WHY, INDEED

Every year Fop watches Eurovision with an unnatural degree of interest. In fact, we've had all 40 songs for this year for a few months, and will over the next fortnight be providing all manner of half-baked "analyses" "thereon". (Truthfully, with less than 2 weeks till Eurovision and Big Brother being on AND good again, we’re basically beside ourselves with happiness 24 hours a day. It’s not really sustainable, but that, we suppose, is simply a product of living in “these difficult times”.) There is Something Really Shit about Eurovision the last few years though, and that, unfortunately, is The Entire Nation of Finland.



Now, we went to Finland back in 2003, and we truly have only nice things to say about it. In fact, we wish we were there RIGHT NOW. We love it! Not only is there is a sauna in every building, but the Finns all seem to like to drink this rather viscous liqueur. "You see it is in flavours," we were advised rather seriously by an untenably beautiful boy in a bar who insisted on continually plying us with this alcoholic molasses until we simply could not stand unassisted, "of mint, and black." They love modern art, comprehensive infrastructure, cutting-edge technology and the most wonderful, wonderful patterned knitwear. But most importantly, they are very good indeed at pop.

The Bomfunk MCs are from there.


Remember them? Freestyler? Rock the microphone? Duets with Jessica Folker on Frida from Abba covers? OF COURSE!

And please note also Popstars winners from a time ago, a fairly excellent girl group called Gimmel, who we have reason to believe are still together (though we can’t really be sure of this since Google won’t appear to translate Finnish and we only really know “kiitos” and “hej-hej”.



There is so much more fantastic Finnish pop, which lovely Edward O will surely be in a position to tell you all about once The Hot New Project begins (so. excited.). Truthfully. The good Finnish pop per capita statistics would make even the pope keel over! *hastily addresses envelope to the Vatican* So why, then, is it necessary to send Geir Rönning to Eurovision, please?



You can hear 30 seconds of his upsettingly dull offering “Why?” over here. And it isn’t even a Mis-Teeq cover! And to make things worse, the selection of Geir Rönning comes only one year after the debacle that was Finland’s selection of the dreadful Ricky Martin tribute act, Jari Sillanpää, who couldn’t even get Finland past the semifinals, which, for a Scandinavian country competing in Eurovision, is surely nothing short of a significant national embarrassment.



And although we can't much stand it, it’s going to happen again, viewers! And quite right too if it does! You just don't DESERVE any success if you send entrants like these to Eurovision! Finland will not be getting out of first “Geir” (<-- do you SEE IT?! DO YOU.) this year with another middle-aged, tubby, toothy male DULLARD as its representative. We just don’t really understand why this is happening. It’s really as though the Australian public is selecting the Finnish representatives, as this is exactly the sort of non-hilarious mistake we love to make over and over again, given any sort of oppourtunity to select any format of public figure at all.

We don't know how many times we have to explain what we expect from Eurovision. It's not exactly a controversial set of criteria. But since the Finns just refuse to get it, we'll go through it AGAIN, bloody:

WHAT WE WANT:

* Girl singer/s!
* No guitars!
* 120+ BPM (unless it's a beautiful ballad)!
* Dancing!
* Great hair/costumes!
* Big, uplifiting choruses!
* Glitter!

WHAT WE DON'T WANT:

* Boy singers!
* Solemn/traditional balladeering!
* Too much of the traditional instruments!
* Guitarists on stage!
* Old people!
* Serious political "tracts" dressed up as pop songs!
* Any other general dreadfulness!


Take a cold, hard look at yourselves, Finland. You've only got yourselves to blame when you fail to make the final AGAIN this year. (And Ireland, don't think for a MINUTE we're not aware of the fact that once again you are sending something to Eurovision that is an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE. Where is Samantha Mumba, for goodness sake? Not available? We'd find that quite difficult to believe. More on that later)