I fully respect that music is all about personal musical choice and preference, so I'll just move away from the debate giggling at the idea that ABBA are better than Elbow or the Arctic Monkeys....

The problem with contemporary music is just the fact that its contemporary, and it doesn't have a very long shelf life.

Its easy to forget, given how commercially successful Abba were, that in the 1970's/80s they were simply chart music pulp purveyors in the same way that Kaiser Cheifs are/were, they wrote tunes to hum along to, tunes to jump up and down and chant along to at a gig, simple tunes, simple lyrics, twice through the ears and they are lodged in your brain and you buy the album - thats the recipe.

Years later they are venerated as some kind of musical genuises, held up as a shining example to all as a pinnacle of musical perfection - they just got the recipe right, at the right time, and their skill meant that they had a slightly longer shelf life.

That is popular chart music in a nutshelf.


Just to throw something else into the mix I listened to guitarist Jon Gomm (jongomm.com) (watch him play "Ain't nobody on YouTube) on radio Leeds the other day speaking about music, writing music, teaching music, specifically for the guitar and he mentioned that he learned to play the guitar as a four year old child after an uncle brought home from Spain a three quarter flamenco guitar and a Beatles guitar music book.

He was asked why it was that in every guitar students case their is always a Beatles songbook and whether its because the Beatles tunes were so easy to play.

His reply was the contrary, that most popular chart music is much, much easier to learn than a standard Beatles tune mainly because most of the chart music for the past 20 years or so has been based on only four or five chord sequences, and usually very common, simple chords, whereas (he said) the Beatles, certainly George Harrison and Paul McCartney learned to play the guitar with help from an older pupil at their high school who had studied jazz guitar and that influence is apparent in many of their compositions with chords and sequences that are not seen in popular music now.

So there you are.

Yet another entire evening of tedious, utter tripe being dished out by the BBC.

What a brilliant excuse for going down to a pub with no telly

It stopped being a song contest the day we let all the little independant states in who just blatantly vote for their neighbours etc. 99 times out of 100 you could probably get almost the same voting results without actually hearing any songs !!.

We used to be good at it, i remember us always there or thereabouts when i was younger, but because we probably know that due to political opinions etc we wont get many votes anyway these days we tend to not take the song part of it as serious as we used to hence some of the dire awful stuff we're happy to send to 'compete'.

We do seemingly take it very seriously, what with paying Lloyd Webber and a legendary US songwriter to team up the other year. Mind you their effort was still pretty dire, but the point is we did seem keen on it unlike what you think.

The neighbours voting thing is just a quirk, it never won anyone the contest. A great song would always win the contest.

OK, so who is going to win, based on your 'best song' theory.
Take as much time as you wish, up to the actual performances of course.
You're the expert apparently.
We can then check out your theory.

As i stopped watching it many years ago due to the farce it has become i will take your word on the 'great song' bit

I will answer my own question.
I'm tipping that there won't be a great song in this year's contest and so it is impossible to say who will win.

I can name many ABBA songs but nothing from Arctic Monkeys or Elbow. Just goes to show then that some bands are unforgettable and two others on here will not even register a blip in the history of music.

Why the sarky tone? It's a thread FFS, lighten up man!

My theory would go something like if there is a song which is clearly oustanding, i.e. genuinely a good pop song, then it will win. But there is a shortage of good songs in the contest. And that's incidentally why we, who have absolutely no trouble in churning out loads of good stuff, and who remain in the vanguard of modern music, and who are admired and copied across Europe, should be able to write a song to win it or come bloody close every time.

However my interest in the contest is not for good music, as there isn't much. It is (a) because I genuinely have a good laugh watching it - I suppose schadenfreude might be the nearest description. Slomo car crash. (b) As a betting medium. I don't always win, but have made some pretty good money (in a modest way) for a lot of years now since it got more predictable.

All you have to do is listen through all the songs and make up your mind where you want to put your money. I do this before I have a look at the betting, so the betting doesn't influence me.

I do this not because I'm a glutton for punishment, nor because I love Eurocrap, or whatever but just because it is the Eurovision equivalent to what I do when betting on horses, or the NFL, or whatever, simply studying the form.

IMHO if you do get a genuinely good song, then enough voters in enough countries are not that bothered about voting for their neighbours or whatever, and will change to vote for a decent entry, and that will be enough to win. But if all the songs are not much use - as I believe to be the case this year - then this factor doesn't apply.

The bookies have Denmark as a clear favourite but the problem this year is that even that is not a good song. It is very much formula Eurocrap. So it is vulnerable as it won't pick up many floating voters.

My main bet, since you ask, is on Norway (Margaret Berger- I Feed You My Love). As long as it finishes in the first four I'll make a profit. It's not great, but it's the sort of song with enough about it that it would make the top 5 in the UK chart if released by a known UK artist, and I reckon that the slow pace and statuesque performance will appeal to enough Eastern European countries to clinch a good result.

My half-size bet is on Denmark as the blatant formula is a clever one - from Titanic-esque flute opening to blokes with big drums (which seems to go down well in many places)

If you want my sneaky outsider then you could do worse take Betfred's 25/1 on Azerbaijan, who seem to get near the top 4 every year whatever they do, and have a tuneful young fella on the case.

If you just have too much money and want to get rid of some, risk-free, bet on us.

....To be fair, and with all due respect, this reply probably exhibits more about your lack of knowledge of music, than any slight on the musical talent of either band.

Where does it put me? I am unmoved by all three.
In the 1980's I realised that I had been feeling a degree of ennui with popular music, a feeling which had started sometime in the 70's ... so much of it was same-old, same-old overproduced pap or was derivative and boring.
Since then I have been very selective indeed and cannot bear to listen to the sort of radio station that covers the kind of contemporary stuff that might expand my "knowledge of music" in and among the rubbish.
Hence, I tend not to be exposed to Elbow and Arctic Monkeys etc. very often ... I am aware of them but they didn't make me sit up and think "Hey, here's something".
Sometimes I do hear something that engages my interest (as an example and to avoid the "there's nothing good nowadays", Amy Winehouse [udid[/u make me "hmm, might listen to some more of this ..."icon_wink.gif but it doesn't happen often.

Maybe it's me age and my back catalogue is that big now that maybe I've run out of hard-disk space.

Have to agree. But then I'm a pop music fan (although my taste is rather eclectic). Not a cool thing to admit but heyho.

I do quite like the ECS. About 25% of the songs I do actually like.

As for this year, Cascada must be a good bet, they have (or her, I'm never sure!) had number 1 hits in must European countries and its a decent little pop song.

I have nothing against people who say they have never heard a song from the likes of Elbow or The Arctic Monkeys, that is perfectly valid because music is a very personal thing. However, it was the dismissal of both bands as failing to register a blip on musical history, which shows the poster up to be rather laughable and also ignorant.

I presume the Elbow he is dismissing is the same one that has won multiple awards for their work??....Or the Arctic Monkeys that he derides are the same band who have the fastest seling debut album in the UK??...



Like I say, music is a personal choice, but to have somebody laud somebody's work through their sales and acheivements, while dismissing other bands, without having a clue what they have actually done, is a tad silly.

I have heard of both bands, but don't really know any of thier songs (tracks). I wouldn't dismiss them (I don't think DMW actually was to be fair) they have obviously been very successful.
They just aren't my cup of tea, as I know Eurovision isn't ... to a lot of people!!

A bit of nail hitting the head there, really. To find out about the Arctic Monkeys, or Elbow, you can only do it by giving them a decent listen. To give them a listen, you have to be interested. You're clearly not, and there is nowt wrong with that, everyone does their own thing. The only point I'd make is that once you stop looking out for music and stop really listening, it's incorrect to say that either band are "not your cup of tea", because they might very well be your best ever teapot. You'll just never know.

Quite the opposite in fact and I certainly wasn't having a pop at either band in the slightest - just having an opinion.

Back to the Eurotwaddle topic..........
I heard Bonny Tyler twice yesterday ....once on Radio 2 and then she appeared on the One Show.
Her song is not that bad, better than the Hump's song from last time I think.
It won't win of course and I would love for us to enter a song that would meet FA's criteria of a great song, because at the moment I don't think that anything we had to offer would circumnavigate the loathing that we seem to attract from our fellow Europeans.

Bonnie still has that raspy voice too. I think the winner will be from one of the former Eastern European countries again and some of the women reading the results from last year were stunners.....I may have to go to Slovenia, Ukraine and a few more nations out there

Quote ="Stand-Offish"Back to the Eurotwaddle topic.......... I heard Bonny Tyler twice yesterday ....once on Radio 2 and then she appeared on the One Show. Her song is not that bad, better than the Hump's song from last time I think.'" Yes. "Not that bad" is about as good as it gets though! Quote ="Stand-Offish"It won't win of course and I would love for us to enter a song that would meet FA's criteria of a great song, because at the moment I don't think that anything we had to offer would circumnavigate the loathing that we seem to attract from our fellow Europeans.'" But honestly, that's simply not true. really it isn't. Look, if we ever enter a good song but it finishes last then I'll concede you have a point but that just isn't borne out by events. The last time we had a fair crack at it was 2009 when Jade Ewen sang "It's My Time", which we'd got Lloyd-Webber and Diane-friggin-Warren ('Unbreak My Heart', 'How Do I Live', 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now' etc) to write yet still they came up with a song that was palpably mediocre, and just never came within coo-ee of the heights that those musical geniuses have consistently managed. Why that was, I have no clue. BUT - and here's the point - it was a steady effort, if not spectacular, YET FINISHED FIFTH. If some concept of loathing the UK was abroad, then that couldn't happen, could it? We got 173 points, ffs! No, the reason in recent years we have finished often near the bottom of the pile is, as Occam would agree, because the entries have been dire. The year after Jade Ewen for example we came up with a piece of utter bilge which was lucky to finish last, it was that bad, it 'peaked' at 179 in the UK charts and that was only because Pete Waterman downloaded a copy. Any loathing it attracted from other people in Europe can't have been any worse than mine! If the identity of the UK is a factor in the voting, maybe that's because so universally admired is UK music across Europe that when our eagerly anticipated entry turns out to be disappointing dross, the disappointment is reflected in the votes? They and their composers and singers largely [iwant[/i to be English! Have a look at any of the European charts - including the European 100 - and as usual they are dominated by English acts top40-charts.com/chart.php?cid=31 Indeed most of the Eurovision entries are English songs. Do these forriners suspend their loathing of us for record buying purposes? (And don't point out that several of those chart acts are US - in any Loathing Contest, they must surely be more loathed than us!)

Quote ="Stand-Offish"Back to the Eurotwaddle topic.......... I heard Bonny Tyler twice yesterday ....once on Radio 2 and then she appeared on the One Show. Her song is not that bad, better than the Hump's song from last time I think.'" Yes. "Not that bad" is about as good as it gets though! Quote ="Stand-Offish"It won't win of course and I would love for us to enter a song that would meet FA's criteria of a great song, because at the moment I don't think that anything we had to offer would circumnavigate the loathing that we seem to attract from our fellow Europeans.'" But honestly, that's simply not true. really it isn't. Look, if we ever enter a good song but it finishes last then I'll concede you have a point but that just isn't borne out by events. The last time we had a fair crack at it was 2009 when Jade Ewen sang "It's My Time", which we'd got Lloyd-Webber and Diane-friggin-Warren ('Unbreak My Heart', 'How Do I Live', 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now' etc) to write yet still they came up with a song that was palpably mediocre, and just never came within coo-ee of the heights that those musical geniuses have consistently managed. Why that was, I have no clue. BUT - and here's the point - it was a steady effort, if not spectacular, YET FINISHED FIFTH. If some concept of loathing the UK was abroad, then that couldn't happen, could it? We got 173 points, ffs! No, the reason in recent years we have finished often near the bottom of the pile is, as Occam would agree, because the entries have been dire. The year after Jade Ewen for example we came up with a piece of utter bilge which was lucky to finish last, it was that bad, it 'peaked' at 179 in the UK charts and that was only because Pete Waterman downloaded a copy. Any loathing it attracted from other people in Europe can't have been any worse than mine! If the identity of the UK is a factor in the voting, maybe that's because so universally admired is UK music across Europe that when our eagerly anticipated entry turns out to be disappointing dross, the disappointment is reflected in the votes? They and their composers and singers largely [iwant[/i to be English! Have a look at any of the European charts - including the European 100 - and as usual they are dominated by English acts top40-charts.com/chart.php?cid=31 Indeed most of the Eurovision entries are English songs. Do these forriners suspend their loathing of us for record buying purposes? (And don't point out that several of those chart acts are US - in any Loathing Contest, they must surely be more loathed than us!)

As the contest approaches, the bookies have firmed up Denmark as the clear favourite, 6/4 is now as good as you'll get.

Norway has been backed down to 3rd favourite - but you can still get 8/1

Azerbaijan is 5th favourite but you can still get 20/1

The "bolter" is Ukraine, with a weird "anthem meets house" song by a statuesque young lass, with a memorable if very annoying pizzicato accompaniment throughout and some background rapping. Weird. Second favourite now, between 3/1 and 4/1 - if you want to make your mind up then type "Zlata Ognevich - Gravity - Eurovision 2013 Ukraine" into a popular search engine.

I've seen Bonnie performing her effort on Graham Norton. Cringe-TV, awful. Your-drunken-mum-at-a-wedding stylee. IMHO of course - you may have loved it, Graham's audience seemed to. But it also emerged that the song was selected when an un-named BBC executive was for some reason provided an advance copy of Tyler's new album, heard the song, and chose it for us. Some selection process, eh?.

looks like it could be a classic this year


Albania Motorhead meets Kiss
Greece a nice bit of Ska crossed with Folk / Rock

Finland Dance at its best

Norway hot chicks
Rumania a 3 minute opera with an amazing falsetto

and all of this from the second semi final ( i missed the first)

cannot wait for saturday night.

I love you man

Bring back Lordi !!!

And yet no space for Montenegro's dubstep astronauts from the first semi-final, which was dominated by the former Soviet republics.

Expect the 2014 contest to be either back in Scandinavia, Moscow or Kiev.