Eurovision 2009: What The Hell Was That?!

So our English neighbors ('scuse me: neighbours) invited us to their apartment this past weekend to see the Eurovision Finals. I figured they were referring to the Eurosport channel (similar to ESPN), and the neverending soccer matches, so the plan was to go up there with some beer and a bemused attitute. Before we went up, I did manage to figure out that this is some sort of singing/talent contest-- think European Idol, only much, much bigger. I had no idea.

Eurovision is a frenetically paced televised song contest that dates back to the mid-1950's, and is one of the most-watched broadcasts of the year. The participating countries that can submit artists must be members of something called the European Broadcasting Union which is a bit of a misnomer as it includes countries in Northern Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. As of this year, a whopping 51 countries have participated at least once, but for the actual broadcast the number of entries was capped at 25 for the sake of brevity (apparently, there are all sorts of semi-finals and eliminations leading up to the Big Broadcast). At any rate we were treated to 25 completely unmemorable songs in all styles, and a great many of them were so middle of the road, I thought I was at a Hootie & The Blowfish covers night or something. Our group (3 Brits, 3 Americans, 1 German) figured that because the songs were all so vanilla the presentation was the key, so for no good reason we were all rooting for the entries that had a touch of showmanship: Greece (an oilier Ricky Martin), Turkey (funky belly dancing), Germany (home team, and fairly burlesque), and the Ukraine, which was so absolutely over the top we were all cracking up over it. Naturally, none of these guys won-- the Norweigans did by a massive margin, with a song that none of us could remember 5 minutes after we saw it. Eurovision voting is heavily political and the votes are cast by phone-- but in an attempt to be fair, you can't vote for your home country. Anyway, it was a fun night. The Ukrainian video is above, and teeters on the NSFW, as it positively drips with sexuality-- crotch shots, engine graphics in the background, the shirtless Roman Guard flipping the bird... maybe it requires 3 beers to be as amusing as we thought at the time, but have at it.