Lena Meyer-Landrut, Germany Won the Eurovision 2010!

Lena Meyer-Landrut - winner of Eurovision 2010!

With astonishing 246 points!

Photo by Daniel Kruczynski http://www.flickr.com/photos/29759986@N03/4650178716/

Josh Dubovie Represents the UK at the 2010 Eurovision in Oslo

Josh James Dubovie, from Laindon, in the county of Essex, performed with StageAbility an after-school stage club from age nine. Hhe has starred in various musical prodcutions at his school, where he appeared in My fair lady, The King and I and West Side Story, among others.

At age 15 he played Enjolras in a school production of Les Miserables with The International Award Winning Essex Group For this role he saw a vocal coach as he had no previous experience of singing. Josh instantly fell in love with singing swing and his coach encouraged him to put on showcases of his music.

He attended The Billericay School and studied for A levels in Music Technology, Drama and English Literature. In 2008 he won the Blues Idol competition, and has also won Voice of St Lukes contest and Billericay’s Got Talent. Prior to auditioning for Your Country Needs You, he applied for a part on E4 TV series Skins 3rd series and was short-listed for the role of Freddie McClair, the role eventually being awarded to Luke Pasqualino. Dubovie has also auditioned for series six of The X Factor, but was rejected. He later auditioned for series four of Britain’s Got Talent, and received a rejection letter the day after winning Your Country Needs You.

Josh believes he has his mum’s voice and his dad’s confidence and he currently performs professionally, at charity evenings, festivals and sports events.

He will now take to the stage in Oslo, Norway, in May to fly the flag for the United Kingdom. Representing UK, a “big four” country, Dubovie is automatically qualified for the final of the Eurovision Oslo on 29 May 2010. He will perform at position 12 out of the 25 entries.

The show will take plase at the Telenor Arena.

The Eurovision Oslo 2010 schedule:

• First Semi-Final – 25 May, 21:00
• Second Semi-Final – 27 May, 21:00
• Final (second Dress Rehearsal) – 28 May, 21:00
• Final (third Dress Rehearsal) – 29 May, 13:00
• Final – 29 May, 21:00

The Russian participant of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, that will take place May 25-29 in Norway, has been chosen! It’s Piotr Nalitch Band that was number 13 in the list of contestants at the national final.

In the mid-February the organizers stopped to accept applications for participation in Eurovision 2010 as a representative from Russia. The jury consisting a number of prominent figures of the Russian show-biz chose 25 contestants. Rossiya 1 TV Chanel, that was responsible for organization of the pre-selection, obviously wanted to present as wide a variety of styles, genres, and even nations, as possible. For example, an Italian, Antonello Carozza, and a Lett, Jay Stever, fought for the right to represent Russia on the Telenor Arena in Oslo and really meant that. Still, Buranovskiye Babushki, who came from Udmurtia (one of the RF Republics) and sang a song in the Udmurt language, were probably the most exotic contestants. They looked really good against all those variety performers who have been trying to become a Eurovision participant for several years. Among the contestants there were protégés of famous producer centers, musical lead singers, well-known participants of various talent shows and pop festivals. However, after the public vote the three leading places were given to such contestants that no one could suspect Rossiya 1 Channel in juggling.

Buranovskiye Babushki ranked third, Oleg Bezinskih came to be the runner-up, and Piotr Nalitch band were in the lead. One could have seen Bezinskih at other TV-shows, but his success at the selection to Eurovision can be explained by his peculiar manner. The singer with a three-octave voice and a very serious face showed something like a blend of Vitas and Modern Talking. His performance was both elaborate and funny, just in the vein of the Minute of Fame show. The two other winners obviously gained the victory thanks to Internet voters, ‘cause neither Buranovskiye Babushki, nor Piotr Nalitch were really promoted on TV; likewise they didn’t enjoy famous producers’ support, and were not usually invited to work at parties. The Udmurt old women became an Internet meme as long as two years ago – users of the web very quickly spread links to videos where Victor Tsoy’s songs were performed by old women in a folk manner and in the Udmurt language. Nobody knew the name of the ensemble, so bloggers called it just ‘Tsoy in Udmurt’. Piotr Nalitch found his fame in 2007 thanks to a witty homemade video clip to his own ‘Gitar’ song. Nowadays the number of views of the clip on YouTube is over 2.5 mln. Since then Piotr Nalitch released a solo album, several EPs and DVDs, and became one of the most welcome singers both on music venues and at private parties. He can afford several concerts a year in Moscow, which can’t be said about seemingly more promoted pop singers.

The ‘Lost and Forgotten’ song is totally different from ‘Gitar’ (Guitar). Now it is a sorrowful ballade, though somewhat ironic too, that allows the singer to show his vocal ability. Piotr Nalitch is used to sing songs and upload them to Internet right after writing them; and ‘Lost and Forgotten’ was probably the only ready and at the same time not-yet-exposed – i.e. meeting the requirements of Eurovision – song in his repertoire. This explains the fact that this year the Russian participant will sing a song not really corresponding to the Context song patterns, that is not cheerful and dancy, but sad and lyrical.

Here is Piotr Nalitch’s comment on his (and his band’s) participation in Eurovision Song Contest: “This is a great promo chance for our band. Maybe Eurovision has gained the image of a show for housewives from Europe; but why not suppose that we could break the stereotype? Besides, the ABBA won there a victory once, so this will be a great honor for me to come out to the same stage. Out of all songs that we haven’t shown yet, ‘Lost and Forgotten’ was best done; the others were rather raw. I clearly understand that they usually prefer more energetic and lively songs, but why not try this one?”

Boris Barabanov for Kommersant, translated by Yana Soboleva.

Biography

Born in Malta in 1992, Thea has been studying vocal technique and interpretation under the direction of soprano Gillian Zammit. She has accompanied the North West Choir from the UK as a soloist whilst performing an oratory at the Anglican Church in Valletta. She is currently a member of Enkor, a gospel classical choir, with whom she also performs as soloist. She has also studied musical theatre at Masquerade Theatre School for ten consecutive years, participating in various productions including ‘The King and I’ and’ Beyond the Barriquades’ at the Manoel Theatre Valletta. She has obtained qualifications in Musical Theatre, Voice Techniques and Drama from TrinityGuildhall College.

Thea was also a student at Sylvia Young Theatre School in London for two consecutive summers where she was vocally coached by Mr. Ray Lamb during which time she was also handpicked to record at the West End as backing vocalist for Paco Pena, a leading Spanish performer. Having auditioned for the British ‘Voice of Tomorrow’ contest with hundreds of British performers, Thea managed to make it with the final thirty contestants during which time she had the opportunity to attend ten sessions of training in Musical Theatre by leading tutors at the West End. Her favorite genre of music includes classical and semi classical as well as songs from musicals. Her dream is to perform at the West End in London.

Recently Thea sang with famous Italian singer, Gigi D’Alessio on the opening night of his World tour in Rome and was again invited to sing in Milan, where this time Gigi accompanied Thea on his piano and let her sing one of his favorite songs as a soloist.

In January 2010, Thea was one of the 20 finalist for the Malta Song for Europe.

On 20 February 2010, Garrett won the Maltese national final and will represent Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 with the song “My Dream”, performing in the first semi-final to be held on 25 May 2010 in Oslo, Norway.

Anyway, the final show of Eurovision in Moscow became an absolute record-breaker as of expenditures, being far ahead the Greeks who spent €12 mln in 2006, and the Serbians who made it with €9.3 mln. The expenditures were mainly attributed to construction of the stage, -the largest one in the history of the contest, as well as to lease of Olympiysky sport complex, advertising, transportation, and escorting of delegacies. In particular, the director general of the First Channel, Konstantin Ernst boasted that they rented all LED screens available in Western Europe. From the very beginning the organizers considered the final show of the contest as unprofitable; they just couldn’t expect to win away at least some part of the expenses ’cause a good half of the tickets to Olympiysky turned out to have been distributed for free.

The public opinion about the expenditures was mostly negative (over 39% of 1,200 Russians polled by Online Market Intelligence responded negatively). Experts, too, tell that the organizers could make a proper final show in Moscow for as little as $10 mln. However, everybody agreed that the Moscow show had politics behind it, and was another great occasion to work at a positive image of Russia. So they spared neither expense, nor time of high-ranking persons: Vladimir Putin (the Prime Minister of Russia) visited rehearsals of the show, and Yuri Luzhkov (the mayor of Moscow city) gave a speech on the opening day. In follow-up of the final show of Eurovision Song Contest some organizers, including Konstantin Ernst, got letters of award from Dmitriy Medvedev, the President of Russia.

Montenegro debuted in the ESC as an independent country in 2007. Before that, they were participating as a Yugoslavia, and then as Serbia and Montenegro with Serbia. A scandal occurred in 2006 between Serbia and Montenegro because of fake voting from the Montenegro juries. As a result, Serbia and Montenegro didn’t have an entry that year and they received a ban from the ESC for 5 years. A few months later, both Serbia and Montenegro became independent and had separated, so the punishment was suspended. In 2007, the next year, Serbia won Eurovision Song Contest.

The first two semi-finals of the 55th Eurovision Song Contest are scheduled on 18 and 20 May 2010, and the final is on 22 May 2010.

Today, 17 May, is a Day of national celebration and pride in Norway, and the country is celebrating twice.

The Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, stated “It’s a great holiday”.

The crowds were coming out on the streets of Norway towns and villages all the night to celebrate their victory. Alexander Ryback is the third winner, after Bobbysocks in 1985 and Secret Garden in 1995, which brings the Eurovision Song Contest first prize to Norway.

The decision about a place of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest will be made by the Norvegian national TV broadcaster NRK in the near future.

Odds are it will be Telenor Arena in Oslo.

Telenor Arena is a multi-use indoor stadium located at Fornebu in the municipality of Bærum, Norway. It will be used mostly for football matches and is the new home ground of the football club Stabæk, who played at Nadderud stadion from 1961 to 2008. The stadium was opened ahead of the 2009 season in Norwegian football.

In June 2008, the telecommunications company Telenor acquired the naming rights to the stadium in a deal lasting until 2018. Prior to this, the stadium was known informally as Fornebu Arena, and while still in the concept stages as Blue Dream Arena. It is also referred to by supporters as Hangar’n (the hangar in English), as the stadium resembles a hangar and is located on the premises of the former main airport of Oslo.

The structure will be a single-tiered bowl attached to a seven-storey building on one side containing retail space, restaurants and bars for the premium-priced seats, executive boxes, and offices. As originally planned, the stadium was to have a retractable roof, but due to the high costs involved it was decided that there would instead be a fixed roof covering both the stands and the pitch. For football matches and other sporting events the total capacity will be approximately 15,600, whereas for concerts it will be up to 23,000.

The Fornebu Arena project has its origins in Stabæk’s rapid ascent from the lower divisions of Norwegian football to the top division in the first half of the 1990s. Although several improvements have been made to their current home ground Nadderud stadion since then, including the construction a new main stand in 1996, it remains severely lacking in facilities, and does not meet national requirements for hosting football matches at the highest level. After initially seeking to buy and redevelop Nadderud, which is owned by the municipality, the club started to work towards moving to a new stadium elsewhere in Bærum instead.

In 1999 the club settled on Fornebu, the site of a large urban development project. Lengthy negotiations between the club, the municipality and the area’s main developer came to an end in 2005 and the plans gained final approval on 21 June 2006. Demolition of existing structures on site began on 17 February 2007 and construction began shortly after.

The project has an estimated cost of 585 million NOK.

The first match played at the stadium was a pre-season friendly between Stabæk and IFK Göteborg on 24 January 2009, which ended in a goalless draw. This was followed by a sold-out AC/DC concert on 18 February, the first concert on the European leg of the their Black Ice World Tour. Trond Olsen of Rosenborg became the first player to score a goal at Telenor Arena as Rosenborg defeated Stabæk 1–0 in another pre-season friendly, on 27 February.

The stadium was officially opened on 8 March 2009 with a “Charity Shield”-style match between league champions Stabæk and cup champions Vålerenga, which ended in a 3–1 win for Stabæk. Daniel Nannskog scored the first ever Stabæk goal at Telenor Arena in the 19th minute of the game. The net proceeds of the match were donated to UNICEF.

(Wikipedia)

Duncan Watts wrote an op-ed in NY Times on The Politics of Eurovision. There he writes:

I had heard about this practice, of course, whereby geographical and cultural neighbors tend to vote for each other, and nobody votes for Britain (well, except for Malta). But it was startling to see just how flagrant it was. The Scandinavians all voted for one another; Lithuania gave 10 points to Latvia (whose entry, bizarrely, sang in Italian); former Warsaw Pact countries voted for Russia; and almost nobody voted for Britain (surprisingly, Ireland did — and, of course, Malta).

Indeed, there has been some debate on bloc-voting in 2007. The map on that page does show that East got better scores than West:

Eurovision has been studied by academics a couple of times by now: Derek Gatherer titled his paper “Comparison of Eurovision Song Contest Simulation with Actual Results Reveals Shifting Patterns of Collusive Voting Alliances” and Anthony Dekker has a paper The Eurovision Song Contest as a ‘Friendship’ Network. The titles are not very forgiving, and here is an example of a chart from one of these two papers (neither of which has been authored by Duncan, of course):

(there isn’t a single Baltic country in the area denoted as “Baltic”, but they are all in the Balkan peninsula).

Serbs and Albanians are pretty much in a state of war, yet they seem to be aligned together in a “friendship” network? The same goes for Greece and Turkey in 2005, and many other similar pairs. I guess the young form a voting alliance for the preservation of hip-hop and metal, and the old too form into an opera friendship. It’s not preferences – it’s politics! It’s not musical taste, it’s alliances! It’s not quality, it’s who is friends with whom! It’s not the fact that musicians in Britain, Ireland, France, who top the charts, already have an excellent means of commercially deploying their music beyond the confines of their country. It’s rare for a first-class musician from the West to try for Eurovision: why expose themselves to public ranking and ridicule in case of failure if they can already sell lots of music by other means. But not so with the East; for the musicians there, Eurovision is the best way of going beyond their borders.

It’s true that Balkan music is overrepresented in the voting scores: it has many small countries with similar musical taste and little population. But as this Excel spreadsheet shows, Serbia would win even if all other countries were prevented from voting. In case only the 1994 members were allowed to vote, Turkey would win instead, followed by Serbia in the second place. The results are quite robust with respect to countries that are allowed to vote. If, however, we weighed the votes by population, allowed countries to vote for themselves, and excluded non-1994EU, the winning order would be Turkey, Greece, Serbia. So, even by population-weighting the votes, the results do not change much.

There are some interesting nonlinearities. It’s known that novelty value plays a big role at Eurovision: and there will be little novelty value to British, Irish, Spanish and German music that are so successful and ubiquitous in the marketplace: they won’t get novelty scores like some more exotic types of music will: the past winners include goofy entries such as Finnish monsters, Ukrainian warriors and an Israeli transvestite. On the other hand, anyone who has tried listening to classical music knows that it takes some exposure before you can enjoy music, just as it takes a certain amount of exposure to literature to enjoy poetry.

The reaction from Britain was quite harsh, dismissing scoring as pure politics. But the UK song should be examined in the context of the 1990 winner on a similar theme. Google can translate the lyrics and you can compare them to the UK entry. Among other events, that 1990 song was what inspired the chain of events that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia (where some of the states were pro-EU and others against), and possibly other nations too. For musical quality, compare it to the UK 1997 winner.

So, in summary, there are many models that explain correlations in data. A cluster in votes can be interpreted both as an alliance to win the majority, or it can be equivalently interpreted as a group of countries that shares cultural preferences. One interpretation is cynical, the other is respectful. If you are an author that doesn’t distinguish between the Balkans and Baltic, you might find it hard to decide on the right interpretation. A respectful one is a safer bet.

Sourse: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/05/eurovision_and.html

Oxford, England

ONE of the unexpected pleasures of spending a sabbatical in Britain has been the chance to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, held the Saturday before last in Helsinki. For those not familiar with this quirkiest of European traditions (which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary), the contest involves 42 “European” countries — Israel and Turkey are included, for example — each of which submits a song to be sung by a band of that nationality.

The rules governing the contest are a little strange, and so is the singing, which appears to emphasize camp over more conventional notions of quality. Britain’s entrant, Scooch, put on a saucy, flight-attendant-inspired act that would have made Abba (the 1974 winner) proud, while Verka Serduchka, a Ukrainian drag queen, came out looking like a silver-foil version of Mrs. Doubtfire. The Greeks, meanwhile, were doing their best Ricky Martin, Belarus looked fresh out of a James Bond trailer and Hungary apparently had ditched the whole Euro thing and opted for what sounded suspiciously like country.

In short, it’s a great show, but the best part is the voting, which is done “American Idol”-style via text messaging. Anyone can vote as many times as he likes, the one restriction being that he can’t vote for his own country. The votes are tallied nationally, and breathless representatives call in the results to Helsinki, allocating 12 points to their country’s top choice, 10 to second place, 8 to third, and so on down to 1 point for 10th.

Now, I don’t know much about contemporary music, but as they say, I know what I like. And watching the 24 acts in the final (a preliminary round removes the other 18), I felt Sweden and Britain were clear standouts, given the silliness of the whole thing. I also had the overwhelming feeling that the Serbian entry, a turgid ballad called “Molitva,” or “Prayer,” didn’t stand a chance.

So imagine my surprise when Serbia not only won, but crushed the opposition, beating second-place Ukraine (yes, the drag queen) by 268 points to 235. Britain, with a paltry 19 points, narrowly edged out Ireland to avoid last place; and Sweden scraped together a meager 51 points, coming in 18th out of 24. What was going on? Two words that were shouted across the British dailies the next day: “Bloc Voting.”

I had heard about this practice, of course, whereby geographical and cultural neighbors tend to vote for each other, and nobody votes for Britain (well, except for Malta). But it was startling to see just how flagrant it was. The Scandinavians all voted for one another; Lithuania gave 10 points to Latvia (whose entry, bizarrely, sang in Italian); former Warsaw Pact countries voted for Russia; and almost nobody voted for Britain (surprisingly, Ireland did — and, of course, Malta).

But Serbia was the overwhelming beneficiary of the system, receiving the top score of 12 points from every other member of the former Yugoslavia — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia — suggesting that memories of war and ethnic cleansing can be set aside with surprising ease when it comes to the serious business of winning a singing contest. It’s hard to say whether the 60 points that the former Yugoslavia effectively gave to itself altered the final result, but an enterprising Irishman suggested that if all the Irish counties were allowed to secede, they would be unstoppable.

Does it matter? Probably not. It’s just a game, after all, and the outrageous bias in the voting is as entertaining as the songs themselves. But it does offer an unexpected glimpse of how ordinary Europeans perceive one another. More than anything, it seems, blood is thicker than water, and not just in the Balkans. That Germany gave 12 points to Turkey, for example, probably reflects the large number of Turks living in Germany more than it does a German predilection for scantily clad dancers (of which there were plenty of choices).

But it was also obvious how little love Eastern Europe feels for the West. Although the “big four” — Britain, France, Germany and Spain (Italy does not participate) — basically pay for the contest, none of them made it into the top 16; and Turkey, which you might have expected to be playing nice, given its pending European Union membership application, awarded not a single point to any big four or Scandinavian nation.

This pointed rejection of Western Europe might even be seen as a poignant metaphor for contemporary Europe as a whole. The large, industrialized nations magnanimously invite their poorer but more numerous eastern cousins to join their party, and offer to pay the bill, only to discover themselves locked out in the garden while their new friends complain about the quality of the liquor and the arrogance of the hosts.

The hosts, meanwhile, can’t get along either — the big four collectively awarded one another a grand total of just 12 points. So although it was more than a little odd that the countries that actually tried to help in Bosnia are substantially less popular there than the country that instigated ethnic cleansing, it was equally odd that the Balkans, of all places, was effectively handing the western countries a lesson in cooperation.

The annual chance to score yourself in the eyes of your fellow Europeans might not be a bad thing, however: the Serbs and their neighbors are now going through an outpouring of pride and brotherly love. It’s hard not to think that’s somehow more useful than crowning the successor to Abba. Last week in Britain, meanwhile, for all the cries of foul play, there was a hint of — I wouldn’t say soul-searching — but perhaps head-scratching over what might be done to reverse the tide of resentment from traditional allies and newly minted European states alike. If nothing else, that seems like a good conversation to start.

Now, apparently, NBC has the rights to bring a version of Eurovision to the United States, with all 50 states competing. I hope they do it, but only if they keep the same voting system. It may not tell us much about the music we produce or like; but in a patchwork quilt of a country, with red versus blue states, North versus South, East Coast versus West Coast, the Midwest versus everyone — and who-knows-what going on in Texas — it may tell us a lot about what we really think of one another.

Duncan J. Watts is a professor of sociology at Columbia.