I have included the scores of my dear friend, Everywhereventually, a Eurovision aficionado. You can see his take on Eurovision and his reviews on the songs on his site, here.
France - S'il fallait le faire (If it had to be done)
The French language has a lot of words that end in soft vowel sounds, rather than hard consonant sounds. Therefore it is not a language conducive to pop songs. France also has a tradition of poetry to music rather than pop songs. Perhaps these two things explain why this is yet another tedious ballad from France as their entry.
Yawn.
Score: 4/10
EE Score: 86/100
Damn, now that I've listened to a French song my brain has started doing it's internal monologue in French and I am struggling to express myself in English. It will only take a minute or two for it to switch back. It's amazing how the brain can do that, when you know more than one language. Mine switches pretty easily - it just doesn't always switch in the right way. I remember taking my final exams in High School and, when I was in my German exam and I tried to translate a word into German, the French word would pop into my head, and vice versa.
Anyway, back to Eurovision.
Russia - Mamo
Russia is hosting this year and they obviously don't want to be doing it again next year because this song is just shit. A young girl with badly dyed black hair is singing as if she's in a death scene at the opera. It's a pop song, so why is she acting like she's going to die any moment?
Crap.
Score: 2/10
EE score: 6/100
Germany - Miss Kiss Kiss Bang
Upbeat big band. Interesting and fun. More America than Germany though... the secret at Eurovision is to do a pop song that is mainstream but still has a flavor - an instrument, a sound, a beat - of your country. This is nice, but gets point deducted for not evoking Germany in any way.
Score: 7/10
EE score: 71/100
UK - It's my Time
This suffers from the same lack of cultural reference as the German song. This is very Whitey Houston. The song has some flavors of Andrew Lloyd Webber, which I supposed could be iconically British. It's reasonably good, but there are other songs that are better.
Score: 7/10
EE score: 100/100 (perhaps a little partisan?)
Spain - La Noche es Para Mi (The Night is for Me)
At first I was going to level the same criticism at Spain re this song not having a national flavor, because it is more of a Middle Eastern beat. But then I remembered that Spain does have a strong North African experience, being very close to the African coat at certain points. This is a song which will definitely be played in all the Spanish clubs over the summer. It's pretty good, but it just doesn't grab me in any way. I much prefer Turkey's.
Score: 7/10
EE score: 66/100
So now you have my full two cents on this topic.
We'll soon see who wins!
