ESC 2011 one-song-at-a-time: Lithuania

There are certain things which are really painful to watch at. A beautiful song being destroyed is one of them. Lithuania's entry this year is just such a case. It's also a good example for what can happen to whoever wishes to write songs "especially for Eurovision". But before I start with my critcs, I have to declare: I adore C'est ma vie. I oved it from the very first time I listened to it, and I still do now. The opening tones make me cry inside every time I hear them, and the lady's voice is just..so rich and charming. Well, she Is a jazz singer after all. And still, some negative comments must also be said about this song.

Here's the story of the creation of Lithuania's entry to Eurovision 2011, as I see it. One lithuanian composer, let's call him Paulius, was a talented musician who liked musicals and grandiose tones that makes your heart swell and your soul melt. He started composing a beautiful sorrowful and dramatic melody with sad minor chords to accompany it...

But then he suddenly remembered it's Eurovision we are talking about, not some musical on a big tour. In order to make the song more catchy and easly-digested by Eurovision viewers, he caled his friend Zdanavičius, who was a devoted Eurovision watcher, in order to compose a decent chorus. Lovely Zdanavičius made himself a cup of coffee. Then he oppened his French dictionary and chose a typical Eurovision phrase - C'est la vie. Then he felt it was too much banal, so he added a little interest by changing the "la" into "ma". The genious then set it into a boring and easy-to-remember melody which every single listener in the whole world would feel like he's heard it before. Somewhere. A few cheap drum effects were addad in order to dramaticize, and then he ended everything with a big last Eurovisionish last "c'est ma vie" with full orchestra. Bravo.

This was what Zdanavičius did. Yeah, I know that all of the information sites say that this song was composed by one Paulius Zdanavičius, but I am convinced. This song could not be written by one person. It sounds like two parts which have been pasted together due to an unfortunate injustice. This song starts so beautifully. the piano opening and the sadness it reflects just melt my heart. The melody of the verses is just so NOT typical and lame, but unconventional and special and combines both sorrow and optimism. The chorus, on the other hand, is awful. It gave the song its title, which is the lowest a Eurovision song can go. C'est ma vie? really! What's next? Voules-vous? Veni vidi vici? A stupid eurovisionary attempt at internationality and multy-linguality, which we fans hate, and them - Eurovision watchers - simply laugh at. And the too-much-drama effect of drum rolls just destroy the worderful quiet ambience that was created at the start with the piano. As the song proceeds, the piano disapears and the playback becomes ugly and traying-too-hard.

Additional things I hate in this song, because they just ruin its huge potential:

1. The singer's dress. What's that?! Does she HAVE to wear two skirts, the lower one black and apparent bellow the transperant upper one?

2. The singer's accent. Am I just imagining it, or all Eastern-European singers has a very strange way of pronouncing the sound "sh", especially when it comes in the word "shine"?

And still - I see hope for this song. This is an only ballad in its semi final, and quite a catchy one. what could go wrong when you get those splendid conditions? Even the worst ballad in the whole world would do well in a situation like this one, and this one is so far from being the worst of all. Even though it is a praise-the-Eurovision song and ends like a sad cliche, it still starts amazingly good. And isn't that all that matters when it comes to Eurovision?  

(In these pictures: Evelina Sašenko, representative of Lithuania, from various sites on the net)

ESC 2011 one-song-at-a-time: Belarus

Patriotism is attractive.

And its message is easily shining through when it's said clear and simply. When I first listened to "I love Belarus", the thing that first cought my attention was not the worn-out folk elements or typical simple and also worn-out melody. What made me actually pay attention to this song and not press the "next" button, as I usually do when encountering over-formulized songs, was the line "I love Belarus". It came right at the start of the chorus, clearly and powerfully sung, almost shouted out loud by Anastasiya Vinnikova and her vocalists, shining through and spreading warm feelings of belonging to one's country, land and nation. Just a simple one sentence, and still, powerfull because of its straightforwardness. A simple phrase that can elicit so many images and thoughts in one's mind.

I recently found out that Belarus also had a non-entry. As you all might already know, they had a former entry named "Born in Belarus" by the same singer, which was disqualified because the song was released and published before the allowed ESC date:

I think they were quite smart in Belarus, when they decided to keep the same theme and write a new song with the same spirit of love to their country. Lyrics almost never really matter when it comes to Eurovision, but I think that this case is an exception, and I want to believe than the song writter or composer knew that and did that on purpose. Anyway, I'm so happy they used this opportunity in order to improve a existing song instead of taking a chance and creating something completely new. Instead of a boring strange song with awkward performance like they formerly had, now we got a powerfully-arranged and straight-forward entry which is so much better, and that's such a big luck.

If relating to the lyrics, the case of Belarus 2011 is, as I said, an ESC exception. But maybe it isn't. Because I cannot really decide if the song;s maguc is all about lyrics, or all about theme. If we take a closer look at the lyrics, we discover a usual dull text which could be also interpreted as a love song that was written in 5 minutes - typical Eurovision. A nice exceptional line is maybe "I'm feeling great and it's easy to be strong, when all the hearts keep on beating as one" - again, So typical Eurovision to put effort only in the very beggining in order to catch the listener's attention. So on the whole, this song, like many other songs in Eurovision, is about NOTHING.

But, and that's a big but, the fact that there is one very strong line like "I love Belarus", which is brought forward so clearly, turns it from nothing into everything. When I hear "I love Belarus", I imagine immediately a song about a connection, a song about a country with a hard past and hope for the future, a song about being simple and still proud. It doesn't even matter that all of this is not written and said in the song at all. But since the watchers of Eurovision are not going to catch the rest of the lyrics anyway (with the exception of native English speakers) - they could maybe "hear" the eco of the associations mentioned above instead.

Now, let's take a look at the music also. As I said at the start of this post, I don't think this song has anything special in it's melody, not to speak about the harmony which is just SO boring. But it has a very good arrangment and playback. It reflects power, and its constant beat and rythm, together with the Belarus theme, make it sound a little bit like a national anthem in remix. Which is good. Very good and highten it's chances in Eurovision, because a simple message is so important, and here we get it in it's simplest form wrapped in a gleaming package. The folk elements are SO Eurovision and give the impression of "okay, didn't we hear that already, million of times before in each and every second song from East Europe?" But it seems like Eurovision fans stay always hungry for folk tunes, no matter how second-hand and banal they would be (judging by the excitment over Dana International's April fool version to ding-dong which supposedly had a cut-and-pasted bagpipes melody in its opening.

Performance? I'm hoping for a typical eastern-european pefrormance, and by this I mean a good performance with a lot of effort put and a lot of sex-appeal and dancers and fun. The best would be if they keep the folk dancers from the video clip and add a sexy Anny-Lorak-touch to them. I am very happy to know that Belarus is not in charge of the shootings for her own song in Eurovision, because if to judge by the youtube performance of their non-entry and the occasional enthusiastic-girl close-ups from the audience, they are not so good in making a performance looking attractive on the screen. The video clip is, on the other hand, completely fine, like it's usualy with those countries that do not hold a glamorous preselection, but then put a lot of effort in improving the winning / chosen entry.

I personally think that Belarus has a song that could really surprise and give a fight. Now it's a source for disrespect and it's quite ignored, but a growing number of fans who claim that "they know that it's obviously not a quality song, but still can't help liking it" makes me feel quite sure that it's simplicity and frankness would help it go very far.

(In these pictures: Anastasiya Vinnikova, from www.songcontest.ru)

A preview for my review

Rankings are so boring. Eurovision fans, mostly, but not only them - practicly anyone who's into music and charts, are obsessed with making a top 5, top 10 or top 30 of their all-times best, or a top-something with some special theme - best of this or that artist, for example. I, personaly, like to make a rank and hate it at the same time. I like it - because it's nice to arrange everything in your head and decide once and for all what you like and what you do not like. I thinks that psychological research could be done about the fact that making a rank contribute to one's definition of personality.

But I hate ranks because of two reasons. For the first, I don't think it's really possible to decide that one song is better than the other (totally contradicts the purpose and vision of the Eurovision Song Contest, but let's ignore it right now). For the second, I think that putting song titlesor entries into a list diminish a little bit from every song's individuality and character. When you see a list of ranked songs, you only see who is "better" and "liked", and who is "worse" or "not popular". You cannot see which song has good lyrics but boring melody, you cannot see which song has a great orchestration and developement and therefore is appreciated, you cannot see which singer is a good performer and which singer has an amasing hit but is a disaster on stage, amd so on. Those things are practicly not mentioned when Eurovision fans rank the songs. This is why I prefer deep reviews over tops and charts. 

And this is why I decided to make a very extended review of this year's Eurovision songs. Since we, Eurovision fans, all have some attention deficit (haha, my own conclusion, due to the fact that we all adore a contest with straight-to-the-point songs which last only 3 minutes) I'm gonna cut it into many many pieces and review one song at a time. In contrast to what everyone keep saying, I think this year is a wonderful great year, and every song is worth reference. I started downloading the songs and listening to them only about a month ago, and instantly loved most of them. Maybe that's due to the fact that I was not following the preselections (except of Melodifestivalen) and couldn't take the actual performance into consideration, but I don't really care. In contrast to many Eurovision fans, I've always been there mainly for the music rather than for the show. 

So from now on, as said, once in a while I'm gonna take one song from the contest and bring it into the spotlight for 15 seconds of fame and review, while relating to other aspects than "I like it" "I don't" and "I think it's gonna do well". Who's gonna be the first entry, I wonder...   

 
 

(In these pictures: Nostalgic Eurovision logos through the years, by SeekLogo.com)

Eurovision spirit, Eurovision soul

I am starting to feel it in the air the moment passover is arriving and spring is coming - the energetic atmosphere of Eurovision. The wonderful sensation of knowing that the tension is starting to build up. You've been following the preselections every week, listening to the new songs on your ipod all of those days, loading yourself with ESC excitment. Now all songs are known. And now there are so many joyful things and events ahead: the festive TV broadcast of the songs and their video clips, which is really the opening shot of the official Eurovision month. Then the final bets, the OGAE parties and meetings, everything is about Eurovision and all the fans are a big happy, excited and histerical family.

And then...the event itself. You ordered a flight, arranged an accomodation and then you fly. There, in the host city, you'll meet all of your Eurovision friends. And how joyful this is going to be...you meet then only once a year. but feel like you share with them some part of your soul. You are all celebrating the same great holiday and plan your lives around it, isn't it so? This week is going to be crazy, hazy, glamorous and terrific week of rehearsals, parties, exciting meetings, conversations and picture-taking and mingling with the artists, a big rush that gets bigger ang bigger untill the day of the final, when we all sit somewhere: in the venue, the green room, press room, in a bar watching it on a big screen with beer...it doesn't really matter as long as you've got a good place. We all would hold our breath waiting for the final results. Hoping to see our favorites go high and our home country getting a respectable position. everything happens so fast as we sit fastened to our chair and follow the scoring. And then it's gone before we even notice. The Eurovision Song Contest is over. We know the winner, we know where we''ll all meet next year. God, a whole year to go untill the next time!

And then, a last party. The winning song is repeated again and again and everybody is dancing like mad. Then tearful packing. Taking your laggage to the airport through the city streets that all of a sudden seem a little bit empty and quiet without all this Eurovision atmosphere. A little bit sad. And then your flight home. Later, when you're back in your country and back in your routine of work, you'll feel some emptiness - Post Eurovision Depression, they call it. But it will pass, and you would be able to live your life just like before, knowimg that next year this whole fansastic race will start all over again...

Those are our lives, Eurovision addicts. We all have this Eurovision rush in our blood and an extreme liking for those gleaming things that attract immediately and then are gone in 60 seconds. A Eurovision song that lasts only for one year, before it's stored up there, in the huge attick of past ESC songs. A show that lasts only 3 minutes and then go on living only in Youtube and DVD's. A singer who's a superstar surrounded by fans only for the one week of Eurovision, unless he wins. A fan that is living a boring meaningless life, who gets a refreshing wave of energy as the ESC times are getting closer and suddenly there is so much to do and to arrange. This is what we all are. Temporarity addicts. We are temporary. And we die and reborn. Every year we die in may, but come back to life just in time for the first national preselection...

But now it's happy, shiny Eurovision times. Today, on my way to work, it felt like the first day of spring. The weather was so fine, the sun was shining and made me take off my cardigan, and the wind brought the smell of bloom and freshness. Those sensations always reminds me that a great perioud is coming. Spring brings a lot of good things, and Eurovision is only one of them.

And now for a little souvenir - some pictures from last year's Eurovision in Oslo. I went as a representative of Tapuz - Israel's biggest portal, and my friend Shira came to represent her fashion and styling website. Even only looking at those pictures makes me long so much and miss those wonderful days we spent there, in the streets of great, noble and beautiful Oslo.

Picture codes:

1. The welcoming Eurovision decoration at the airport. 2. The venue - Telenor Arena. We've been visiting it almost every day till if felt like home. 3. A car with the ESC 2010 slogan "Share the moment", that played all times ESC hits in the street. 4. Me with Feminnem, the croatian representatives, at the Croatian party at the embassy. 5. Me with Giorgos, the Greek singer, at the Greek party. 6-7. A little big from the beauty of Norway. It was really breath-taking. 8. Me and the Polish singer, Marcin Marozinski at the opening coctail. 9. Me and Shira at the official opening coctail.10. Me and Shira at the Greek party.

(Pictures taken in Oslo, Norway. Summer 2010)