Eurovision

The overall reaction to the 2009 Eurovision contest across Europe has been positive, especially in terms of how smoothly the show ran and how the scores were presented. I guess in past years the contest has been much longer, so the general public appreciated a relatively quicker show.

Alexander Rybak’s “Fairytale” was also tremendously popular all over Europe, and not just in Scandinavia. The performance received at least two points from every voting country, with 16 12-point scores, 9 10-point scores, and 10 8-point scores. With 387 total points, the entry has set a new record with its landslide victory. The general consensus on the message boards I’ve seen has been that his voice was not the strongest in the contest (I agree), though he had the best overall performance. Rybak is going to make a tremendous amount of money off of this song, as he not only performed it, but wrote it as well. It’ll be interesting to see in the next few weeks how popular the song becomes all over Europe. I wonder if it’ll be a hit at all over here in the United States. I could be wrong, but my gut reaction to the song is that it won’t have much commercial success outside of Europe.

Norway’s reaction has been pretty tremendous. Not only are they celebrating their Eurovision win, but today, May 17, is their independence day, so they are also celebrating that on top of Eurovision. Apparently there has been much parting and dancing in the streets both last night and today.

Rybak’s reaction to the win has been hilarious. After kind of freaking out on stage before his winning reprisal performance, he has been quoted as saying that he thinks he won Eurovision because he “had a story to tell”. He also said he thought his performance was strong, which in my opinion was more the reason he won.

Other performers’ reactions were mixed. The performers from Azerbaijan, for example, are thrilled by their third place finish. Others, like Greek performer Sakis Rouvas was a little disappointed by his placement. Overall, most performers have said it was a good experience and that they enjoyed participating.

The only major frustrations that I’ve seen people voice on message boards about this year’s contest was the voting. Many people have been angry about the 50/50 split between televote and jury vote that decided each country’s votes. Additionally, since the jury vote was just included with the televote in the score presentations, people are wondering how much the jury affected the outcome of the contest. I have a feeling that they didn’t affect Norway’s win, however, I’m sure the other placements would have been different if it was done completely by televoting. A lot of people want to see the numbers in how the juries voted compared to the televotes; however, if these numbers were published, I’m sure the backlash from the general public would be strong if the outcome was significantly swayed by the juries.

There have been some other controversies surrounding this year’s contest. First, May 17 in addition to bein Norway’s independence day is also apparently the International Day Against Homophobia. Many gay rights activists wanted to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow, but since it was so close to the Eurovision contest, Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov did not permit the parade to happen, most likely for fear of bad press from the hoards of publicity in the city for Eurovision. As a result, there were protesters outside of the Eurovision event, 20 of which were arrested. The other noteworthy controversy was between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Images of Karabakh, a disputed area between the two countries, were shown in relation to Armenia. Additionally, the number for Azerbaijan to use to vote for Armenia was apparently censored from the country’s broadcast to prevent people from voting for Armenia’s entry. This is just another example of how politics gets intertwined into this “song” contest.

Sources:

http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/14075
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2709
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2652
http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=2786
http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/14086
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2009

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 2:57 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.