It’s now less than week to go until we fly into Oslo to commence a whole week of Eurovision Song Contest geekage. This time next week, we’ll be settled in and already living inside the eccentric Eurovision bubble. But for now, we’re enjoying getting more and more acquainted with the songs.
As we mentioned already, 2010 is the year of the ballad at Eurovision. Soft and slow tracks feature heavily in the list of 39 songs competing. Some are good, some are horrendous, but three of them are properly amazing – the entries from Norway, Azerbaijan, and Ireland.
Ireland’s ballad, ‘It’s For You’ by Niamh Kavanagh has been given the dance remix treatment! And as you would hope and expect, that means that it’s been turned into a delightfully camp anthem. A euro house beat literally explodes at the very start of each chorus, and the key change has to be heard to be believed! We can only imagine how much fun it’s going to be to dance to this after a few alcoholic beverages in Oslo.
The Irish entry is one of the examples in an amusing trend that’s emerged throughout our favourite songs this year. Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden – all super songs, and all composed by Swedish songwriters! We all know that Sweden has the best composers, but we didn’t expect them to be able to take over other nations’ efforts at the Eurovision Song Contest! We’re glad they have though, as the four entries mentioned above make this year’s contest a lot more enjoyable than it would have been without them.
Our absolute favourite song this year though, as you all probably already know by now, is Iceland’s ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ by Hera Bjork. We’re still knocked into a serotonin induced happy coma every time we hear it – it just doesn’t get stale or boring or old. And so we were delighted to see that Hera has released its parent album, also called ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’. And it also contains her two previous singles, ‘My Heart’ and the utterly, incredible, fantastic, ‘Someday’ which manages to be even better than ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’. It’s worth it for those three songs alone, but there are ten tracks on there and it’s a great album – very much in the dance pop mould that we love so much. You can buy it, and listen to the songs here.
Finally, back to Sweden, if you watched Melodifestivalen then you’ll remember how special the performance of the winning song looked, thanks to the inclusion of thousands of neon orange light sticks that were lit up during the song. It was a beautiful moment, and no doubt helped viewers with their decision on which song to vote for. Well, the same will be happening when Anna Bergendahl sings ‘This Is My Life’at Eurovision! 35,000 red light sticks have been shipped to Oslo especially for Sweden’s performance. Lovely!
