feeling listless

Music Glutton for punishment I’m ‘enjoying’ the full Eurovision experience this year, tuning in for both semi-finals ahead of Saturday. Tonight’s show was about as disappointing as I expected with retina splitting production values, a steady stream of average ballads and novelty records but with the odd moment of genuine goodness. The Belgium entry, decked in a dress borrowed from Strawberry Switchblade, took the Sigur Ros approach of making up her own language and I think if she hadn’t been called Ishtar with all the jinxiness that name attracts she might have gone through.

Finland’s Teräsbetoni scored because they’re from a genre totally unlike anything else there and Kalomira from Greece was essentially British weather girl Laura Tobin pretending to be Britney Spears. But my favourite and the only genuinely good song came from Norway’s Maria Haukaas Storeng, a Jewel Kilcher lookalike sounding like Christina Aguilera when she’s not doing interesting things with oils. She once played Ophelia at the theatre with adds a few points, but the song was about something and had a beginning middle and end and at least she's not a turkey (Dustin’s only admirable quality was actually mentioning Terry Wogan in a Eurovision song, not that it did it much good. That’s comedy in Ireland? Yeah, err, grand).