Eurovision 2011 - Dusseldorf to Baku

What a night!

Eurovision is essentially my Christmas, and it really didn't disappoint. It's perhaps cliche, but I really do think that the quality of the songs improves year on year.

At my house party, the best reactions were for Denmark, Ireland & Sweden, with everyone singing along to Switzerland and Finland too. We loved Ukraine's sand artist and the mental Moldovan unicyclist trumpeter.

We felt that Blue's performance was okay, but that "it's a better song to sing along with than just listen to".

All party attenders were given a country or two support, and got to sport a fab Eurovision Minipop pin badge. We ate Black Forest cakes and hot dogs in honour of Germany's hosting, and drank more than 20 different spirits from around Europe in the voting drinking run. Newcomers this year were an Austrain Chocolate liqueur (lush) and a Lithuanian spirit (caustic). We were unfortnately unable to locate any Vana Tallin, our favourite Estonian petrol-like spirit.

So what about my analysis? Starting with the Semi-Final qualifiers, I was pretty sad that San Marino failed to qualify in their second outing, and I still rate Senit's "Stand By" as one of my favourite entries this year. I was also disappointed that Norway's "Haba Haba" didn't qualify, especially as questionable entries from Lithuania and Greece did. From the second Semi, my favourite song was Latvia, largely due to the lyric "Love me with luscious thighs", but along with Israel's Dana International, it failed to qualify in favour of dull Austria and bizarre Moldova.

In the Final itself, I chose to support Azerbaijan out of tradition, and whilst I really liked the song from the first listen, I didn't see it as a contender to win. The staging was simple and singing great. Once again, the winner of Eurovision was a simple song, with simple staging, proving that it's not always about the tricks and gimmicks.

Having said that, there were some great gimmicks: Sweden's glass-shattering and Bieber-licious dancing; Bosnia's triangle; Russia's glow-jackets; Lena's sperm-dancers and Ukraine's set-stealing sand-artist.

I was a bit disappointed with the low positions for Hungary and Estonia, I really liked their entries and thought they deserved better.
The UK song is great on CD, but felt a bit lacklustre live, I've read since that there were sound mixing issues which is a real shame but does probably explain why it lacked the anthemic sound Blue were aiming for. Nevertheless, we scored ten times the points of last year and an 11th place for a country with no friends or countries with shared music taste is pretty good!

So that's it for the year, I've just got to finish off the last of my smoked cheese and anaemic meats, play the CD to death and start researching Azerbaijan, ready for next year's party... here's a map to show you where Baku, the Azeri capital is.


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