Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Or so the story goes. Apprently the Soviet propaganda wanted to take also the Eurovision trophy in the crazy years of change in the late 1980's. Back in 1987 the Minister of Education for the Soviet Union Veselov brought out the idea. He even had proposed popular singer Valery Leontiev as the ideal debut artist but both president Gorbachev and the leaders of Communist Party considered the idea "too radical". LOL. The talk continued until the whole union was gone by 1991. Russia did enter the contest in 1994 and despite sending local superstars Philip Kirkorov and Alla Pugatseva among others failed to make an impact, even not qualifying in the 1996 pre-selection. They took a break of a couple of years before re-entering and have been very succesful ever since with one victory, 4 second places and two third places so far.... Nine other former republics of the Soviet Union have entered the contest since 1990's though: Lithuania 1994, Estonia 1994, Latvia 2000, Uk...

Totally unfounded rumours from Russia and Greece. While we wait that the rumour that Dima Bilan will try again we have the latest local X factor winner Sergey Savin listen as a possibility, especially as he is guided by primadonna herself, Alla Pugatcheva. Check him out here and here . And here's one more, a real video. Why he makes me think Italian X Factor winner Marco Mengoni? Is it the good madness both seem to posses? On the other hand there's a rumour Russia might be having a national final after all... Greece is a mess as well, as usual, it seems. Names come and go and a very welcome addition to the list right now is Kostas Martakis who already tried with Always and forever and should definately try again. His other goodies include Agapi mou , Anatropi , Fila me , Sex indigo and Η ΑΓΚΑΛΙΑ ΜΟΥ .

 Another week of singing all sort of songs is over and the second qualifier in the Azeri selection is Məryam Kərimov. She belted out amongst other I will always love you , and rather stunningly I may add. Her Eurovision cover was Wild dances so she can do uptempo, too. Then she also covered Alla Pugatsova's Arlechino . And she can do simil-bossa nova , too. I might start thinking this year the singers selected are much better than last year if they go on like this....

esctoday.com has made a list of best selling Eurovision artists. No surprise ABBA tops the list but there are some surprises, who would have thought Nana Mouskouri at the top? But she has been extremely popular at her day. Some names are not in the top-10 like Lara Fabian who might be the 11th. Bucks Fizz might be 12th and Lulu have also sold a lot, including the single To Sir with love , that was the most sold single in the US in 1967. Then we have the outsiders Ajda Pekkan , Samira Bensaid and Albano . Ajda Pekkan is said to have sold some 50 million records but there's no official proof of that. Samira Bensaid is one of the best sellers in the Arabic world and her record sales are said to be anything between 20 to 200 million. But there's no proof either. Albano claims to have sold something like 160 million records but that most likely includes his solo mefferts and the records sold with Romina Power, so... excluded. But then we have also Ricchi e Poveri with record sal...