The adorable grannies Buranovskiye Babushki won the Russian final and istantly made the news all over the world. In Finland for example all major papers have been talking about them, the MTV3 TV-news featured them not only in their 7pm news but the 10pm main news as well. One should remind MTV3 is YLE's main competitor. People have been checking them out in Youtube and most everyone is talking about them at work places. And I'm talking about common people here, not Eurovision fans. Something you can't say about the Finnish entry ( - who is it anyways?)
On the other hand they have created quite a turmoil amongst the Eurovision fans. Some like me just adore them, while some take them just a joke. It's very black and white - either you love them or you hate them. Strong reactions. All this reminds me a lot of Lordi back in 2006. And we all remember how that ended....
However there is one significant difference between the grannies and the monsters. Lordi had a strong melody, a good song that easily transfered into different kind of cover versions from acoustic to techno, from swing to male choir. The babushki song is fun to watch when they perform it but if you close your eyes it's rather mediocre pop tune with rather messy vocals but the chorus "everybody c'mon and dance, c'mon and dance boom boom" is rather hilarious.
Can the babushkis keep up the media circus all the way to Baku where they surely will be the center of attention wherever they go and transfer that into top points from everywhere and bring Russia it's second win? If they had a better song, yes. Now they risk doing a Verka instead of a Lordi. But maybe the sympathy will be enough this time?
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