27. ITALY: One of the favourites, and surprise surprise we have a group of young men in suits singing Opera, because of course Italy has never released such a concept upon the world. After a montage of the sweatband-wearing singers of Il Volo happily whizzing around on wheelchairs, a la Poland, we then meet them one by one, beginning with Mr Serious Squint, whose eyebrows are almost laser-perfect, who makes the most of his time on camera, and when NOT on camera, he loves to point at the audience and make everyone feel special. His crony is just…hairy. Misshapen mouth girt by hair, hair, and more patchy gross hair, with big fat sideburns that a bikie would be jealous of, and a pair of eyebrows who look as though they were joined by several other sets of brows to create a Super Duo of Brows. Wrong. And finally we have Wally of Where’s Wally fame (Or Where’s Waldo, for my American readers), but in a suit instead of that red and white striped top, that surely would reek by now after years and years of use. Grot. So the crowd goes mental and everything is all wonderful. Yay yay, whatever, the song was generic, but hey, there were worse, and at least their pants fit, unlike the Romanian’s.
Now time for intermission and repetition over and over and over of the performances so that everyone in Europe can vote and everyone else can sit and stare longingly at the screen, feeling very left out. Alice is still high, and Mirjam is just a skull. A skull with no personality. But the drummer from the following intermission act certainly makes up for her lack of personality by showing more personality than someone who has snorted a bucket of coke cut with a bucket of Omo. I will actually have nightmares thanks to this fright of a person. His eyes are bulging out, as though trying to escape from his sweaty head, as are his teeth, while his back is so hunched over as though it is folding itself with embarrassment. CALM DOWN.
Hosts countdown for end of votes, the numbers explode dramatically, and then Conchita returns with a terrible wig and cloak combo, looking like a wealthy 50 year old housewife from Toorak (swish suburb of Melbourne, for those of you who don’t know) who is off for a peruse in David Jones (an expensive department store where you need to modify your accent in order to shop there. Night becomes naght, and right becomes rarght, and so on) for a few hours. Conchita really needs to whiten her teeth a little more…the beige tinge to them just spoils the near perfection of her image, well, for a man pretending to be a lady pretending to be a bearded half/half. Off comes the cloak, and she now has the typical black chinos up to the ribcage and one of those oddly small jackets that must leave a chill upon the exposed kidneys — this jacket has clearly been doused in glue and Conchita had fun rolling around in a Swarovski store for a bit. After she hollers for a bit, she is then quizzed by Mirjam, and tells us all that her Unstoppables are all there, which sounds a bit frightening, to say the least. I am now worried that there will be stomping herds of Unstoppables plodding about the streets at night, doing whatever clearly-evil deeds that Unstoppables would do. Thanks, Conchita, we’re now all scared shitless.
Cue Alice’s giggly return, joined by a toothy Italian winner of Junior Eurovision, which is Europe’s version of the Little Miss Alabama contests. Vincenzo yells a bit, which admittedly sounds better than many contestants from the evening, and tells Alice that he is fourteen, to which she responds ‘’Thirteen! Really?’’ at which point part of his soul would have died on the spot.
And so we endure more and more stilted and awkward commentary from the hostesses who are about as comfortable with one another as five obese people in a SmartCar on a hot day with the air con off. Jon Ola Sand speaks to us in a manner as though someone has a gun pressed against his privates lest he utter the wrong word, and we then finally proceed into the voting, because nobody really gives a shit about Jon Ola Sand’s yearly speech. Bye now.
Montenegro: Andrea let’s us know that she is honoured to present the votes, and Serbia is so thrilled from receiving 12 points that she jiggles around on the spot and probably burns a few calories. Keep it up, girl. One thing you will notice, is many countries have terrible reception, so there will be lots of awkward silences and people talking over one another and looking confused in general. And they ALL shout.
Malta: Julie, from Julie & Ludwig fame (On Again, Off Again, from years ago, where she shouted during a duet where Ludwig looked petrified of her) has aged a bit and turned into Mariah Carey, but with a clipped British accent. Jolly good show.
Finland: Krista Seigfried is offensively happy and her hands want to tell you so, just in case her face and yelling did not demonstrate this fully. No bra, boobs out, yell yell, bye Krista.
Greece: We all love Elena Paparizou for a reason. Her charm and looks win us over no matter what. No criticism here.
Portugal: Hi Suzi! Oh, bye Suzi. That was sudden. Suzi is no more. Mirjam offers the wise words of ‘Suzi seems to be gone’, lest we were questioning the meaning of the black screen and all. Thanks for clearing that up, Mirjam, you’re GREAT.
Romania: Miss Anorexia 2015 (I am not sure if she has been officially titled yet, but chances are she has) grimaces at us with her deep smile/frown/hungry lines and makes us all feel a need to force feed her like a goose in preparation for foie gras. Poor thing.
Belarus: Last year’s contestant, Teo suffers with Belarus’s notoriously bad reception and waves just a bit too much, to the point of looking a bit special. He can be friends with Finland from the Semi final, whose lyrics were linked earlier, in case you wanted to let your mind explode. Belarus of course awards Russia with twelve points so that Russia does not eat them. Wise move.
Albania: Andri’s blind and senile mother dressed him for the occasion, and as a result he will spend yet another year of his life being single. He could always audition for The Wiggles if he felt like it, considering that lately they seem to be marrying one another, which sounds a bit gross.
Moldova: I don’t understand why the Moldovan spokespeople ALWAYS look scary. Moldovans themselves usually aren’t, but they seem to have a strong desire to be represented by the most vampiric of people. Horrifying. Olivia likes her makeup and she loves her boobs. Good for you.
Azerbaijan: If Daniel Radcliffe happened to be reborn in Armenia’s detested neighbouring country, he would be Tural the spokesperson. He looks a bit lost though, poor thing. But he gives many ‘sanks’, and shares with us that he was ‘a little bit surprised’ by the huit point vote, and ‘also a little bit surprised’ by the dix point vote, but don’t worry, once he got to the douze point vote he was no longer surprised, for those of you who were concerned for the state of his heart after all these shocks and excitement.
Latvia: Markus is very good friends with the hairspray can and not very good friends with the local menswear store, who spitefully fitted him with a red blazer because they hate his guts. He gives a very stiff wave goodbye: maybe the hairspray floated too far and paralysed his arm. We could say poor thing, but he is wearing a red blazer, so no, he needs to suffer.
Serbia: Maja stands and looks lost amoungst terrible quality imagery. End of story.
Estonia: Tanja from last year begins to say hello, and then meets the same fate as Suzi. They must know too much. Oh.
Denmark: Basim, also from last year, has cut off his crunchy curly hair and happily awards Australia with huit points, with lots of yelling of course. Thanks Basim.
Switzerland: Mind you, you may notice that Alice likes to give very meaningful smiles to the camera as she turns to the main screen, as she has clearly learned the art of seduction, while Mirjam grumpily looks down at her prompts and hates the world. Anyway, Laeticia from Switzerland, like many contestants this year, loves her shoulder pads. Width!
Belgium: Walid, from Belgium tried to learn the art of seduction, but clearly not at the same institute as Alice, with the very sleazy and predatory ‘’Good evening lllllllladiessss’’ which makes us all feel a bit dirty, having borne witness to this. He loves making full use of his face, clearly he hasn’t gone for Two For One offers at the Botox clinic with Montenegro’s contestant.
France: Virginie has a couture jacket. Or maybe it isn’t couture. She’s allowed to wear whatever she wants: she’s French, so it is fashion. Deal with it. France unfortunately awards their neighbours, Belgium with douze points for the moronic zombie performance. Poor taste.
Armenia: Lilit is the younger sister of the star of Two Broke Girls, Kat Dennings. She isn’t REALLY, but she may as well be. She gives douze points for Russia, so that they do not stomp all over Armenia. Safety.
Ireland: Nicky In Dublin, as he is apparently known, loves to starch his collar. Or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, he is probably going to lose circulation to his head soon.
Sweden: Mariette of course is not ugly, because of Sweden’s determination to stamp out all imagery of ugly Swedes in the media, but she doesn’t seem very bright. Lots of awkward silence, and a hairstyle that looks disturbingly like a brain.
Germany: Barbara is like every other Barbara that we all know: loud, happy and a bit over-done up. She loves to put emphasis on all K sounds, and shout and roar in general, perhaps because the thing hanging off her shoulder is beginning to rupture organs and disfigure her spine.
Australia: Oh. My. God. Australia’s favourite staccato-speaking newsreader, Lee Lin Chin is here, looking a bit like a semi-dried up frog, and just as skinny as Romania’s spokesperson. She happily chirps away and somehow seems hilarious, even though she didn’t actually say anything comedic in particular. She just looks hysterical regardless. We then have a sudden chat with Russia’s contestant Polina, who is leaking fluid from the eyeballs and breathing erratically, but Mirjam clears this up by asking ‘You are crying?’, so that may explain her symptoms. She just wants to say, she just wants to say, (come on, spit it out) she just wants to say Hi to her mother. Okay, you could have said that in two syllables: Hi Mum. Cue more flappy arm waving and we are then joined by…
Czech Republic: Daniela loves her some sequins, and has as many sequins on her dress as Conchita has Swarovski on hers. Her plummy British accent makes a refreshing change to the general US accent many ESL speakers have. Thank you, and bye bye Daniela.
Spain: Bland. Bland bland bland. Lara could not only be a fly on the wall, but also the wallpaper on the wall and quite possibly the mortar behind it. She just lacks…everything. Mirjam grouchily sneers ‘’Bye bye, thank you…Spain’ as though referring to someone as Spain is quite possibly the worst insult ever.
Austria: Kati does not like her V sounds, so she substitutes them all with W sounds instead. But we can’t complain because she gave Australia douze points, so she can pronounce the alphabet any way she damn well pleases. Go for your life, Kati.
Macedonia: The imaginatively named Marko Mark wishes Eurovision a ‘’Happy Siiiixtiet Burdday’’ which was very sweet. You can go away now, Marko Mark, and perhaps find a way of incorporating the Mark name into a middle name for yourself too.
Slovenia: Tinkara from last year’s show presents her country’s vote morbidly. Thanks for that. Now you can go tinker with your violin now. Toodles.
Hungary: Csilla is Conchita’s 50year old new character’s sister, from Toorak also. Enchante.
United Kingdom: We are greeted with a very stiff-faced, very gaunt Nigella Lawson looking as though she and her boobs are being held at gunpoint, with nervous glances to her left and right, and a very dead feel to her whole presentation. I guess when she isn’t cooing about food she finds no joy in life. Someone give this woman a bowl of whipped cream already.
Georgia: Natia sprouted on the screen with her poorly done makeup, which offended the film crew so much that they turned the camera off. Bye bye Natia. Alice laughed happily of course, because if you are Alice, the whole world is just one raucous jokefest really.
Lithuania: The interestingly named Ugne has hair, lots of hair, and it just fills the whole screen. On a political note, some of you may know that Lithuania is currently training their countrymen in preparation for if Russia suddenly decides to repeat it’s Ukraine attack on them instead, and thus, perhaps unsurprisingly they gave Russia absolutely no points whatsoever. BOYCOTTAGE.
Netherlands: Hrrrrmmm. Edsilia Rombley very unsuccessfully represented the Netherlands several years ago, but has no problem with returning, attempting to be larger than life and channelling her inner ghetto queen. She starts off with the sassy hands on hips, then flaps the hands around which is the fashion this year, bulges her eyes — also a trend, and then goes into full stereotypical Shanequa mode, with the head jerking from side to side and an impromptu dance session. Calm down, Edsilia.
Poland: Ola has a head dress but no facial movements. Maybe the head ornament is a means of control of sorts. Poor Poland.
Israel: The very British Ofer offers Israel’s votes with his very very large head. He could sit beside a tombstone and look like it’s brother, if tombstones happened to have siblings.
Russia: Dmitry is very happy. Very smug. He announces that ‘’MUDDA RUSSIA IS HERE’’, just to give their neighbours a paranoid reminder. He clearly sees no difference between announcing votes and announcing fighters in a boxing match, but he actually makes up for this annoying behaviour by happily yelling: ‘’And the twelve points…go to RUSSIA! HA HA!!!’’ (Watch it here) at which point I probably injured a lung or two from snorting violently with laughter. Clearly he was joking. Russia can do a lot of things, but they cannot break the No Voting For Your Own Country rule. That’s just sacred.
San Marino: San Marino has a very limited population, so when it comes to Eurovision, they just give their national singer, Valentina a makeover each year and send her back into the war zone. But this year she was demoted to being a mere spokesperson. She didn’t let that stop her though, by singing a line from each year of her performances with the final three votes. Yes, we get it, you sang for San Marino. Mirjam makes it all awkward again when she says that Valentina will probably sing again next year, with the snide side remark ‘’can’t wait’’. Don’t hold back, Mirjam, people just might start to think you are nice or something.
Italy: Federico, like Spain, had overdosed on BLAND. Snore.
Iceland: Sigríður Halldórsdóttir decided to wear a very odd dress, featuring a beige solid panel down the front and then a panel of black on each side, giving her the most bizarrely deformed silhouette that made her body appear to be twiggish, and then her arms voluminously chunky. Wrong choice. Nice use of letters in your name though. Congratulate your parents for us.
Cyprus: Nikos and his velvet smoking jacket. No no no, wrong. By this time, Mirjam has really got the shits and just wants to go home. Alice is still having a grand old time. Mirjam sighs that the winner is Sweden, but grudgingly continues to the final few awardings of points from the remaining countries.
Norway: Margarethe likes lollies and candy, as evident by her shoulder pads adorned with a sugar plantation’s worth of diabetes. She also likes to dance and be socially retarded in general. Too late, Margarethe, we know the winner, your words are useless. Leave.
Portugal/Estonia/Sweden: All three girls return, giggling as much as Alice, with an unimpressed Mirjam glaring them down. This finishes up the voting process. That only took ten years.
So Sweden won, he’s all happy, and still not sweating, and the hostesses clearly have no idea what to do now. Cue lots of very very strange silences. Måns Zelmerlöw gets his award, grins liplessly, tells us all that we are the heroes (are Conchita’s Unstoppables also heroes? Can they multitask that much?) and then repeats his whole performance again and we all clap and turn off the TV. Good night Eurovision. See you next year.
