Stupid people vote for wrong songs

What can be worse than a bad song? A bad song performed by a very famous singer. Dana International, for example, who won the Israeli preselection for ESC a few moments ago with one of the most casual and boring songs ever. As expected. Yeah, it's no news that everyone expected her to win. Her name is much too big in Israel to be ignored, at least when it comes to Eurovision affairs. Whenever she choses to nominate herself, she's almost automaticly made a winner, like her mere participation pushes the button of "selected". We've had the same thing before.

It also happened two years ago, when she wrote a song for Boaz Mauda's internal preselection and won. Well, yes. Many would say that in the end her "election" was all for the good, because Boaz and his song reached a good result. But who knows? The other songs in his preselection might have taken him into an even better position. One thing is for sure: Boaz reached a good position in ESC because he's a great performer who felt connected to the song. Not because Dana wrote it. The problem is that the public in Israel believes in the latter.

I think it's almost like believing in charms and magic. No person is a mascot for Eurovision. Not even Johny Logan. I am entertaining myself with the thought of her not having success in ESC this time. Of course I want my country to succeed, but a result which is not top 10 will prevent a future Dana dictature in everything that concerns ESC in Israel.

If to relate to the Kdam in general, I think it was quite a shameful event. The presenters - beautiful talented ex-Eurovision participant Shiri Mimon and Actor Aki Avni seemed to improvise their texts rather than to come up with something ready and witty, as required. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it just looked embaressing and improffessional. The sound quality was horrible and ruined some songs completely. The postcards were, again, improvised - something that worked well for artists with charizma and good camera attitude, and worked very horribly for artists who are not especially inteligent or talkative. The only good thing was the songs. I was really surprised by the wide selection, and the level of modernity that characterizedm them. Not that it matters, after the worst and most boring and old-fashioned song of the ten was chosen.

Traveling to Dusseldorf is starting to seem less and less attractive for me now. Everybody knows how good it feels to be present at the event when your country has a good song that everybody like. And everybody knows how pointless it feels to travel all the way to the host country and not be able to support your country because it happened to choose a bad song by apparently giving power to the stupid population who knows nothing about music.

Now Sweden is my only hope. If my favorite country has a good song, or at least a song I can live with, I would be more than satisfied and may be ready to ignore my bitter Dana-feelings. For my part, it means that Linda Bengtzing should be chosen, or at least Swingfly or the playtones, who are also frequent stars in my playlist.

You know what? I could also live with Sanna as a representative of Sweden. I don't like her song, but she's been trying for so many years, and most of her entries in the past were excelent. Besides, she can turn shit into gold, as a friend of mine said, because she's such a great performer. It doesn't really matters with what song she's coming. So Sanna will also be okay with me. But please, just don't let Brolle or The Moniker or some other song that will take all the fun out of Eurovision for me be chosen. That's selfish of me, I know. But aren't we all?

(Posted in my old blog on 8/3/2011)

About Eurovision songs which get translated to English and Linda Bengtzing's dishwashing machine

What is the official language of Eurovision? Yes, of course, it's English. But a very special kind of English. Let's call it the Eurovision Dialect. It's characterized by the use of low-level language and a very simple wording in the best case, and gramatical errors blended with phrases literaly translated from one's native language, at the worst case. The reason for this mess is derived from a very obvious fact - only 3 out of the many countries of Eurovision have English as a native language. The rest have other languages from a variety of origins and groups, and this, as so many peoplesay, is what makes Eurovision such an interesting and rich music event.

But does it, really? Because as we all know, most coutries go on choosing English as the main language for their representing songs. I will not talk about the banal issue of "countries should sing in their own language because it enriches Eurovision". I'll take a different angel of the problem, and it's the consistant lowering of quality when text writers, singers and countries choose to express themselves musicaly in English.

I'll start with a personal example. I speak 3 languages: Hebrew, my native language. English - the first language I learned at school. And Swedish - a language I chose to study one year ago because of interest in some music contest called Melodifestivalen you might haven't heard about.

I'm a very different person while using the three different languages. In Hebrew I'm fluent and therefore can express myself freely acording to my level of education or inteligence. In English I'm quite trained, and therefore also fluent, but make occasional mistakes and cannot speak about higher issues. In Swedish I'm becoming a very quiet person who'd rather listen than speak, and when I do speak, it can only be done in a very simple and basic way. If I wanted to express myself through some art medium, what language would I choose if I wanted to get a respectable result?

Ofcourse, there's the issue of internationality. If you send a song in English, it hightens the chances for people to understand the song and to relate to it, and therefore get more points. But we forget that English is hardly the native language of anyone in Eurovision. So yes, a song in English might sound more up-to-date and more international, but the final product is often one of a very low quality. And the worst thing is, that we even cannot detect each others mistakes, because non of us is a native English speaker! And so we, inteligent and nice people who love Eurovision, end up praising songs that we would have never liked if they were sung in our native language. Otherwise we would be able to see immidiately how stupid they are, and detest them automaticly.

A good example for this is given by Jonas Gardell in Melodifestivalen 2003. I assume you all already know it. But the part about the Estonian presenters shows how something that might sound not so witty but still okay in English, is exposed in its great stupidity while translated to your native language:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG8fiX3oRLM&feature=related 

Even worse is the opposite phenomena: Songs written originaly in the local language, who later earn a translation to English when they win the preselection and go to Eurovision. The deterioration in quality that follows is almost heart breaking. A good example for this comes from my own country's national final this year. Most of the songs contain unfortunately some lines in English - a lame common side effect of ESC songs. One song, sung by Adi Cohen, a very good singer and idol participant, proves perfectly what happens when a song is translated.

The title of the song in English is "just abot love". Sounds bad and wrongly translated. It IS wrongly translated, actually, as it should have been "solely about love", if they would want a same-level synonym. But what's really interesting is the transition from Hebrew to English at the second part of the song. The first part, in Hebrew, is quite ok for a ESC song. Listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rr2CtfQdo 

I'll translate the Hebrew part literaly for you to understand:

 

My life are calling me to go on and advance

To discover new locations even though I'm without you now

A place where I could live, a place free of worries

 

Quite acceptabe lyrics, I think. But than, after the first chorus, it transforms into English, and a horrifying scene of cliches is taking place:

 

Why do  people be so cruel and start to fight

I have no answer to a thousand stars at night

Why do you run when love is here?

 

Now it has become a call-for-peace song with lines that are both recycling older lines from other ESC songs, and are also kind of making no sense. And I ask - why???? ahy not keep it in Hebrew and let people use their imagination in trying to figure out what is it about?

What brings me to the third example. The main two languages of the music I am listening to are Swedish and Finnish. I understand the lyrics of most of the Swedish songs (unless it's Håkan Hellström, then I need to use the dictionary a little bit) but I didn't know even one word in Finnish untill recently. This is why Finnish music always sounded to me very mysterious and deep, even when it was all about pop songs. But now I've been studying Finnish for a month or so, and I am starting to change my perspective. In only 4 lessons, we covered almost 90% of the words I could recognize from Finnish songs. I wonder, does it mean that music always utilizes the lowest level of the language? Or does it only mean that I listen to songs with a very low level of vocabulary? :-)

I'll end this post with a desperate request. If, and if Linda Bengtzing wins Melodifestivalen. Please don't let her song be translated to English. I don't really think I would be able like it anymore if she's going to sing "He can even take out the dishes out of the dish washing machine".

(Posted in my old blog on 3/3/2011)

Why do Eurovision Song Contest fans just LOVE comebacks?

The excitement over Dino Merlin's selection to represent Bosnia-Herzegovina made me wonder a little bit. Why a singer who happened to be part of the duo that represented Bosnia in 1999, and is coming back to compete again, is such a big deal?

Well, you can claim, ofcourse, that it's because he had a great song back then, or because he reached a very good place. You can also say that it's exciting because he's a familiar character to Eurovision fans, his music must have competed in various internal fan-initiated contests online and it will be nice to see him again. I personally think that it's not the whole story. That's because excitment, as we all know, is also elicited when an artist who's done very bad is coming back to compete in the contest or its many many national finals. Which makes me ask: What is it, that make Eurovision Song Contest fans care so much about comebacks, whether good or bad?

The answer, in my opinion, has to do with facebook. Not the application itself, but it's general spirit. In a way, I think that we all see the artists and performers of ESC not as our idols, but as our friends. Come on, we know everything about them! We know if they were a big success in their home land and were send to ESC as means of developing their international career, or otherwise, if they were totally unknown and were chosen only because they won a national final in a country were esc is quite an uninteresting issue.  We know whether they are favorites or not, we know the specific point in their show where their voice shuddered or where they've been completely out of pitch. We know whether they made a respectable show at the contest, or whether they had no awareness whatsoever of what's "in" by using strange gimmicks or irrelevant outfits. When the calendar shows May, and they all become gleaming stars for 15 seconds (or for a whole week of rehearsals), it's only us who know who they really are.

That's the reason for why coming back to Eurovision, entering the ring again, has, in my opinion, a certain facebook effect that lets us, the fans, peep into their life again. See who changed hairstyle or even his whole image, see who stayed beautiful even though the many years that has passed. See who is going to make a success after he failed for the last time, and who's gonna fail even though he reached second a couple of years ago. It's just as fun as discovering what happened to the most popular girl in school or feeling happy for the outcasts who turned into a success story. And just like as it is in life - the biggest the time gap between their participations, the higher the interest rises.  

And what about satellites-Lena, then? Not so many people seem happy about her comeback. And why would they be? She's just like this person who's updating his facebook status 24 times a day, with her coming back just a year after she won, as if her hunger is never satisfied. And still, even considering this specific comeback, it's gonna be very interesting to look at the final results.  

(Posted in my old blog on 23/2/2011)

I just love a fresh start

Starts are always fresh and bright and clean, aren't they?

(Pictures taken in Bergshamra, Sweden. Fall 2010)