Daniel Viles’ Funky Pharmacy presents
Daniel’s Eurovision Song Contest Guide
or
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Eurosong
Welcome all to the penultimate guide to the Eurovision Song Contest. Below, you will find links to my personal reviews of many songs performed in the Eurovision Song Contest from 1989 to the present day.
I regularly tell people what wonderful songs I have heard at
the Eurovision Song Contest, only to find that in their search for the wonders
which I so sorrowfully take for granted, their path to enlightenment has been
waylaid by the dark, evil forces of Eurovision (viz. bad music!) The world
desperately needs a guide to help people decide what's worth listening to, but
due to this sickening "everyone's entitled to their own opinion"
theory that's doing the rounds at the moment, no-one is game to stick their
head out and say "This song is hot stuff for these reasons" or
"This song needs remedial care for these reasons".
No one, that is, except me! Friends, I am here on this earth
to provide this service to you, and I give it to you out of love. I am here to
help you decide what to listen to, to guide you down the road of mystery,
through the tunnels of apprehension and onto the highway of Eurosong bliss. Use
the reviews on these pages to find descriptions of the musical style of the
song and my personal opinion of the song. Read my reviews to gather
information, learn my personal biases to help you make your own opinion, and
then ignore everything I say and go listen to what you bloody well like!
In short, these are song reviews. I don’t pay much attention to what the performers wore or how they did in the voting. Many of the great Eurovision songs were performed by people with novelty warts where their facial features should be, wore clothes rejected by op shops and received 10 votes based entirely on proximity to another nation in the competition. But they still sounded great. That’s why this site is here.
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Athens 2006
(coming soon) |
Kyiv 2005 (coming soon) |
(half-done) |
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Tallinn 2002
(unavailable) |
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Songs
are given a star rating:
*****
- the world is now a better place
****
- yeah, this has a lot going for it
***
- well, there are elements of a good sonng there
**
- what the... oh that's right, I'm watchhing Eurovision
*
- ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Bwa Ha Ha Ha
no
stars – guards, seize them!
Songs
are shown in order of performance. DANIEL VILES' ALL-TIME CLASSIC EUROVISION
SONGS are denoted by the presence of that country's flag to the right of the
review.
Oh, and let me explain a few of the trickier terms used in
these reviews:
A.M-T.P.B.P.B.A.S.W.A.P.Y.S.V.
- Another mid-tempo pop ballad performedd by a singer with a pleasant yet
substanceless voice
4KQ; 4KQ
set - 4KQ is an 'easy listening' radio station in Brisbane,
Australia. Its slogan is 'greatest memories, latest hits'. They haven't played
a 'latest hit' since about 1985, and whoever promised 'greatest memories' must
have been exclusively marketing the slogan towards the Alzheimer's' community.
The 4KQ set is a collective name for 4KQ listeners.
L.N.T. – Loud Nationalised Thankyou. Now that performers’ microphones are still on for a few seconds after the conclusion of the song, the opportunity is frequently taken to tell everybody watching how much your country loves their country. Variants range from “We love you” to “We love you (insert host nation here)” to “(insert performer’s nation here) loves you (insert host nation here)” and occasionally, the L.C.T. (Loud Continentalised Thankyou) – “We love you Europe!”
S.R.D. – Superfluous Reference to Death. Usually found in songs written in the English language by people who can barely speak it. In such songs, the willingness to die is seen as a sign of love and devotion which, in Communist Europe, it most certainly was.
W.A.N.C. – Wink At Nearest Camera. If the song stinks, the performance is off and everybody hates your country anyway, just wink at one of the cameras and you’re sure to get votes from someone. Not sure who started it this trend but the acronym is quite appropriate.
Click here to read why I get involved in this dumb contest in the first
place.
Some
Eurovision Song Contest Links
Eurovision Jukebox
run by
UK's Malcolm Codd; comprehensive Eurovision site featuring song and video
downloads from Eurovisions past and present
run by UK's
Chris Melville; fundamental source of late-breaking, early-breaking and
not-quite-broken Eurovision news
Song Thrush
wonderful
Eurovision lyrics site by Marky from Israel
ESC Statistics
delightful
site by Finnish fan Jarmo Penttila in which you can vote in around 100
different Eurovision polls ranging from your favourites in a particular year to
the best contest presenters of all time
comprehensive
page of Eurosong links
Mumiy Troll (Russia
2001)
Danijela Martinovic
(Croatia 1998)
Guildo Horn (Germany 1998)
Melanie Cohl (Belgium
1998)
Anna Maria Jopek (Poland 1997)
Paul Oscar
(Iceland 1997)
George Nussbaumer (Austria 1996)
Eimear Quinn
(Ireland 1996) interview on Celtic Cafe
Kasia Kowalska (Poland 1996)
Justyna Steczkowska (Poland 1995)
Secret Garden (Norway 1995)
Keti Garbi (Greece 1993)
last updated 21 May 2006
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