World of Chig   

15.3.06

...while I'm in Stockholm.



This, ladies and gentlemen, is not Chig's attempt to turn this blog into Bel Ami or gaypornblog. (Chig makes a mental note to check how many people click on those two links.) This is Russia's entrant in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. I kid you not. His name is Dima Bilan. After perusing the galleries* on his website for hours and hours research purposes the other day, I did, rather flippantly, say to some friends, 'who cares what his song's like?'. Today, a demo version of his song has surfaced, and it's not half bad. All Dima needs to do is make sure his clothes fall off at the right point in the song, and he should get through from the qualifier into the final. Failing that, he should always be able to find work as a Mark Owen lookey-likey.

There's been a bit of a surge of last-minute entries in the last 48 hours, with the deadline approaching on Sunday. (Sweden are last to choose on Saturday - and we'll be there, just in case I haven't made that clear enough.) We watched France and Greece choose last night. Greece had four good songs out of four and chose the slow one over three disco tunes. No complaints though. France chose an inexperienced 19 year-old in a live casting show and then made her sing a really forgettable bit of fluff, disappointing Francophile moi yet again.

Monaco also revealed their song yesterday. 'La Coco-dance' manages to sound like not one but two Harry Belafonte songs, without troubling the lawyers. It's just a bit reminiscent of 'Island In The Sun' AND 'The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)'. It also seems to have musical accompaniment by George Formby. It's summertastically fab! Aloha! Swing those coconuts! This is what a song in French (and Tahitian) should sound like! Are you listening, France?

Armenia's song, released today, has to be one of the strongest Eurovision debuts ever. Andre's 'Without Your Love' is catchy ethno-pop at its best. It sounds Armenian - yeah, like I know - but also modern and poppy. It also sounds like a snake charmer is playing on it. Who could ask for more?

Moldova had another go at a national final tonight and managed to pick a winner this time. He's another ex-popstar, called Arsenium, which sounds like something on the periodic table, or a double dose of poison. He's not exactly ugly either, and he has already graced the UK charts as one third of O-Zone, who had the pan-European megahit 'Dragostea Din Tei'. Funny how we were told at the time that they were a Romanian boyband. It turns out he was Moldovan all along. It's there in his official biog.

We're too upset to talk about Serbia & Montenegro's withdrawal today (yet to be absolutely confirmed), because I liked No Name's winning song and it's all gone very silly. We'll also ignore the dreary tune that Israel picked tonight, sung by the BBC's rugby correspondent, apparently. We're off to have fun in Sweden and see them pick the wrong song for Athens. Have a good weekend! Go Andreas! (Don't go Carola!)

*The galleries are the fifth word down on the left menu, by Dima's face. I did try to show the Russian word on here, but the Cyrillic script won't display properly.

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