Friday, May 14, 2004
IN THE DISCO (WELL, IN THE ARENA ACTUALLY)
It was the first dress rehearsal for the final this afternoon, which means we got to see the show in the arena with all the flashing lights and sparkly frocks for the very first time.
Annoyingly, we got the start time wrong, so we completely missed the cute little French singer, and a few less notable (ie ugly) ones.
It didn’t matter, though, because we took our seats just in time to see Deen mince onto the stage to give a storming performance of In The Disco. And we mean “storming” in the “rubbish, but you just can’t take your eyes off the stage” sense. The temperature has dropped quite considerably in Istanbul today, so we were glad to see Deen was being sensible and wearing a few more clothes than he did for the semi-final (ie any at all).
A few people who we hadn’t really noticed before seemed quite impressive.
Avril Lavigne-a-like Julia Savicheva from Russia was really good. Well, actually, her half naked boy dancer acrobats were really good, but she did well to bask in their reflected glory.
The Greek entry, Shake It, has been hotly tipped to come first, and it certainly looked like a winner from where we were sitting. Apparently, singer Sakis is the only popstar of any note in Greece, and he already has ten albums under his belt. He definitely stood out in the competition, especially some of the more inexperienced singers. And he has a pant-wettingly exciting Bucks Fizz-style clothes-ripping-off moment.
Iceland’s Jonsi is another one to watch – and not just because he’s spectacularly fit. He’s one of the few contenders who is taking to the stage completely solo, so there are no backing singers or people pretending to play the guitar to distract him. Luckily, he has an ego the size of a house, so he easily fills the stage all by himself. He needs to watch it with the Celine Dion-style vocal histrionics, though, in case it all goes horribly wrong at the crucial moment.
Chris Doran looked like a nice Irish boy who had accidentally wandered onto the stage while looking for the toilets, and decided to just stay up and belt out a quick number while he was there, and our own James Fox looked like he was too busy trying to be serious and a Proper Artist to put much oomph into his performance. Hopefully he is just saving his energy, and his voice, for tomorrow night.
Cyprus have a British girl, Lisa Andreas, representing them this time around, and she’s actually quite good. Her song, Stronger Every Minute, is a quiet, unassuming ballad that suddenly hits some soaring high notes in the chorus, and she didn’t quite pull it off the first time around – she used Kylie Minogue’s favourite ploy, where you just make up another tune that isn’t as high and sing that instead. But she made up for it by the end, and there are even a couple of those notes that will send a shiver down your spine if you’re a big homo – which, luckily, most people here seem to be.
Last up was Lene from Sweden. While some lowculture readers have been publicly doubting the autenticity of her tits (we still reckon they’re her own, cos they bounce around too much when she’s dancing to be fake), her voice is the geniune article, her song is extra-great, and she’s got a great Girls Aloud-style microphone stand dance routine.
So, taking all that into account, who do we reckon is going to win? We reckon that Greece will do very well, but Cyprus might give them an unexpected run for their money. And, if the gays of Europe unite behind their new hero, Deen, he might just be able to bend the result his way.
Whatever way that might be.
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