Lessons for 2011

[Beanie]

Since it's much easier to write them out now that try to remember them in 9 months time...

'Chart' songs seem to have got the jury votes(although its not possible to say for sure until jury rankings are released.) Ballads did relatively poorly compared to 08 with well produced uptempo songs being the main beneficiaries.

There's a fine line in terms of the ballads - the ultra simple Belgium did best(when compared to expectation), but any sort of gimmicks/overblown power notes seems to have done poorly.

But by that token Sweden would have done well with juries so....

Own language songs did very poorly - particularly Israel, Portugal etc.

The draw still favours late songs, not as much as before but it still does...Songs in the first half of the contest occupied the bottom 6 slots. Songs in the second half occupied the top 4.

I think the jury vote is slightly strange...certain well sung ballads(Portugal) got no support, other well sung ballads(Georgia) got a lot. I think there is a slight geographical bias in the jury vote in that a badly sung Georgian song wont get many jury votes, same with Portugal. A well sung Georgian song will get a lot of jury votes, whereas not necessarily the case for Portugal. So its not as clear cut as being well sung, still needs to be for a country with a geographical bias. Also an element of own language factor in there.

Individual songs....

Azerbaijan...I think this could have won if there hadnt been such a feeling of them trying to buy the contest. The anti-azeri feeling around the contest was pretty strong, and I think that probably damaged their jury vote significantly. Being tagged as 'the favourite' isnt really good news, as people are always inclined to say 'whats the fuss about?'

Cyprus...it wasnt that different a song to Belgium, in that fans of one seemed to be fans of both. So the pts difference between the two(given that Cyprus can count on a few friendly votes that Belgium cant) is slightly odd, although I suppose Belgium offered far more of an emotional package, Cyprus was pretty bland.

Georgia/Ukraine - As above, well sung, but the juries seem very ready to send votes their way in big numbers I think(I mean did Ukraine really do well with televote?) So still a big advantage there.

Turkey/Romania/Germany - a possible shift in the contest, where complete song 'packages' are rewarded. Relevant(in terms of todays music) songs, a solid stage show, and generally uptempo.

France - errrr! Surely it didnt get many jury votes, which means a very strong televote. Almost entirely down to standing out like a sore thumb and being the only song of its type - Turkey another beneficiary of being the only real rock song.

Israel - Mickey reminds me every year about songs being too dull, and he's right. It was a very emotional song, but that doesnt cut it at Eurovision and unless for one of the big countries, I cant see a song like that winning as it simply cant command enough televotes.

Armenia - = The juries dont seem to have supported it, outside the diaspora it didnt do that well in Western Europe, and I'll put this down to the 'relevance' point - its just not a current, relevant song, and this looks like the year where that isnt cutting it any more.

Slovakia - Far too middle of the road in the end. The ultimate example of the need to give people a reason to vote for you. No stage show of note, no emotional connection, no catchy beats or rhymes....its was a great song, but the lesson is that a 'nice' song that plods along for 3 minutes is begging to miss out.

Sweden - I've still not seen a reasonable explanation from anyone as to why it wasnt top 10 in that semi and I dont think I ever will.

More some other time.

[Listener]

From my point of view Malta and Sweden should have been in the final too. I agree that Sweden was in the 2nd semifinal where the songs were better, but Malta was in the first and didn't qualify. Moldova took their place and they didn't deserve, bad live performance. Also Slovakia and Lithuania were pretty good too.

In the final I personally liked Romania, Georgia, Turkey. I also liked Armenia, the girl really improved her live performance. I didn't consider her able to do that, because she was first of all a model in the past, not a singer, but she did it.

Germany and Azerbadjan had awful live performances. This happens when you send girls without experience at this level. I am pretty sure that Lena had no experience in Germany as live singer at contests. Azerbadjan because of the interpretation didn't finish top, but Germany did. Well, a lot of publicity with this Lena, that's why maybe... And some drums for example covered her bad live voice and some people didn't realise she sung a lot of false notes! I don't care that on CD the song is nice, because I must admit she has a good song, but this was a live contest and nobody punished her for bad interpretation...

Denmark's song was nice, BUT it was a cheap copy of a song of ABBA. I can't believe nobody kicked them from the competition.

In the end, I want to congratulate all the participants, especially Romania, Georgia and Turkey who were really the best 3 from my point of view!

And yes, the most important lesson for 2011 is that people are sick of these ballads, the chart songs are preffered now. Very good, because I was sick too!

[MickeyPaul]

In my opinion Turkey ended up the best overall although admittedly I didn't like their song until I actually bothered listening all the way (and of course that sexy robot and a few bells & whistles really made an impact with me).

As mentioned a couple of times, is it possible a lot of people did just vote for Germany as they'd bought the record? I think that's probably what carried them to victory (maybe a bit cynical). Not to take away from what probably was the freshest sounding song this year. And I don't actually think she performed badly. She's just very different in style and it sounded better up there than I expected to be honest.

I'm guessing the juries were a bit younger this year too. Last year, UK were 3rd with the jury with what pretty much everyone agreed was a really bland song brought to life a bit by a very good singer. It seems everyone is gradually moving away from the old school Eurovision stuff though which I think is definitely a good thing as it's gong to die a slow death otherwise. The times they are a changing. The likes of Finland ended up too old school for me and I pray we'll never have to suffer things like Ireland and Belarus again (or Holland, UK, Spain, Poland etc). I'd say Latvia but they at least sounded pretty modern. It was just an appalling song.

So yeah. Fresh, creative, well produced, hopefully well performed, and stands out from the crowd - I think that's already what we look for anyway though.

[Beanie]

Originally Posted by MickeyPaul

As mentioned a couple of times, is it possible a lot of people did just vote for Germany as they'd bought the record?

I did mention in a thread about a month ago(in what was probably my only post suggesting Germany might win!) that if the following was big enough then Germany almost had a diaspora of its own - ie people tuning in who had already made up their minds. If the contest had involved all songs being watched for the first time then I doubt it would have won as while its a good song, its not particularly immediate. Thats not the contest though, and I've read somewhere that in the week before the contest it went top 2 in iTunes in Finland, Norway, Sweden etc etc. It was all across Europe(not the UK mind you) and the obvious lesson is that chart success can translate to Eurovision votes.

[MickeyPaul]

Anyone got a clip of her being interviewed with a few votes to go? She came across so badly I was embarrassed for saying she was going to be my Eurovision girl.

She was actually beyond geek. A whole new level of geek where it was just really uncomfortable to watch.

[Beanie]

I dont have that green room vid but I do have this one...I apologise in advance.

[MickeyPaul]

You really are a dirty skanky bitch, Beanie. How could you? How COULD YOU!!!?

Fuck. I was getting all emotional there. Poor biatch.

[slick]

I didn't see that Germany win, she must have sang her heart out on the night as those clips didn't sound upto much, and here's me saying I'd back against her all day at the odds being offered.

Apart from that it was good to see most of our opinions coming home to roost as we've picked the best songs in the past only for them to come nowhere.

My Shortlist was ..
Turkey
Romania
greece.
denmark
France.
georgia.

so its good to see three of those finish in the top 5, and we all said GB would finish last so that was a bonus too.

Good stuff anyhow lads and congratulations to all the winners, big thank you to Gavin too who did a cracking job of admining this forum and keeping us all uptodate with the songs months before the competition started.

[squallsquall]

One thing I'd be very interested in would be the instructions given to the juries by EBU. Surely there must be some guidelines. Am I too paranoid if I believe that one of these two could be true:

a) they've revised their guidelines since last year
b) they've intentionally changed the jury composition since last year

I just feel western pop was waaaaaay more popular this year. But let's see when the jury points are released anyone know when that is?

[Beanie]

Dont know when that is ss - I know last year the EBU released a document with guidelines for jury members - will try and dig out the 2010 version from somewhere this week.

Having said that, since these guidelines are in the public domain, I doubt they contain anything more than generic guidelines - too risky otherwise. Thats not to say there weren't some unofficial guidelines suggested!