To be fair, this shouldn’t really be an “Austria-ism” but rather a “Europe-ism”. Eurovision is this rather perplexing pop song contest conducted every year and hosted by a European country. It really brings out some of the less fine elements of European living but is addictive in its own way, since each successive song is a bigger train wreck than the previous one.
The favorite going into this year was the Irish duo Jedward with their (despite being native English speakers) incomprehensible song “Lipstick”…
Not their best work – though the number that they did with Vanilla Ice last year I thought had a nice catchy tone to it. I just cracked up when someone in the YouTube comments mentioned that these gentlemen looked like toothbrushes. Even funnier is that Vanilla Ice apparently invested wisely over the years, despite making a few social mistakes, and now has his own home renovation show – “all right, stop! renovate and listen!”.
Alas, it was not to be for Jedward – Azederbajian swooped in for the win. As usual, “no one is really sure what they’re saying”, as diplo-husband said of this ditty. That’s the beauty of non-native english speakers amateur musicians writing their own music in english. And probably doing their own lighting effects. Last year there was the forgettable “I love you like a satellite” song by the bopping around the stage like a satellite unknown Lena, who as far as I can tell, has gone back to being unknown. This year, it’s “I’m running, I’m scared tonight” despite the fact that song is called “Running Scared”. Somehow the double I’ms didn’t make it into the title.
But my all time favorite was the winner two years ago. A young violinist of Russian descent singing for Norway about princesses and fairytales (which with its notes of nostalgia, folky fiddling, kossak-style dancers, lyrics of love, fighting, curses and hurt (repeat cycle) was I’m sure in no way pandering to the host city of Moscow and typical Russian dramatics). It was really his sheer joy at winning that made it such a crack-up to watch, and kind of made me want to be a princess in a fairytale too.
For more eurovision goodness, check out the following Slate article here.
