Dancing !

So here is this week's podcast -  all about song that make you dance !

Advanced warning  (and apologies) to all the Lithuanians and Swedes out there !!!

You can download or listen to it here http://www.archive.org/details/DancingEsc

Click here to listen to this podcast in your usual music player (M3U Playlist)

25/01/12 CYPRUS

The Cypriot Final wias held on January 25th at the PIK TV Studios in Nicosia, hosted by Christos Grigoriades. Ivi Adamou was internally selected by CYBC and sung all 3 songs. The winner was be chosen by a mixture of an "expert" jury (50%) and televoting (50%)

The show itself was far too long and strung out A 2 hour show to present 3 badly mimed songs? I don’t think so ! The selection was won by the pre-contest favourite “La La Love” – unfortunately not a song about appreciation for a certain Teletubbies character…

The song itself if a very bubbly, dancy song with a ‘la la la’ style chorus which of course is incredibly catchy OR incredibly annoying, depending on your point of view. Some could say it is quite a stereotypical Eurovision entry with a nonsense chorus.

Unfortunately, Ivi did not sing any of her entries live or have a full proper staging, therefore it is almost impossible to give a pointed critique of he chance in Baku. Her dress during the selection process was not particularly nice looking OR flattering and I hope she can come up with something a bit more fun and inspiring. Her dancing was a little raw, sometimes uncomfortable and OTT at times and the whole thing could have benefitted from some dancers. I really don’t have much confidence in her live singing ability, this is also furthered by the fact that the track seems very heavy in autotuning and production. I get the feeling that not only will she need dancers but may also need some good solid backing singers.

So in general, I am not particularly impressed by the song or the performance and just hope that this entry steps up its game before May.

SONG  - La La Love

ARTIST – Ivi Adamou

COMPOSERS - Alex Papaconstantinou, Björn Djupström, Alexandra Zakka, Viktor Svensson

LANGUAGE – English

21/01/12 DENMARK

The

The Danish Final was held on January 21st at the Gigantium in Aalborg, hosted by Louise Wolff & Emil Thorup.

The one-off show consisted of 9 songs. There were due to be 10 songs in the running, however song 2 “Nowhere” to be sung by Tine Lyngaaard was disqualified due to irregularities about early release on youtube. This then meant (confusingly) that Song 1 was followed by song 3…

The voting was in 2 parts.

Firstly the entries were whittled down to a Top 3, from am 50% televote 50% jury vote. The Super Final consisted of song 1 “Take our Hearts”, song 9 “Should’ve known better” and song 10, the only Danish language song “Venter”.

Then the voting window was opened once more. Then the “international” juries voted. This included Alex Sparrow from Russia and Nikki (the winner last year) from Azerbaijan. Then the Danish Jury gave their marks. The other half of the marks came from the televote and the winner was Soluna Samay with “Should’ve known better”.

The song starts off with the chorus (which is always a very clever thing to do) and the name of the song gets in your head very quickly. It is a very radio friendly song and could easily be heard on the radio stations around Europe ad even further afield. The staging is a little strange. Soluna was wearing a military inspired outfit, including oversized hat, whilst her ‘band’ is sat around her. There is not much movement but to be honest it is not a dancy song. Soluna sings the song very well and accompanying herself on a guitar. Parallels between this and Anna Bergendahl from Sweden must not be far away… also every time I hear the chorus I think it is about to turningg to Seal’s “Crazy”.

The Danes once again put on a fantastic show with a good range of songs and artists and to be honest the best 3 songs did get through to the super final. However I don’t think this song will be troubling the highest echelons of the scoreboard in Baku…

SONG  - Should’ve known better

ARTIST - Soluna Samay

COMPOSERS - Remee, Chief 1, Isam Bachiri

LYRICISTS – Chief 1

LANGUAGE – English

Second Best

Here is this week's podcast!

I've gone down memory lane and looked songs that came second and did not quite take the Eurovision crown. I've tried to play a range of song styles and langages (and tried not to play the obvious ones!) and have even mentioned some of the songs I really don't like!!

You can listen to the podacst on the embedded player below or you can download it from here - http://www.archive.org/details/SecondBestEsc

Keep your ears peeled to the end when I reveal the very imagnately titled next podcast!!!

Newsflash 2

So what ESC news do we have …?

Well, no finals for the past few days but there have been some moves towards finals which will take place later on in the month

Firstly the EBU have announced that a total of 43 countries have applied to go to Baku in May. This means that 37 countries will contest the semi-finals but only 20 will get through to the final (the big 5 and Azerbaijan go through the final automatically)

 The 6 acts and songs going forward to the Dutch preselection were unveiled, as were the 10 entries for the Danish national final.
The Latvians have had their two semi-finals and now have whittled down their final to just 10 songs which will once again be voted for on February 18th.
The Icelandic preselection is now underway. The first of the 3 semis occurred last week with just 2 songs going through for a list of 5.
The three songs Ivi Adamou will be singing in the Cypriot final were released on 6th January. The songs (2 up tempo electronic numbers and one ballad) will be voted for on January 25th by a mixture of an expert jury and televoting.
The Slovene selection is one step from the end! The Misija Evrovisija shows started back in October but on 8th January the last two acts were selected. Going through to the EMA 2012 on February 26th will be solo artist Eva Noto and duo Nika & Eva Prushnik.
The 20 names and songs in the running fir the Hungarian ticket have also been announced. They will have to endure 2 semi finals before the final on 11th February.
A few weeks ago the list of names for the Austrian preselection were announced and last week 8 of the 10 songs were unveiled in a concert in Vienna
“Unser Star fuer Baku” started last week. This is the second edition of the successful process that catapulted Lena to victory in Oslo in 2010. he first 10 hopefuls were whittled down to 5. On Thursday another fresh batch of 10 will go down to 5.
Romania’s future in the contest this year seems to be bleak. The Romanian TV company has announced a monetary crisis and it is still unclear as to how (or if) they will appear in Baku. An internal selection concerning the dance pop singer Inna fell through and they are not sure if they can afford to produce a selection procedure. Their name is on the list for Baku but they will have to decide soon before the draw at the end of the month.

Entries In French

Here is the very next podcast... all about entries in French.

We have a range of songs from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Monaco !

You can listen to the podcast below or dowload a copy from http://www.archive.org/details/EntriesInFrench




Next week's podcast has the theme "second best" so I'll be trawling the archives for the songs that came second... and as we all know, sometimes the best songs don't always win!

DNQ

Hello all and welcome to the first proper podcast.

The theme was "DNQ" - those songs that never quite got out from the Eurovision semi-finals.

You can play the link below or down load it from http://www.archive.org/details/D-N-Qs



Next week's theme is "Songs in French" - not just the odd word!
If you ahve any ideas, requests suggestions or just general comments you can either leave a comment here or leave a tweet @DVVHolland or via the facebook page at www.facebook.com/DVVHolland

Happy Eurovision !

The Tryout

So here i my first try at doing a podcast !!!

Basically I finally have a webcam (with mircophone) as well as the proper software on my laptop !!!
Ashamedly I have been fine tuning these 18 minutes for 2 days.

I just wanted to check that the whole process worked so that I can do more in the future !

If you have any ideas for future show themes (or have a particular request) I am open to offers !!!!
Either leave a comment here or, even better, tweet me at @DVVHolland :o)
If you found it ok and got to listen to it please let me know - I just need to know it worked !

Either listen to the link below or you can down load it from http://ia700801.us.archive.org/22/items/TheTryout/
 Please listen and (try to) enjoy !

29/12/11 ALBANIA

The

The Albanian Final was held on December 29th at the Palace of Congress in Tirana, hosted by Nik Xhelilaj, Enkeleida Zeko & Hygerta Sako.

The Albanian entry was chosen via the long running “Festivali i Këngës” which was celebrating its 50th edition. Before the final there were 2 semi finals on the 26/27th December where the initial set of 28 was whittled down to a final of 20. The winner ,as ever, was chosen by a jury and in Eurovision style each member awarded 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10 and 12 points to their preferred entries. This part was quite funny because the presenters were going much too fast for the poor bloke trying to input the scores into the computer which almost brought the graphics to a stand still. By the end I think it was very close to breaking down! However there was a clear winner.

The winning song was “Suus” – meaning Personal – sung by Kosovo-Albanian, Rona Nishliu. Born and raised in the former Yugoslavia (now present day Kosovo) she moved to Prishtina when she was 13. In 2005 she entered the Albanian Idol competition placing in the top 5. She is very striking with her very large eyes (even larger mouth) and her long flowing dreadlocks.

Before I start there are some provisos to my analysis of the winning song. Firstly, the Albanian preselection involves an orchestra. Its addition does gives every song a lot of backbone, atmosphere and extra oooomph, something that won’t be there at Eurovision. Secondly the song is over 4 minutes long and I certainly would not like the job on abridging it down to 3. Thirdly, the song is in Albanian and as of writing I don’t really know what the song is about or what it means, which doesn’t help.

The song starts off as a quiet piano based ballad which then starts to get quite jazz-influenced in places. It is not exactly the most merry of songs and doesn’t really have a sing-along-able tune or hook to catch you and interact with. The song takes quite a while to get warmed up and build to the peaks in the chorus. The chorus however is quite extraordinary. The orchestration really builds and changes to unexpected chord sequences while Rona shouts, screams, yodels and yelps over it like Mary Margaret O'Hara on “November Spawned A Monster” by Morrissey. The instrumental part in the middle is also wonderful to listen to and has an almost military sound to it. Rona is a very inward performer, a bit like Max for Germany back in 2004 and the song also does not give a lot of scope for audience interaction. It is a very memorable song, but possibly not for reasons you would like a song to be remembered.

It is quite hard to give a full and round opinion because so many things about the song have to change. I would be quite shocked if the language of the song was to change. It would be hard, if not impossible, to set English lyrics to such a complicated melody and keep the mood of the song. We will just have to see over the coming months what changes are made and make a judgement then.

As ever, Albania are going to send a very interesting song to Eurovision and I can confidently predict there will be nothing else quite like this one when we get to Baku in May !

SONG  - Suus (Personal)

ARTIST - Rona Nishliu

COMPOSER - Florent Boshnjaku

LYRICIST - Rona Nishliu

LANGUAGE – Albanian (title is in Latin)

kjf

Newsflash 1

I cannot believe how much Eurovision news is coming out and it is not even 2012 yet!!!

Bad news first - both Czech Republic and Poland have confirmed they will not be particpating in the next Eurovision. Let's hope it is only temporary and are back for the 2013 round!

Three more countries have announced artists for Baku.
Montenegro internally selected the strangely named Rambo Amadeus described as " the self-titled musician, poet, and media manipulator". He certainly seems a very interesting artist with a very colourful and artistic manner. It is more than likely that he will write/compost/produce the song himself. Wondering if this is entry is going to be more like Laka or Gypsy.cz ...?
Bosnia Herzegovina seeems to have shocked everyone by NOT announcing Hari Mata Hari! In fact their star for Baka was on the Eurovision stage just last year. Maya Sar was one of Dino Merlin's backing singers in Dusseldorf - she was plinky plonky bad piano miming woman !!! It was also suggested in acrtles that she will be singing 'her own' song.
There was shock though with the sudden and unexpected announcement from Spain. Yesterday they internally chose Pastora Soler to represent them in the final. However it looks at though there will be a national final in February to choose her song. Although Soler's style is more flamenco she has suggested that she would sing something more pop-influenced.

2 selections are still underway - Slovenia and Belarus.
Slovenia is now down to the final 3 acts in Misija Evrovizija. Nika Zorjan, Eva Boto and duo Nika & Eva Prusnik will compete in the final on January 8th where 2 acts will proceed to the EMA show in Febrary when song and act will be set in stone.
The semi-final of Belarus's EuroFest took place on Wednesday 21st.The cast of 15 was reduced to a final 5 which includes Gunesh, Litesound, Alena Lanskaya, Victoria Aleshko and Uzari. The first 2 being stalwarts of the Belarussian preselection procedures while Uzari was a backing singer last year.

The next national final on 29th December sees the Albanians choose their entry via "Festivali i Këngës" which will be celebrating its 50th edition.