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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Monday, May 16, 2011 :::
I feel the need to apologize to anyone whom I might have encouraged to listen to the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. I look forward to Eurovision every year for the cheezy Europop itself, for the more admirable aspects of nationalism on display, and, on rare occasion, for actual musical quality that makes it past the national filters. I don't usually agree with the winner, but I usually feel some warmness to it. Usually, but not always.
Profanities can not express the contempt with which I regard this year's winner. I would expect the average teenage band in the average American garage to do somewhat worse, but if I tuned into VH-1 - I'll assume it still exists, since I don't know otherwise - and came across this song, I would assume that they were simply rotating through their top 40 songs and that some innocuous, forgettable band had fluked its way to number 38 for a week and that the band members' children would have to hear about it incessantly from 2017 to 2046. If I truly believed that this were the best that Europe had to offer, I would not buy Swiss bonds at Greek interest rates.
I do want to highlight the Italian runner-up which I had previously missed. It is an intriguing non-abominable jazz tune. It has other characteristics that distinguish it from the winner, but those are some that stand out.
For other rejected alternatives, I recommend Europop from Estonia, a decent Euroballad from Austria, and a tamer-than-usual but still solid Eurorock entry from Turkey (which didn't make the final).Labels: Eurovision
::: posted by Steven at 12:10 AM
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