Don’t play that song again! Or did you already….

We figured that given the success of Loreen’s bangin’ dance anthem Euphoria in Baku last year (and indeed the very reason that your Eurovision contest is off to Malmo this year), that a brace of club floorfillers would find their way into the line-up of this year’s contest – and indeed we haven’t been disappointed. For while 2012’s performers couldn’t get enough of big ballads (off the back of Ell and Nikki’s Azeri victory), 2010’s hopefuls favoured post-Fairytale twiddly folk nonsense and the class of 2007 wanted to out-Lordi Lordi, so 2013’s crop seem to be hellbent on emulating our Swedish siren. Well some of them anyway. To kick off, here’s Slovenia’s Hannah Mancini going all Skrillex on Straight Into Love. We quite like this but we cannot envisage many people west of Bulgaria will:

And here’s Ireland’s Ryan Dolan, who snatched victory from under the nose of Aimee Fitzpatrick in this weekend’s national final with this little number, Only Love Survives. This reminds us of what Euphoria might have sounded like if it had had a few ethnic drum beats thrown in. And had been sung by a man. Or possibly it just sounds the kind of thing Malta might enter in a particularly average year. Your choice:

Not to be left out, Germany have also gotten in on the act with their effort from Cascada (you may remember them – adoptsTroy McClure voice – from such hits as Evacuate The Dancefloor and Every Time We Touch) with their much-hyped entry Glorious (much-hyped in that we’d actually heard of them as opposed to most of the other finalists). The song’s already whipped up a bit of controversy back home where it’s been accused of ‘copying’ Euphoria – but we can’t think what they’re on about. I mean they’re both upbeat dance tracks, they’re both sung by women, and they’re both in Eurovision – well, stands to reason doesn’t it? They must surely be the same song. Well they’re not really since Euphoria is a strong, powerful dance anthem while Glorious to us sounds like something Tulisa might pull out of the bag for an X Factor semi-final. You be the judge:

To finish, here’s the Greek entry, the wonderfully-titled Alcohol Is Free by Koza Mostra and Agathonas (i.e that bloke with the moustache). This isn’t really a dance anthem at all (unless you count the sort of dancing you do after partaking of much free alcohol) but since it is a) marvellous and b) sounds like nothing else in the competition we figured we’d include it anyway, if only to convince you it’s not all about drum machines and glowsticks this year:

 

 

Calm down, don’t panic, we’re here….

First up, apologies for the lack of posts in recent months. It appears your editor has gone and landed a job at  this place, which doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for blogging, or at least hasn’t of late. But fear not, we are aware that preparations are well underway for Malmo, and we shall endeavour to try and keep up with them even if we’re not quite as prolific as before.

Still, we shall try to play catch-up over the next few weeks as the contest rumbles ever closer, and what better way to start than by taking a look at some of the songs which  have already been chosen. Our current personal favourite is the Maltese entry, from the simply adorable Gianluca Bezzina. Seems our man – who has a doctor’s degree and a penchant for snowflake sweaters – was a bit of a surprise choice over the more strongly fancied Kevin Borg (and just to keep it in the family his sister Dorothy squeezed a song into the national final too), but frankly we reckon it was well deserved – and we wouldn’t be surprised to see him get a fair amount of Tom Dice-style love in Malmo come May. Because really, the only way this song could BE any cuter would be if it were sung by a basket of kittens….