S. Worthen | Weblog

Hurray! For the second year running, my favorite song from the videos managed to win the competition!* Azerbaijan it is. I word it that way since actually, the performance was weaker than in the semi-final or video. I voted for it in the semi-final, but not the final as a result, however much I like the song itself and the pretty use of pyrotechnics on stage.

But not as weak as Blue for the UK. They had a decent song and they swamped it with a backdrop which overwhelmed the singers, and then had sound problems. On the other end of the spectrum, Switzerland and Estonia really should have done better than they did. At least it was a solidly mixed field this year, which made it interesting in the voting. Am astonished that Italy came second: a good welcome-back after 14 years away from the contest. The Ukraine song did remarkably well given all I can remember about it is the amazing sand artist. Germany made such intelligent use of the backdrop screens; nicely done.

Top gymanistic feats while singing: The lead singer for Russia did a backflip *while singing*!!! Russia was technically very impressive, but had a weak song. The lead singer for Denmark did a whole lap, to the mini-stage and back, also while singing.

We did a lot of recasting while watching this year, pairing the decent song with better singers where they were needed. Still so, so relieved that Graham Norton did not talk over the songs, as he did his first year hosting the contest. I really loved the postcards, which made real places look like toy miniatures.

* So this must mean I have very middlebrow, very European taste?