After weeks of speculation over the final version of the UK’s Eurovision entry, our very own Josh Dubovie performed the all new That Sounds Good To Me live over the weekend, at Amsterdam’s Eurovision In Concert. It was long past our bedtime by the time he took to the stage (and given his tender years, we think it was possibly long past Josh’s also), but the good news is that the performance – and indeed the new version of the song, complete with slightly different chorus and intro and other assorted nips and tucks – seems to have gone down well. Great. So that’ll be a handful of points from the Netherlands then, just another 37 or so countries to convince……:)
Oh, and you can check out the UK performance footage from the concert for yourself at esctoday.com, where it is also revealed that Josh will be joining Niamh Kavanagh, Paula and Ovi and Hera Bjork (she’ll be the one brushing volcanic ash off her sleeves for much of the evening) at the UK Eurovision Preview Party on Sunday May 2. Your friendly Eurovision Blog representative will be there too, if you want to tell us what a good job we’re doing, engage in discussion about the relative merits of Miro vs Didrik Solli-Tangen, buy us a drink or simply compliment us on our party tights…..:)
The frontman of this year’s Estonian hopefuls, Malcolm Lincoln, takes on the fearsome Eurovision Blog question challenge and explains that there isn’t really a Malcolm at all. Or perhaps there is. Oh we are confused…..
Introduce yourself to our readers and tell us how you ended up being Estonia’s Eurovision representative this year!
Robin Juhkental from the band Malcolm Lincoln, age 21, from Tallinn, Estonia. At the beginning we had no aim to go to Eurovision, we did simply send a couple of our songs to the contest because already for the second year in a row Estonia is not searching “an Eurosong”, but a great pop song with a character. Therefore we are really happy that our song was selected by the viewers to represent Estonia!
What are you most looking forward to about taking part and what can we expect from your stage show?
I’m looking forward for getting a good experience and performing to such a wide audience. By the way, I get this ”stage show” question all the time and I really don’t understand why stage show is so important? ESC should be about excellent songs and music, not oiled bodies, dance moves or pyrotechnics.
Which is your favourite all time Eurovision song and your favourite from your home country?
Johnny Logan’s – ”What’s Another Year” is just brilliant and simple pop melody imo.
My Estonia’s favourite is 2003 entry – Ruffus with ”80’s Coming Back” – a really first-class song and would have deserved a better place than it got.
Which of the other entries this year do you rate? Many Eurovision fans have said it isn’t a great year for songs, what do you think about this?
Haven’t got much time to listen all the songs but I still have some time! 🙂
Estonia haven’t won Eurovision for a while. Do you have a strategy to try and reverse your country’s fortunes and bring the contest back to Estonia?
Last year Estonia received 6th place, which is not bad at all. Honestly, I do not have plans like these you were asking for… our aim is just to give a good performance.
Like the one we succeeded in Estonian final:
We’re big fans of your song at Eurovision Blog as it reminds us of the music we listen to outside of Eurovision season, similarly we have played it to some non-Eurovision fans who love it. Do you think it is an atypical Eurovision song?
Glad to hear that kind of feedback, thanks! Yes, I think “Siren” is definitely atypical for Eurovision. Which may also be an advantage 😉 So you are very welcome to share our Myspace among your friends: http://www.myspace.com/malcolmlincoln
And check out the video for “Siren”:
Eurovision always suffers from accusations of political/neighbourly voting. Do you think the new voting system with the re-introduction of juries has gone some way to changing people’s minds?
Hard to speculate, hopefully it will be about music not about neighbourly votes.
Is it true that your band name came from a question on Estonian Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Yes, it comes from one of the biggest fails of the show: a lady was convinced that there was a president called Malcolm Lincoln in U.S. Not Abraham Lincoln. Do you find that people think Malcolm Lincoln is a solo singer as opposed to the name of your band?
It might possibly be so in the UK where Malcolm is a fairly common name 🙂 In essence, Malcolm Lincoln is my solo project, so it’s not very wrong to think of Malcolm Lincoln as a solo singer.
And finally……have you heard the UK entry this year and if so what do you think of it? Any chance Estonia could give us some points (if we asked nicely, since frankly we need all the help we can get……?)
Hopefully your nice song finds its fans and gets the votes it deserves! Good luck, UK!
Every year around this time, we decide it would be fun to try and get interviews with as many of the forthcoming Eurovision participants as possible, (which generally involves sending out long begging emails to publicists, saying nice things about their country’s entry etc etc. and then seeing what comes back). And 2010 has been no exception. Over the coming weeks leading up to the final we’ll hopefully be bringing you quite a few of these, but to get the ball rolling this year here’s the lovely Anna Bergendahl from Sweden:
Introduce yourself to our readers and tell us how you ended up being Sweden’s Eurovision representative this year!
I am an eighteen year old girl who grew up in a small town with my parents and siblings. Music means everything to me, and I don’t think an hour passes by without me singing. I write a lot of music, and I always bring my iPod for inspiration and consolation!
I entered the contest in Sweden with no hopes what so ever. All I wanted to do was a good performance, and I really felt like an underdog. Yet somehow, I ended up winning the whole shebang. Outlasting a lot of big singers and artists in Sweden. I couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t! Right now I feel as free as a bird, as if the whole world has been laid by my feet. I am so exited about competing in the Eurovision Song Contest, and I will do my best, but most of all, just have a lot of fun.
What are you most looking forward to about taking part and what can we expect from your stage show?
I am looking forward to my performance in the semi final and hopefully later on in the big final. The thought of standing in front of a whole Europe is nerve racking, yet fantastic! I also look forward to meeting a lot of new and interesting people!
Which is your favourite all time Eurovision song and your favourite from your home country?
I really liked Carolas Invincible, and I was blown away by Alexander Ryback!
Which of the other entries this year do you rate?
I love Germany and Belgium! They are both great singers and I love their songs!
Many Eurovision fans have said it isn’t a great year for songs, what do you think about this?
I don’t agree! I liked a lot of songs and I really think there is a wide range of songs artists and performances in the show.
Sweden hasn’t won Eurovision in a while, despite being one of the most successful countries in the contest. Do you have a strategy to try and reverse this trend and bring the contest back to Sweden?
I don’t have the secret recepe to winning ESC! I will to my best and try to bring warmth, hope and a lot of love to the show. Let’s just how far that will take med!
Eurovision always suffers from accusations of political/neighbourly voting. Do you think the new voting system with the re-introduction of juries has gone some way to changing people’s minds?
I don’t see the problem in voting for your neighbour! Of course you want to support the once closest to you. But in the end I think the best song will win, despite geographical location.
Have you heard the UK entry this year and if so what do you think of it? Any chance Sweden could give us some points (if we asked nicely…….?)
He is a great singer! I’ll do everything in my power to make sure they’ll vote for your entry!
One of the great things about the Eurovision season is the way in which songs that didn’t impress us at first eventually win us over, to the extent that we are prepared at key moments to hold up our hands and say OK, we were wrong. Such is the case with this year’s German entry. Nope, we admit, we didn’t like Lena Meyer-Landrut’s song at all at first.
But we took it away and we listened to it, and we gave it a chance – and we can now categorically say we’ve done a complete about turn and think it is indeed one of the best songs in the contest. Not because public opinion dictates so. Not because we’re aware it’s the favourite and we don’t want to look foolish when it flies to the top of the scoreboard (although we’re still not completely sure it’ll do this, it might appear too quirky to the casual voter on the night and if our first impressions were negative what will theirs be?) Simply because we’ve seen its appeal as a lovely, fresh song and possibly one of the few original efforts around this year – and while yes we still do find the lyrics a bit cringeworthy there’s something altogether charming about Lena and her weird singing.
And in fact this is what makes the Internet such a useful tool when it comes to getting to know Eurovision songs before the night. Had Germany fielded that song in, say, 1990 before the information superhighway took over everything we probably wouldn’t have heard it at all before the night (except possibly on BBC1’s late lamented ‘preview’ show) and chances are we wouldn’t have rated it at all then acted all huffy and surprised when it did well. Now we have a chance to really get to know songs and form proper opinions of them instead of just going on first impressions (and it’s not the first time we’ve done an about turn on what we think of a song – Romania 2005 springs instantly to mind). Which is what many of the postings on this blog are when it comes to songs, in an effort to keep as up to date as possible.
What will also be interesting this year is to see the effect that jury votes have on the German entry plus the new system which allows viewers to vote from the very first song. Since Germany aren’t performing until the 22nd spot in the contest this will give 21 songs before it an opportunity to gain more votes, so it’s going to have to work hard to do well. Plus we don’t know what will be before or after it – the similarly fabulous Azerbaijan on right after this could just be the nail in the coffin of a potential Berlin 2011. But then it has the advantage of jury votes on its side, which could really help propel this song to the upper echelons of the scoreboard – and it’ll be interesting to see how that helps it.
And it’s in the case of songs like this that it’s easy to see the plus side of having jury votes back in the contest. A few years back when the old school and the Big Four were struggling to make an impact in the era of 100 per cent televoting a song like this would probably have been lost in the mix. Now thanks to the combined voting it has a real chance to do as well as its peers. Let’s hope it does.
(Oh and btw we quite like the Israeli song now too. But don’t tell anybody…….:) )
Sunday show? Super six-day ‘Eurovision festival?’ Live judging panel in the venue? EBU spokesman Sven Erikson? People of Europe, happy April Fool’s Day. Not quite on the level of spaghetti trees, but we like to think it was a fairly decent gag 🙂
(Just to confirm: there is no Sunday results show. But actually we do kind of like the idea. If you still don’t know what we’re on about, see the previous post……)
Exciting news has reached us here at Team Eurovision HQ this morning of what could possibly be the biggest change to the Eurovision Song Contest format in years. According to reports, from 2011 the show will attempt to replicate the format of popular shows such as The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing by introducing a special ‘Sunday night results show’ to replace the current Saturday night voting system.
The decision to try out this new format was taken by the EBU after monitoring the viewing figures of shows such as those mentioned above, and seeing how successful they were in retaining interest among the public by spreading the show out over an entire weekend. It will be brought in on a trial basis over the next couple of years, with a view to making it permanent if it is popular.
So how will the new system work? Well apparently Saturday night’s contest will feature all the finalists as usual, and viewers will be able to vote for their favourites with the 50/50 televote-jury system remaining. On Sunday’s show the three songs with the highest number of votes will be performed again, and a panel of music industry experts similar to those on The X Factor and other such shows will vote off the one they consider to be the least worthy winner, live in the venue. The remaining two songs will then go head to head in one final battle voted for by the public, before the eventual winner is crowned.
The voting format for the semi-finals will remain unchanged for now, although it is thought that if the new system proves a success they may introduce it in a few years time and have results shows the evening after the semis, thus creating a kind of super six-day long ‘Eurovision Festival.’
“We are all very excited by this new chapter in the future of the Eurovision Song Contest,” said EBU spokesman Sven Erikson. “We are always thinking of ways in which we can improve the event and bring it up to date with current trends in popular viewing. The idea of a Sunday results show has proven to be a huge hit for many popular programmes across Europe. We hope that by introducing this format to Eurovision we can make the event bigger and better than ever, as it ventures into its seventh decade.”
For more developments on this story, check back here this afternoon.
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