Songs which seem worse, after having seen the videos:

Croatia - In Croatian, and completely lacking in smiles until right at the end. No one wants to vote for a hard-faced bitch, you know. Lighten up.

Russia - Aaaagh! I really liked this song before I knew what they looked like. In boyband terms, this lot are more chubby Nsync than fit 3SL. But of course, it's a SONG contest, isn't it? Image doesn't matter. Er, no, that's rubbish. Lovely flowery set though. Watching this also made the lyric seem clearer, which was a bit of a revelation, to be honest. For several weeks now, I've thought this was the rudest song in the contest, and I've been singing "Northern girl, frosty eyes, I wanna MOUNT you" and wondering how on Earth they could get away with it! Now I realise it's "I wanna MELT you", and I feel relieved, a bit stupid, and yet strangely disappointed. (The 'Rudest Lyric' award now goes to Malta for that opening line and the "cherry red lips" bit.)

Switzerland - "Hey, Francine, the local student union is having a karaoke night. Do you fancy having a go? You don't have to sing anything decent - that Eurovision song of yours will do. Do you mind if we film it as well? We promise to make loads of noise at the end. Cheers." A suitably rubbish video for this year's worst song.

Sweden - Yes, the song is fantastic, and the energy of the performance is damned infectious too, but in this Melodifestivalen clip it just doesn't come together properly. This is one of the braver videos, as they've left the live vocal on it, whereas many of the others have been redubbed with a studio recording. There's also one bit in this where I thought on the night itself that they'd made a mistake, and it still looks odd. They don't sing half of one of the lines. Even if that was intentional, it sounds disjointed. If they'd made a proper video for this, Sweden could have had this in the bag already. Now it will depend more on their performance in Tallinn...

Germany - ....and talking of countries which could have made a good video, what's this Grand Prix performance doing here? Even the 'new, improved' Corinna May would have benefited from a video. Instead it looks like Germany is trying to do it on the cheap. It won't win them any favours having this broadcast all over Europe. They haven't even bothered to take the station ident off the screen. Or the caption from her first performance, or even the bloomin' phone number! What were they thinking?

Lithuania - Total cost = 1 Euro (for the light bulb shining in his face). Okay, I know they didn't have much time, so I'll forgive them, but this could have been so much better. I was really fed up looking at his eye for three minutes. Not to mention the hair (but Roy probably thinks his hair is lovely).

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