Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The Danish are determined to do well and win Eurovision after a string of top placings. So there are changes in the selection procedure next Saturday January 21, 2012. A jury will be added and it will count 50% of the final result. And part of the jury is made of international Eurovision stars including the winners Ell/Nikki from Azerbaijan and Alexander Rybak from Norway. Azeri Aysel , German Roger Cicero and Russian Alexej Vorobjev is added for further flavour with other music professionals. Will this bring the trophy back to Denmark? Nine songs are in the running after one disqualification, amongst them Finnish Emilia :-)

Russia didn't have an open selection and sent Alexej Vorobiov with mediocre Get you instead and luckily it failed badly (for Russia) in the final reaching only 16th place. Switzerland on the other hand had in their selection my favourite song of the season, Vittoria Hyde's Play the trumpet . Unfortunately it was disqualified and replaced by another bella bionda alta e magra Italian, Scilla and her Barbie doll which remains my favourite of their final songs, when some of my favourites were left in the internet selection.... The winner Anna Rossinelli celebrated for awhile and was the last to qualify for the final from the first semifinal and came last in the final but hey, Switzerland did the final for a change!

The Russian organized a great party lead of course by Alexey Vorobyov. Axel aka Paradise Oskar was one of the guests he invited and they performed together the Russian version of Get you while Axel was playing guitar. Axel and Alex together... let's see how it goes in the Ice hockey World champs tonight when Finland meets Russia and the winner goes to play for gold... Here .

Here is the video for Alexey's previous hit Бам Бам! and here is the video for his Eurovision 2011 entry Get you as Alex Sparrow as he likes to be called now abraod. Looks like he potreys the new rich Russia well....  The only problem is that he can't play the bad part convincingly not even a second. And did I say the song is crap? And of course as he is a Russian star he must have nude fotos of him flotaing around internet trying to be sexy and he fails there, too, big time. If you are not bad nor sexy you shouldn't push it. Maybe he should stick to singing jolly little numbers like the Kalinka rip off instead....

Bosnia-Herzegovina - Dino Merlin - Love in rewind ***** When I heard this for the first time I thought this is it, a possible winner. But Bosnia hasn't managed to win yet even if they have had some great songs. Could it be this time they have got it right: not too weird, not too ethnic but the right ingredients to be liked by everybody even if not the one that takes a lot of 12s but many 10s and 8s, enough to take it home in the end? Dino is a charismatic performer and there's enough of sing-a-long and a touch of weirdness to make this memorable. And he is wellknown in the Balcans to secure votes from all the neighbours - and don't talk about voting blocks this time when it is well deserved (just like Serbia 2007). It could just be so in the end. Qualifier: Sure . Russia - Alexej Vorobjov - Get you ** Such a let down from Russia. This is propably the worst Russian entry since... well, last year excluding, 1995. The song's like a Melodifestivalen reject and Alexej is n...

The troublesome national finals in Russia and Ukraine are coming up this weekend. The news from Russia is Alexey Vorobyov has withdrawn from the final, while Anastasia Prihedko has been added, after she has caused a lot of trouble in Ukraine and withdrawn from there (after she was accepted to Russia) after she has filed a lawsuit against the organisation asking for a new semifinal, cancellation of the whole, and ban of Ukraine in Eurovision 2009, in that order (if I have followed the story right). Some people in the east really do believe Eurovision is a contest for singers who can enter with old songs, win and then find a new song for the international final instead of reading the rulebook by EBU stating the songs must be new, under 3 minutes and so on. The line " changes can be made to the songs until March 15 " has been really, really misundestood by Anastasia and her team, (and not only). Anyways, by Sunday evening we know how it all ended....

The Spanish entry from 1966 by Raphael, Yo soy aquel - that is also this blog's favourite's in the Spanish selection 2009, Rafael De Alba's all time Spanish favourite - has been living mostly in the South America in recent years due to TV-series Montecristo . Now the series has been adapted also in Russia and the theme song is sung by Alexej Vorobyov, who came 5th in the Russian selection 2008 with the questionable New Russian Kalinka. You can hear the version on his website http://alekseyvorobyov.ru/ click АУДИО and then 16) Ты и я. (Thanks to Eurocovers)