Eurovision 2009 - Moscow

 

 

The highlight of the year has now finished. The show, this year held in Moscow, yet another dose of campy performance, good, bad and worse songs and of course, although to a lesser than usual extent, neighbour voting.

Since the semi finals were broadcast on BBC3 which I had nowhere to watch, I spent two evenings sitting in the university library watching them on Maltese TV over the internet. Unlike in pervious years, I hadn’t heard the songs before they were actually performed live on stage.

This year’s Eurovision saw a few changes. The voting has changed and it’s now based on the televote and jury, so it’s meant to be fairer and I think it worked. Also, Terry Wogan is no longer the commentator which was very sad news when resigned after last year’s Eurovision. Graham Norton, however, turned out to be the perfect replacement. I hadn’t laughed this much in a long time, he was absolutely brilliant.

Now the songs. I didn’t feel particularly sorry that some songs hadn’t made it to the final and was mostly pleased with the outcome of the semis. In the final itself, I thought there were a few songs which were pleasant to listen to. I’m talking here about Portugal whose song was sweet and cheerful and of course sung in Portuguese, the singer seemed like a lovely girl. Other songs sung in national languages that I liked were France, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Estonia.

It was France that got my vote as I didn’t want any country from eastern Europe to win since that would cause much disappointment and anger among ‘western’ countries. The winner (Norway) performed a nice and catchy song and although it was in English, I still liked it and was pleased that they had won.

Going back to Estonia, I must say that this song is growing on me more and more every time I listen to it. Although I didn’t want them to win due to the fact that they are considered an eastern nation, I wished them well and, as far as I can remember, they fared rather well. Plus, Estonian is the most beautiful language there is and if Estonia was located somewhere in the south of Europe, I would definitely consider moving there.