[Multilingual Monday Music] Eurovision 2012

[aadroma]

Ah, the Eurovision Song Contest. One of the original draws for me, admittedly, was that each country had to sing in its own language, so you would hear languages in song that you wouldn't otherwise. Danish rap? Turkish rock? Russian dance music? It was there

Comments

[jawnbc]

I'm so pleased we'll hear so many languages this year. And while there's not a lot of standouts, there's a lot of really good songs.

I'll be pleased if Kuula makes the final: on balance I think it's the best song in the Contest. But--and I've never said this before--I really really hope Sweden wins.

And Jedward doesn't.

[progbear]

While this is quite possibly the dullest contest since 2005 (only instead of tons of identical-sounding dance songs, we have tons of identical-sounding ballads), there’s still some quite nice tunes listed above: Slovenia’s, Estonia’s and Finland’s in particular. My faves are still Iceland (wish they’d stuck to Icelandic, but I respect their decision) and Slovakia.

[bluebear2]

Yeah, it's weird in Europe. Maybe I come from the perspective of a culturally occupied country with an expansionist neighbour and of our linguistic politics but Europe just seems so eager and willing to plug into American pop culture and leave their own richness behind.
Also lyrics in music are just something for the singers to remember the syllables they should sing. It's not a literary medium.