It’s kind of like Sophie’s Choice, only not as tragic. And you’re probably not going to need tissues. It’s not a bad song per se, but it does have more than a touch of the Michel Legrands about it. And Michel Legrand at his most indulgent. Here’s Harel Skaat (who had been previously chosen to represent Israel) singing it live on the show during which the song was chosen by the ubiquitous televote.
In other news, it seems that yicky creepazoid Vasyl Lazarovich has been given his walking papers and Ukraine will have to choose again. My guess is that the new head of the Ukrainian national broadcaster decided he was too much like a sitcom version of Eastern European letchery, so he used the fact that Lazarovich was chosen internally as the pretext to scrap his involvement and open the selection to a cattle-call to find a replacement singer and song. From what I can tell, it’s going to be pretty much the audition round of Idol, only without the judging panel. It’s just a case of everyone who wants to have a go, turn up this Saturday morning, sing for a few producers, they decide who goes in front of the judges (in this case the viewers) and then there’s a vote taken. It should be interesting if not a little scary.
In other other news, which I should have spoken about earlier than this, Bosnia and Herzegovina have released their song. They’re sending Vukašin Brajić, with Munja i grom (which I’ve already mentioned). I did say that hopefully they’ll be allowed to compete, and I stand by that because I quite like their song. It’s quite rocky and it’s certainly not like the majority of soppy, dated ballads that are getting sent to Oslo. Check it out:
In yet other other news, Norway appear to be having difficulties with the concept of Irish. At a St Patrick’s Day parade yesterday, they had the Oslo Caledonian Pipe Band play (Caledonian is the latinate form of Scottish) and then had Johnny Logan, a man who was born in Frankston and won Eurovision the first time while still an Australian citizen talk about what it means to be Irish. Just because he’s lived there for a while, doesn’t actually make him Irish.
PS. For those of you who were wondering, once the album gets released, I will be doing a super monster post, which will give my feelings on all the songs and I promise I will credit the composers and lyricists who have slaved their guts out to varying degrees of success.
As a member of the pipeband in Oslo, I can tell you that we play Irish music as well as Scottish. :) Not too many pipebands to choose from in Oslo, anyway. ;)
I suspected as much (on both counts), I just found it odd that the two things touted as being Irish in that article are actually Mainly Scottish and Mainly Australian.
Hehe, I can see your point. :)
St. Patrick’s Day in Oslo is usually a happy mix of Irish, British and Norwegian people. Everyone’s Irish on Paddy’s day, right?! :)
I didn’t know Johnny Logan is Australian.