The second Eurovision 2008 semi-final was somewhat disappointing after the first one. It got off to a reasonable start with Iceland’s stock Eurovision entry and, after the inexplicably popular Swedish entry, seemed to be getting strong with Turkey’s very good contemporary guitar-based indy nonsense, and Ukraine’s very entertaining men in boxes. However, it was downhill from there: Lithuania got the man from the IT Crowd who lives in a cupboard to sing theirs, which seemed to promise much, but there were no ridiculously gothic dancers to back it up, no actual guitarist to put his hair in the way of the ubiquitous wind machine during the guitar solo, and no explosions of unnecessary fireworks to accompany the last chorus. Shame.
After that, Albania was just plain disappointing: the 16 year-old clearly came from the Christina Aguilera school, but not a in a particularly good way (I expect she gets on well with the Greek entry (who was better)). Switzerland’s song “Era stupendo” (“It was wonderful”) was flatly not wonderful. Nothing much to report after that really. The only bright spot was Malta, and that wasn’t too bright as spots go.
Even the Latvian entry was a complete missed opportunity: all dressed as pirates singing an entertainingly piratish song:
We are robbing you blind,
We hope you don’t mind.
This was promising but it was just rubbish: the song was rubbish, and they could have done so many more piraty things than hire costumes and put a ship’s driving wheel (whatever it’s called) on stage: where were the parrots, hooks for arms, treasure chests with scantily-clad backing singers leaping out? If you want to see this done properly, watch the Lazytown pirate song: the song itself is stronger and the visuals are more entertaining, and do remember how irritating Lazytown is.
One temporarily bright moment was Hungary’s entry: Hungary had a (dismal) song called, in English, “Candles”. So, they put candles on stage, which is only fitting, except that they all went out. Ha ha! I blame the wind machine.
We voted, vainly as it turned out, for Malta, partly on grounds of quality, and partly on realising the need to engage in political voting ourselves: Malta are always nice to us, so we should do the same. Somehow, though, the dreadful Georgian and Portuguese entries made it through instead. Tellingly, given the above comments, the first six, not including Lithuania, went through.
I predicted last year’s result correctly, so the pressure’s on again. I think Ukraine will win: they have good block-voting credentials, have done well in recent years, and have a moderately good song and stage presence. I think Finland will also do well: Scandinavia is a not often talked-about bloc, but one which is important, and Finland stand in the middle of the Scandinavian and Eastern blocs, which is partly why I think they did so well with Lordi. This song isn’t as good, nor is their stage presence, but it is not bad. I’ve probably written some “diva” off, like Sweden, but I really can’t see it, except perhaps for Portugal, which seemed strangely popular and has some passing similarities to last year’s winner.
I hope Finland or Azerbaijan win, preferably the latter as I think they worked harder on all the blood and everything, although I would really like to hear the songs again properly.