Eurovision: Never Again

Congratulations! It is Monday and we made it. That means we survived another year of Eurovision, even if there might have been times when we both felt like maybe we hadn’t survived and that somehow we had slipped away into an oblivion of pretty dark haired European ladies in little to no clothing singing totally boring songs about love whilst dancing like hookers.  

I’m actually glad to admit that last night was my first ever viewing of Eurovision. After a week of hearing my friend blab on about it on Facebook, how could I resist? 

 

 So, I made myself comfortable on the couch, prepared to be amazed by the talent performed before me (and for the world). Unfortunately, I must say, I was disappointed with the whole program. Not only was it one continuous advertisement for the host country Azerbaijan (which I had never heard of until last night and will probably never hear about again) the quality of the performers was terrible. The whole time I was asking myself, what on Earth is a central Asian country like Azerbaijan doing in a contest called Eurovision? Nothing about contemporary Azerbaijan marks it out as distinctly European -- it's Islamic, undemocratic and many, many miles away from the continent.

 

 Sure, the smorgasbord of beautiful European women wearing little to no clothing was captivating but I thought that Eurovision was supposed to be a battle by the best for the ultimate prize. Boy was I wrong! The winner, Sweden’s Loreen, was probably one of the WORST performers of the evening wearing some weird creepy smoke monster costume reminiscent of Lady Gaga. Personally, I would have given the prize to the Russian grannies just out of spite (and cuteness).  

 

Alright, so you may be thinking, “Marissa, aren’t you being a little harsh?” Well, as a musician and faced with performers with real talent and training every day, I cannot help but put a superficial, pop-star show like Eurovision down. There was too much sex, too little clothing and not nearly enough talent to get a tick in my books. The only thing that I did enjoy was reading the Twitter comments that appeared at the bottom of the screen… They had me and my Dad in fits of laughter.

Suffice to say, last night will be my first and final Eurovision.