Eurovision (Part 1)

It's that time of year again!

Today's topic is Eurovision. In case you've been living under a rock or have been cyrogenically frozen for centuries, the Eurovision Song Contest is huge music competition and a chance for Europe to demonstrate its diversity through the power of song. It's kind of like if the world wars were fought with music and strange outfits instead of, you know, guns and shit. I tune in every year because you never quite know what you're going to get. It's like they go around lifting rocks and digging under every nook and cranny to find the weirdest musicians that quirky continent has to offer, and usually there will be at least one or two bands that have me shaking my head in wonder and marvelling at how crazy the world can be.

Last night I caught the first semi-final. This year the competition is set in Baku, since Azerbaijan won last year with that song that goes "UH UH UH OH OH UH UH OH" or something like that. I didn't really watch it last year because no one was particularly interesting. But this year I was pulled back into the frontlines of musical hilarity right off the bat, with three performances I think are worth mentioning directly.

Wait, make that four performances. I just remembered another one.

Israel - the girl on the keyboard was clearly pissed. I tip my hat to her for discovering the best way just to get through the night.

Russia - the seven oldest women in Russia sang a song about partying. Even the paramedics standing by the stage were dancing.

Ireland - two twins with ADHD, dressed up like anime characters, dancing like anime characters. Seriously, where do they find these people???

Austria: A rap band called Trackshittaz, which is funny enough. But the absolute best thing about these guys is that they were apparently rapping in Austrian and yet every word sounded kind of like an English swearword, even though it supposedly wasn't.

I also love how Azerbaijan seemed to run out of famous landmarks to advertise between performances after about performance five. I suspected that they'd already covered every square metre of their adorable little nation once they started showing shots of "radio tower". Tonight we can probably expect them to give us beautiful, jaw-dropping footage of "post office" and "John's house" and "car park".