{"id":652,"date":"2008-05-29T23:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T22:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=652"},"modified":"2008-05-29T23:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T22:10:00","slug":"how-to-win-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/how-to-win-eurovision\/","title":{"rendered":"How to win Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eurovision Party 2008 – Andy Abraham<\/a>
Originally uploaded by johnthurm<\/a> <\/span><\/div>\n

Some people think that Eurovision could be fixed by not revealing the nationality of the songs<\/a>. I guess the thinking behind this is that people vote based on nationality rather than what they actually like.<\/p>\n

However, Rod Liddle in The Spectator has a different idea<\/a>: Perhaps people actually vote for the songs they like, but cultural differences mean that they like different tunes in different parts of Europe. In his own words:<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s song was a piece of savvy, soul-inflected 12-bar blues<\/a>; that\u2019s what we usually do for the Eurovision, sometimes witlessly, sometimes \u2014 as with Andy Abrahams \u2014 with a degree of panache. But the one thing none of the countries east of the Oder-Neisse line have is a tradition of 12-bar blues. It may, up to a point, form the basis of our pop music, but it is an alien, disconcerting life-form in Chisinau and Belgrade and Vilnius. Over there, they like stuff in a minor key, the melodic extension of the Imam\u2019s wail or the pobodny liturgies of the Russian Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

If we take part next year, here\u2019s the way to win. Choose someone swarthy and hirsute \u2014 preferably a woman \u2014 and shove her in the sort of dress worn by Joan Sims in the early Carry On comedies. Ensure that she does not shave her armpits. Give her a song in a minor key wedded to a moronic 4\/4 disco beat but which begins with a sort of quasi-spiritual ululating. Let the chorus be along the lines of \u2018Life Ees Good!\u2019 or \u2018We Are All Frentz!\u2019 \u2014 and, from Riga to Baku, watch the votes roll in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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Eurovision Party 2008 – Andy Abraham Originally uploaded by johnthurm Some people think that Eurovision could be fixed by not revealing the nationality of the songs. I guess the thinking behind this is that people vote based on nationality rather than what they actually like. However, Rod Liddle in The Spectator has a different idea: Perhaps people actually vote for the songs they like, but cultural differences mean that they like different tunes in different parts of Europe. In his own words: The UK\u2019s song was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,159,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-en","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}