The Slovene Sahlene 'runs away' to Riga

Another Eurovision night - Slovenia chooses

Hi, it's 22.40, and I'm at Bryan & Kevin's house (on broadband), after watching tonight's EMA, live from Slovenia, on their super-duper TV. The EMA is Slovenia's live show to choose their Eurovision song, and last year it was so good that there are now ten of here watching tonight's. In fact, the album of the show was just top album of 2002 in my unpublished list!

Anyway, there were 16 songs tonight, in groups of four, punctuated by adverts. Two presenters; the very attractive Peter Poles (no sniggering at the back please) did the intro and the Green Room chat, with Misa Molk presenting on stage.

There was an international jury in the studio, which gave the usual 12, 10, 8 etc. votes, and the televote initially did the same. The jury and the televote were equally weighted (50% each). The jury included Marie N (last year's Eurovison winner for Latvia, who performed her song 'I Wanna' in the interval for the benefit of those of us who haven't heard it for 11 and a half months, and those who've forgotten why we're off to Riga in May. Also Paul De Leeuw, very camp Dutch Eurovision commentator (like Christopher Biggins meeta Anne Robinson.

It was quite a good selection of songs, certainly better than the recent Polish final, and after the sixteen songs, the jury's hunky spokesperson (no idea who he was) gave their votes first. Their top three were;
12 points to Poglec me v oci by Alenka Godec.
10 points to Ujel si se by Polona.
8 points to Zlata sestdeseta by Alenka Pintaric & Tulio Furlanic.

Readers may be interested to know that these were the last three songs performed tonight. Perhaps the jury were in the bar at the start, as they ignored my second favourite, song number two; a ballad called 'Mlado srce' (The young heart) by Ana
Dezman, giving it no points at all! I described Polona's song as "promising start, but then becomes a plodder". The duet was surely just a joke song, and I've no idea how it made the top three - it only came tenth in the televote.

Then the televote scores were added, and the Slovenian 'Popstars' group Bepop won it by a mile with 16,000+ votes. Now I love manufactured pop groups as much as the next person, but their performance was rubbish; a badly sung song, not poppy enough, with a tedious rap bit. Thankfully, the jury had given them no points, so they didn't make the top three play-off.

With the jury votes and the televote combined, we ended up with Nusa Derenda (really strong song, and my own favourite, albeit Energy part two), Karmen Stavec (again, with a song that's SOOOOOO derivative of Estonia last year that it's a joke) and the aforementioned Alenka Godec. This top three was exactly the same as the combined votes of ten people here had produced, so we were pretty pleased, adn couldn't really care who won out of Nusa and Alenka.

These top three were performed again, and then the phone lines were opened again, with all three songs starting from zero, and eventually Karmen won with just over 50%, so at least it was clear cut, if unoriginal. If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. It's her fourth time of trying, and she was incandescent last year at coming second to the trannies, Setstre after the phone vote (which she won) collapsed and was declared invalid. (Sestre won on the jury vote, but were not too popular in the televote.) You could almost SMELL the desparation, and see the relief on her face tonight. Actually, I didn't look at her face that much as I was distracted by the candy pink outfit, including pedal-pushers, that she wore. (Pedal pushers were a big theme of this year's EMA.)

So there we had it - 'Lep Poletni Dan' (which until yesterday was called Na Na Na, so you have some idea, is a good song if we hadn't heard it before, but we have. Christ, it EVEN copies the bit in Runaway where Sahlene sings, "Runaway to the [and then stops]...Runaway to the stars...." Just like Estonia's final last week, the best song doesn't win. ('Club 'Kung Fu'' came equal last, despite being utterly, fantastically brilliant - read all about it on Mike's blog, including a comment from one of the band, Vanilla Ninja. Jealous, moi? You bet I'm jealous!)


Latvia's still my favourite song so far. And now back to Bryan's buffet....


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