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At least according to the Eurovision contest

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-11/e ... te/6084582

Eurovision 2015: Australia set to compete at this year's song contest as 'one-off' wild card entry
Updated about an hour agoWed 11 Feb 2015, 11:22am


Australia has been invited to compete in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in May.

After Jessica Mauboy's guest appearance at last year's Eurovision extravaganza in Denmark, the European Broadcasting Union and the host broadcaster, Austria's state television network ORF, have invited SBS, which broadcasts the show in Australia, to field a candidate.

Australia will be a one-off wild card entry in the final stage of the competition, according to the Eurovision website.

The addition brings the number of countries competing in Vienna to 40.

As Australia will be an official competitor, audience members with a +61 country code will be allowed to vote for the first time.

SBS secured the deal and said the successful candidate to represent Australia would be selected and revealed soon.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the competition, which attracts hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide every year.

Eurovision has launched plenty of careers over the years, the most famous success story being Abba who won in 1974 for Waterloo.

On Twitter, some users expressed confusion over the wild card entry, while others shared their excitement.

I am so going to catch up with my friends for this and since I can now vote.....

Before someone jumps in... yes I know some competitor countries are somewhat outside of what is geographically thought of as Europe. For example

a. Malta is an somewhere between continental Europe and Africa (so I can see it sort of counts),
b) Turkey, Azerbaijian are countries which have parts of their territory in Europe and another continent (so again I can see why this counts)

and some countries just lie outside of geographical Europe, eg Morocco (in North Africa), and Israel being in the ME, that is the region where Asia meets Europe meets Africa, albeit its located more in the Asian part of it. But stilll...

We are just fricking so far outside of Europe we qualify for the world cup via the Asian section. Come to think of it, China is closer to Vienna (host city of this year's Eurovision) than we are (yes I checked that). Anyway, being someone who does watch Eurovision, I am bemused by this, but not complaining. Maybe without the politicking we might get votes because we haven't pissed any Europeans off. Aside from Russia when our PM threatened to shirtfront Putin.

Now Asia needs their own version of Eurovision, and then we can also participate. At least we are closer to Asia and both sides of politics realise our trade is going to be tied up with Asia in the future.

I'd have no problem with the thing evolving into a world wide celebration of really bad music.

Just as long as you guys don't take it in any way seriously.

Bedlam wrote:I'd have no problem with the thing evolving into a world wide celebration of really bad music.

Just as long as you guys don't take it in any way seriously.

Of course they will, they're Aussies - they take all minority sports seriously.

*performs dark rituals*

Arise from thy unquiet grave, thread!

So, the Eurovision semifinals are now done. The first round of semifinals on Tuesday was bloody pathetic, even for Eurovision. I really only liked the entries from Romania and Estonia. Everything else was from okay to fucking horrible.

Finland quite obviously got eliminated at that stage, though at least we sent in a memorable entry and it was nice that those guys got as far as they did. Just getting into the contest in the first place was a huge win for them and for Down syndrome awareness (for those who have not followed this, all four members of the Finnish punk rock group we sent to the contest have Down syndrome and various otehr learning disabilities).

The second round of semifinals today (well yesterday technically, it's past midnight here) was a far better quality group, so it sucks that some of them weren't in the first semi, as they would have knocked out some of the horrible shit that got through. I liked Azerbaidjan's entry and Sweden's entry is pretty good for a pop song. Glad Montenegro got to the finals as well, since they have a very nice power ballad that is not in English. Some of the other entries selected to the finals were just shit, like Cyprus, Slovenia and Israel, but meh. That's the nature of the beast. Would rather have seen Ireland instead of one of them. Or Czech Republic, they also had a good entry, but no joy.

What really ticks me off is that Portugal had hands down the best song of the lot (both semis AND the prequalified countries) and they didn't get to the finals. So fuck that bullshit. They really would have deserved to get into the final instead of some of the others. Then again, I'm a sucker for stuff in the mold of Laura Pausini, which their entry was (and better than the bulk of Pausini's songs, though not quite as good as her best stuff), so I'm certainly not the most unbiased party to assess that.

I've got a roleplaying session with some friends of mine on Sunday, and since the final is on Saturday evening and will probably last until something like 3 AM before it's all said and done, my sleep cycle is looking to get royally fucked. Can't even sleep during the day, since my cousin's wedding is on Saturday.

And now I think it's bloody well time to go to bed before I have another glass of eight year old Marsala (as in, the bottle was opened eight years ago, it's amazing how long that stuff can stay viable as long as you put a really airtight cork the bottle) since I have a 6:30 wake up call tomorrow so I can manage to feed the cats and get to work on time.

It should just be renamed Global Really Bad Open Mic Night.

I am going to resist the urge to look up the winner until I viewed in delayed telecast at one my friend's over the weekend. Even if its crap as much as Edi says it is, at least its a great excuse to hang out with friends.

It's not all crap, there have been worse Eurovision years, it's just that the semis were too lopsided, which resulted in some good stuff being left out of the finals due to overcrowding and some bad stuff getting in because there was nothing good to fill the slots, depending on on the semifinal in question.

All of these assessments are, of course, based on my completely objective and in no way biased personal opinion and if other people absolutely positively insist on being wrong (i.e. having opinions different than mine), then that is their privilege.

Eurovision is supposed to be the following things:
1. Trashy
2. Outside the norm
3. Trashy
4. Did I mention trashy?

That is all it is. The times where there were good winning songs are just a few. It is the lowbrowest "art" festifval of Europe there is.

It wasn't always that way though. Look back at the good old days and you'll get stuff like Abba. The trashy garbage brigade is a relatively recent development.

Purple wrote:It wasn't always that way though. Look back at the good old days and you'll get stuff like Abba. The trashy garbage brigade is a relatively recent development.

No, not trashy at all.

Hillary wrote:No, not trashy at all.

Given the year it happened no, it really isn't.

I just watched Semifinal 1 on delayed broadcast.

I loved that whenever they would normally say 'Europe', they now say 'Europe... and Australia'.

Great, managing to zoidberg a continent that just so happens to have the whole 3rd rock from the sun between it and Europe.

I suppose, could be worse - AU could win and thus have the ABC hosting the next Eurovision in, say, Sydney?

2 hours to go to the final. The ribs are roasted, the sushi made, the pimms is cool and the least euopean eurovision party is ready to go!

fnord wrote:I suppose, could be worse - AU could win and thus have the ABC hosting the next Eurovision in, say, Sydney?

And the show ends in horrible tragedy as the native wildlife decided to cast its vote on the matter of bad music.

I liked Sweden, Belgium and Georgia's songs ( in no specific order).

Sweden are crowned champions!

Best of the remaining lot, that was. Congratulations to Sweden!

A bit sad that the tenors did not do better.

The winning song is utterly forgettable and bland, which is good for it will be forgotten quickly.

Thanas wrote:The winning song is utterly forgettable and bland, which is good for it will be forgotten quickly.

Unfortunately not here in Sweden.

Meh it has catchy tune and I liked The interaction with The background video. Deserved winner imo. Surprised that Austria and Germany didnt score any points

wautd wrote:Meh it has catchy tune and I liked The interaction with The background video. Deserved winner imo. Surprised that Austria and Germany didnt score any points

Politics, nobody likes Merkel.

Surely politicus had an impact but few countries have love for Putin either and Russia scores damn good this year

My guess is that it's a protest vote against Merkel. There are quite a lot of people who see her only as that *bleep* hell bent on imposing austerity on them.

wautd wrote:Surely politicus had an impact but few countries have love for Putin either and Russia scores damn good this year

yes, but there had to be two explicit calls within the venue not to boo the russians, one by the host near the start and a second halfway through the scoring by Conchita in primary school teacher mode. There's political ill will to russia, and there's a few thousand drunk gay fans of eurovision ill will...

Not so sure about the Germany one. Austria, France and the UK also did poorly, and the voting seemed less policatal then usual.