| Eurovision Song Contest News - 2010 Oslo, Norway 

Martin 78

My earliest Eurovision memory is Herreys winning the Eurovision with Diggi-loo diggi-ley. Just like any other Swedish-speaking kid, I became a devoted fan of Herreys and probably drove my parents crazy walking around the house singing the song. My grandmother still recalls the day a swallow had flown into a window and, as we buried it together, I gave a very solemn rendering of Diggi-loo diggi-ley.

My next memory is Sandra Kim winning in 1986 with J'aime la vie and this little boy of French-Swedish origin immediately understood how this contest works- it is the song you understand that wins! Fair enough, but I became increasingly fascinated by all the other exciting languages that other countries used. Soon enough, I begun to realise that I actually understood almost all the songs! Speaking Swedish and having learnt English and German since I was very young, I understood those three languages along with Norwegian and Danish perfectly well, and usually got the gist of the songs in Dutch and Icelandic as well. I still remember how, in 1992, my friends and I were thrilled to understand every word of the Dutch entry Wijs Me De Weg (Swedish: Visa mig Vägen). Similarly, it wasn't too hard to understand the Italian and Spanish songs with my French although Portuguese was more difficult. And when more and more Slavic speaking nations entered the contest, I was thrilled to discover that my knowledge of Russian and Serbo-Croatian (as it was once called) was enough to understand not only these countries, but Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian as well! Of course I loved the songs, but the sensation of figuring out what each song meant and hearing the small differences between each language started to become the real thrill. As I grew older, the languages and the cute girls who competed were at least as interesting as the songs themselves.

Much as I love the Eurovision there are two things in particular that has started to annoy me in the last few years:

1. More and more countries are sending songs in English. Having read how much I enjoyed all the different languages and the cultures they represent, you'll understand that I find it a bit sad that most countries completely ignore their own language when sending a song these days - it makes the whole contest much more boring when performer after perfomer gives yet another unmemorable song in English. I don't understand why this is. This is after all just a song contest, it's here for the fun of it! Winning is nice, but not that terribly important so if someone thinks that winning is so important that they should disregard their own language and send a song in English to make sure they win... Well, I disagree wholeheartedly. Besides, there's no connection between singing and English and performing well. In the last years, the average score for songs in English has been lower than the average score for non-English songs.

2. The constant whining in some countries about "Eastern political voting", or even "cheating" is highly absurd! Yes, songs from Eastern European countries have managed very well in the last years but not due to any political voting. To being with the simplest of facts, Eastern countries have sent better songs! I'm Franco-Swedish but my favorites for the past years have been Serbia (2007, 2004), Bosnia (2006), Croatia (2005). Why? Because they had the best songs, that's why! Another reason many neighbouring countries vote for each other is, of course, a shared taste in music. An artist that is well-known in Sweden will also be well-known in Norway, Denmark and Finland but probably not in Azerbaijan and Portugal. That people vote for music and artists they recognise is a fact in all countries and not in any way political. Besides, this is something that all countries do, it is at least as prevalent in the Nordic countries as anywhere else. And finally, to connect point one and two, most countries in the Balkan have the very good taste of sending songs in their own languages, representing their own culture. Believe it or not, most people in Europe speak no English (luckily enough) but everybody likes their own language. So if a Bosnian entry is in Bosnian, it is immediately recognisable to Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bulgarians while other Slavic speakers will at least get the gist. No wonder people vote for what they understand! So next year, I hope the Nordic and Central-European countries get their act together, stop complaining and send good songs that really represent them instead of soulless English muzak