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This is the 2016 Eurovision CD, featuring all songs
from the contest, including those voted out already before the grand finale.
The album also includes a song that was withdrawn at the last moment (the
Romanian entry). Highlights include Dami Im from Australia, Zoë from Austria,
Westlife's Nicky Byrne representing Ireland, Malta's Ira Losco, Israel,
Lithuania, Sweden, Russia and the incomprehensible entry from Germany (which
ended up last). While the show itself is entertaining, the songs are often
taxingly bad or ugly, with the somewhat-good carefully hidden away somewhere in
between the two former categories.
The voting system badly needs an overhaul. This year, the jury groups preferred Australia, while the phone vote favored Russia, yet the win went to the Ukraine (second in both categories taken separately). The Ukrainian entry, “1944”, nominally about Stalin's deportations of the Crimean Tartars, was (of course) a veiled protest against Putin's annexation of Crimea. Since political messages are verboten, the song should have been disqualified, yet we all know that *this* particular rule has been bended many times! Israel and, indeed, the Ukraine are the usual suspects.
The fact that the ESC was organized in Sweden this year was obvious, from the perennially vulgar jokes of show hostess and vamp extraordinaire Petra Mede to the bizarrely brilliant double-entendre in the motto “Come together”. But then, we're talking about the nation which sent a song titled “Boogaloo” to ESC 1987...
As for being non-political, well, there was Refugees Welcome propaganda on stage, the audience was allowed to fly Rainbow flags and EU flags, while the Armenian delegation was reprimanded for flying the flag of Nagorno-Karabakh and, ahem, the winner was an anti-Russian protest. Not that I really give a damn, but unless the EBU does something to safeguard the non-partisan character of this contest, we will see even more of this in the future.
The somewhat-good, the really bad and the awfully ugly will probably remain a constant, though. As on this CD, where you can't see any of the action on stage, but actually have to listen to the music…
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