07/03/12 RUSSIA

The Russian Final was held on March 7th at the Akademicheskiy Concert Hall in Moscow, hosted by Olga Shelest & Vladimir Zelenskiy. The winner, after a 50-50 combination of televoting and jury vote, was Buranovskiye Babushki with “Party for Everybody”

“The grannies” are not exactly the most energetic of performers – ‘old school’ doesn’t even describe it at they’ve probably been alive so long they remember a time there was no such thing as school.

Enough of the bitching and onto the facts. The group itself is its own gimmick, its own advertisement its own publicity machine and no matter what the ladies do they will get the press. People will find the group intriguing and will get a lot of ‘sympathy votes’ although I’m not quite sure why they should get any sympathy.

The song is basically structured around the chorus which is in English. The rest of the song is their regional tongue of Udmurt. The fact that they stand there going “boom boom boom boom” quite hilarious. Because of the sound of the song it will get a lot of Eastern European votes as well as that of Scandinavia. They will also get votes from the mad quarter too.

The song and performance are incredibly indulgent almost to the point of a saccharine overdose. Yes they are rather cute and old and cuddly and make you go “awwwww”. Yes they are dressed in a very old fashioned ethnic way (nothing like it has been seen since Mattis Hætta in 1980) and are singing a song you wouldn’t expect. But behind the rose tinted façade I’m not quite sure what is left of any substance. It is quite a catchy song however I find myself laughing at it more that wanting to join in.

Only the ‘granny’ on the left seems to conscious of what she is doing and one of them seems totally bemused at to what she is doing. I am also concerned to see what looks like a smouldering piece of Chernobyl rotating and smoking away behind them. It is almost a shame there are 6 of them as a couple of Cossack dancers either side would have polished the look off to a tee.

So, will it qualify? Yes.    Will it do well ? Yes.    Will it win? Probably.    Do I like it? NO

This year’s Eric Saade.

SONG – Party for everybody

ARTIST – Buranovskiye Babushki

COMPOSERS – Vikton Drobych, Olga Tuktaryova

LANGUAGE – Udmurt & English