The Winner Is… Norway!

The Eurovision Song Contest is over. Norway, represented by young Alexander Rybak took the first price and highest ESC score ever (387 points) with the song Fairytale. The song is really good, folk-influenced (I'd say it also sounds Slavic), melancholic, melodic, and soundwise dominated by violins and Rybak’s fairly sweet voice. What makes this victory special is that the winning song is actually good from beginning to end – something that is, in my opinion, nowadays not very common in this contest. Rybak is now getting really famous also outside Norway with his song topping download charts. In his home country, Rybak has already made Fairytale a hit with massive sales. The song is written by him, so you gotta give him a couple of extra points for that.

Finland made its way to the finals but Waldo’s People’s placement was 25th – the last. I think the placement was pretty justified. The song definitely wasn’t the best our country could provide but, on the other hand, this wasn’t the first time when Finns have been very wrong about what Europe might like to hear. Finland has so far collected several placements as the last – and only one victory. What did we hopefully learn this year? You don’t win with 90s Eurodance anymore and rapping will definitely not help. How could you make an impression with rhythmic talking instead of introducing a gorgeous melody that will sweetly caress your eardrums with melodic variation? (Something that I’ve been wondering ever since hip hop became very popular.) And, after all, I didn’t want Waldo’s People to represent Finland. My favourite was Vink!

After all, I am happy, and I hope all other Finns are as well, that a neighbouring country won. See and hear Norway’s winning song at YouTube. Rybak probably would have liked to play his violin for real, but in this contest all instrument except for vocals are playback. Also, these days there are hardly any Eurovision contestants without a proper dance choreography!

Rybak's winning song at YouTube

The Greatest Plan?

It's time for Eurovision Song Contest (Euroviisut) once again. Most European countries willing to participate are having their national song choice contests going on at the moment. On Friday, there was Finland's third and last semi-final on TV. What did we Finns hear and see? An international Finnish singer performing a completely structureless tune, hip-hop in sing language (whatever happened to music?), another schlager from every grandmother's favorite son, Mr. Sillanpää..

I was quite surprised when I suddenly heard melodic pop-rock played on the show! I had no idea what was about to happen, but the song made me tick right away. It was a band called Vink ("Wink" is probably the most accurate English translation..) that performed a song called The Greatest Plan. It was an energetic piece of music, and slightly My Sharona-esque, I might add.. This band is a very new one, so it wasn't so strange that I had never heard of them. They've only released a couple of singles so far and their songs have been playing on the radio (that I never listen to - apart from the soul/funk/disco channel Groove.fm. Finnish radio sucks big time.).

Vink's song didn't win the semi-final, neither it will most probably succeed in the "second chance round" that will take place in a week, but it was a really nice thing to hear among all those other songs, most of which were, in my opinion, (if not bad -) incredibly uninteresting - to say the least. Ever since Finland won the contest in 2006 with an 80s-styled hard rock tune Hard Rock Hallelujah performed by Lordi, there have been many hard rock/heavy metal songs in Finland's national semi-finals, and other types of music represented include hip-hop, schlager (iskelmä), eurodance, and some other genres that are more difficult to define. There really seems to be little room for pop-rock and fresh melodic hooks in the contest.

Listen to this Vink's song, if you like.. According to the rules of Eurovision Song Contest, only lead and backing vocals are to be performed live in the contest while everything else is playback.

If you have no idea what this Eurovision Song Contest is and you'd like to find out, check out some info at Wikipedia.

Update: Vink made it to the finals but not the super-finals. Finland's representative for this year's contest is Waldo's People. They are a eurodance group that was quite successful in the late 90s. The song isn't entirely bad but.. Eurodance is the most predictable type of music you could ever send to ESC. I just gotta say that everytime someone starts speaking in music (instead of singing), it's such a huge loss for music. Music has the potential of being melodic, and there is nothing more magical than a good melody.

Vink - The Greatest Plan