We need to recruit a bunch of Bulgarian grannies in traditional dress, waving union flags if we really are serious about making a statement of intent to win it.

But it's not "nonsense", it is just the most mammoth thing, it's so big, there's nothing even remotely to compare with it. Literally hundreds of millions are spent on it. So whatever you think of the actual end product, it is as big a deal as there is in that context.

If I gave you exactly the same funding, do you think you could turn it into something credible? I'm damn sure I could. My issue with it is that why pisz all that money down the toilet that the end product has become? The sheer weight of money available should very easily transform it into a top music event, and I can't understand why it doesn't. Particularly as the thing has got so bloody big whole countries wouldn't even be able to afford to stage it if they won.


Heheh there's more chance of Bonnie winning than that

Its fundamental problem is that good quality songs usually need to be listened to a few times to be fully appreciated. Eurovision panders to instantly absorbed bubblegum. To make it into a contest that genuinely attracts good songs would require the judges to listen to each song 3 or 4 times. Eurovision doesn't work like that, certainly not when there's a pubic vote.

Good point, but all the songs are available long before the contest. I'd accept the majority of people wouldn't have listened to them all, though, certainly.

But it is the same for all entries, and so full appreciation isn't required, but yes, instant immediate appeal is.

What isn't immediately apparent though is why so many entries think that the standard cliched Euroclone song fits that bill - it no longer does, those songs never do well.


Is there? Well, that WOULD attract a whole new demographic!



Meanwhile, Engelbert has spoken. He congratulated our Bonnie on "being the one" and went on:



If anybody can post a translation of this for me, I'd be grateful.

Loosely translated it means I was robbed, good luck to the Welsh Warbler.

Do people really take the Eurovision serious??...



The UK comes close to the bottom every year, which, if we are taking it seriously, means we are pretty dire at the whole music thing, yet we gave the world The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin the list is endless??

Instead of the Eurovision, just show re-runs of the music from the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games and then stick two fingers up to the rest of Europe and tell them to match that....

I don't know, ABBA are at least a million times better than Jessie J.

Really?.....Both are utter shiite, both just sound like camp disco, aimed at teenage girls and homosexuals to me.

I'm neither but I like ABBA. You can keep Jessie J, Spice Girls, Emeli Sande, Artic Monkeys, One Direction, Elbow, Kaiser Cheifs and all those who made the opening/closing ceremonys so great.

I fully respect that music is all about personal musical choice and preference, so I'll just move away from the debate giggling at the idea that ABBA are better than Elbow or the Arctic Monkeys....

The problem with contemporary music is just the fact that its contemporary, and it doesn't have a very long shelf life.

Its easy to forget, given how commercially successful Abba were, that in the 1970's/80s they were simply chart music pulp purveyors in the same way that Kaiser Cheifs are/were, they wrote tunes to hum along to, tunes to jump up and down and chant along to at a gig, simple tunes, simple lyrics, twice through the ears and they are lodged in your brain and you buy the album - thats the recipe.

Years later they are venerated as some kind of musical genuises, held up as a shining example to all as a pinnacle of musical perfection - they just got the recipe right, at the right time, and their skill meant that they had a slightly longer shelf life.

That is popular chart music in a nutshelf.


Just to throw something else into the mix I listened to guitarist Jon Gomm (jongomm.com) (watch him play "Ain't nobody on YouTube) on radio Leeds the other day speaking about music, writing music, teaching music, specifically for the guitar and he mentioned that he learned to play the guitar as a four year old child after an uncle brought home from Spain a three quarter flamenco guitar and a Beatles guitar music book.

He was asked why it was that in every guitar students case their is always a Beatles songbook and whether its because the Beatles tunes were so easy to play.

His reply was the contrary, that most popular chart music is much, much easier to learn than a standard Beatles tune mainly because most of the chart music for the past 20 years or so has been based on only four or five chord sequences, and usually very common, simple chords, whereas (he said) the Beatles, certainly George Harrison and Paul McCartney learned to play the guitar with help from an older pupil at their high school who had studied jazz guitar and that influence is apparent in many of their compositions with chords and sequences that are not seen in popular music now.

So there you are.

Yet another entire evening of tedious, utter tripe being dished out by the BBC.

What a brilliant excuse for going down to a pub with no telly