Eurovision – Russia

I thought that this image I found would help me puzzle out  the intricacies of voting blocks in Eurovision…but it still looks very, very confusing.

So Russia is not on many country’s good sides this year.  It has been fighting the the Ukraine over natural gas and oil for a while, which makes their choice of a Ukrainian singer not that popular among strong nationalists.  I already discussed Georgia’s anti-Russia entry.  All of this conflict makes it kind of remarkable that Russia is entering a song written by a Georgian and Estonian and sung by a Ukrainian.

So, most Russians are definitely not voting for Georgia or the Ukraine.  Besides that, though, Russians who come from smaller countries will probably vote for the country from which they come.   Russian nationalists will probably vote for another country–any country–because of the songwriters/singer combination that was entered by Russia this year. However, since the contest has implemented a pool of judges, I don’t expect nationalist sentiment to make as big of a difference as it did in years past.  Russia is probably crippling itself by using non-Russian songwriters and singer unless there are lots of people who really, really, really want to win again and don’t care about nationalist anti-Georgian or Ukrainian feelings.

Prikhodko is very different than the woman who represented Russia last year.  In a Time article, another Russian pop star related last year’s winner to as if England had entered Amy Winehouse.  Prikhodko does all right as a pop star, but she is no superstar and her outsider standing will probably hurt Russia’s chance of winning, especially in light of all the conflict that Russia is in the center of right now regarding Georgia and the Ukraine.

the Time article I referred to: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885138,00.html

You know, I’ve got to say–these songs are all really terrible.  The Russian entry isn’t any different.  It starts with a slow first verse, and then gets faster when the chorus first pops up.  It’s pretty catchy, with one word (”mamo”) repeating several times.  I want to say it means ‘mother’, but I’m not sure.  The second verse is a little slower and I can tell that it is building up to the chorus.  After that, it’s pretty much par for the course in any Eurovision song, with Prikhohdo  doing some melisma-type vocals over background singers in the course.  Right before the end it gets a little faster so that there is a big showy finish.

For a Eurovision song, though, the visuals are pretty subdued.  Prikhodko (I’ve seen her name spelled with both 2 ks and only one, I’m not sure which is right although the official website uses 2) is alone on stage, there are some white lights, she is wearing a dark dress and the stage is similarly dark.  It’s probably fairly risky to stage the song like that, considering how showy a lot of the  other entries have been in the past and surely are this year.  I’ve read comments on a couple of websites (not that they have much bearing on all of this) saying that Russia doesn’t want to win this year since they won last year and apparently it’s very expensive to host the competition.  But considering how important the Eurovision contest is for these people, they probably would like to win and aren’t slacking off.

Anastasiya Prykhododko is representing Russia in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Mamo.”  Prykhododko is of Ukrainian descent, and sings the song in both Russian and Ukrainian.  “Mamo” was written by a Georgian, to add another layer of controversy to this year’s entry.  Georgia and Russia have been in the news regarding the Song Contest recently, after Georgia submitted a song called “We Don’t Wanna Put In”, which featured dancing bears and soldiers marching to the Russian national anthem as an obvious act of parody.  I want to take another post to discuss the political aspects of Russia’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, so I will leave that topic there for now. 

Prykhododko previously entered the 2009 competition in the Ukraine, but was disqualified before the semi-finals because her song was too long and had previously been released.   There has been controversy over her entry, with people complaining that she cannot properly represent Russia because she’s Ukrainian (Prykhododko previously performed her song in just Ukrainian, but has reached an agreement with the Russian final judges to sing in Russian as well) and that the voting was rigged.  After she won, another contestant angrily stormed off the stage and has commented on her choice to sing in Ukrainian.  Most other contestants sang in English.  Prykhododko is most familiar to the Russian public as the winner of an American Idol-like contest called Star Factory.  Her victory was announced only a few weeks after a “gas war” between Russia and the Ukraine, when Moscow turned off supplies to the Ukraine after a payment dispute, which probably led to more widespread and vocal dissatisfaction with the choice of a Ukrainian singer to represent Russia.  

sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasiya_Prykhodko

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/world/europe/19eurovision.html?hp

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5875152.ece

Russia has been competing in the Eurovision song contest since 1994 when they became a member of the European Broadcast Union, though they have only done it every year since 2000.  In 2000 and 2006, they came in 2nd place, and in 2003 and 2007, they came in 3rd place.  Last year in 2008, they won the competition with Dima Bilan’s rendition of “Believe”, a song with writing credits by the producer Timbaland.  An article in the NY Times describes the winning act: “Dima Bilan, a Russian pop singer with a mullet hairdo, gyrating on stage as Yevgeny Plyushchenko, the Olympic champion figure skater, pirouetted on a patch of artificial ice.”  This year, Russia is hosting the contest in Moscow.