Eurovision 2010s: 155 - 150
155. Milan Stankovic - “Ovo je Balkan”
Serbia 2010
Fun fact: one of my (straight female) friends has a MASSIVE crush on Milan Stankovic. Yes, THIS thing:
We stan questionable straight women’s taste <3
As for “Ovo je Balkan” The Song, it is one of those entries that are deliberately made as annoying as possible but I am mostly amused? Christmas elf-looking creature who prances around in a hideous, half-bedazzled dinner jacket. <3 The score is a banquet of honking noises, schlager beats and obnoxious autotune fillers <3 "Ovo je Balkan” just feels so quintessentially Eurotrash and for that I’ll always cherish it.
________________________________________________________________
154. Ivi Adamou - “La La love”
Cyprus 2012
“NAFINK TUFERR ... WILE U ARNERRRR.”
I know that “La La love” has a lot of fans, and it isn’t hard to see why: The song is pretty good: Three minutes of unbridled fun descended from Eurotrash heaven. <3 The choreography is darling, as is Ivi Adamou’s lovable diction <3 Standing on top a giant table made from books <3 Another tragic victim of Crystal Arena acoustics. 😭
________________________________________________________________
153. Eleftheria Eleftheriou - “Aphrodisiac”
Greece 2013
In a reserve of “La la love”, the selling point here is actually Eleftheria’s live and not the song. “Aphrodisiac” is servicable, but inferior to “La la love”. However, I think Eleftheria has a more engaging live performance charm than Ivi does, so I like her slightly more.🤗 Like Venus birthed from the clam, so did Eleftheria emerge as a wonderful throwback to the mini-skirted, hairflipping Eastern European slutpop DIVA.
Mind, like most contestants in 2012, Eleftheria was REALLY bad on the night, but in such a legendary fashion that I now refer to the common Greek practice of “burying bad lead vocals under backings” as “Eleftheria’ing”. The voiceover work is so meticulously done it sounds like a doppler-shifted fire alarm <3 RIP my sweet discount Foureira.
________________________________________________________________
152. Balkanika - “Nova deca”
Serbia 2018
Bless Serbia for that one time they shirked their Joksimovic traditions for a megamix of millenium-old music <3
Bear with me for a sec. “Nova deca” is NOT a song that I hold very dear in my heart. It features several Balkan musical tropes and coalesces them into a giant bloated mess. I like the historical aspect of it all, but I never connected with the song. Still haven’t, in fact.
However, I love what Balkanika have done with it. What an endearing bunch of weirdo’s <3
Gallavanting around the stage in black shawls and cloaks, making yoga poses, performing their hackneyed choreography with so much gusto <3
THE BEST ONE, and this cannot be stressed enough, IS THE RASFLUTIN-LOOKING FLUTE PLAYER. He isn’t show at a gif-worthy angle but pay attention to him and be rewarded with endless laffos <3 We love you Ljubomir <3
Balkanika have so much earnest commitment to the Fertility Cult concept of their staging that it also rubs off on me. I may not love the entry itself, but I do appreciate the collective effort delivered here. They 1) believed in it and 2) just rolled with it, and that’s how you Eurovision a song. 🤗
_______________________________________________________________
151. Filipa Azevedo - “Há dias assim”
Portugal 2010
Remember when Portugal had a three-year qualification streak? It is SO painful that Portugal, one of my favourite Eurovision countries, has only TWO qualifiers in this decade and one of them is S******r. 😣
Which is why we must all cherish the other Portuguese qualifier because I think "Há dias assim” is kind of really underrated. It’s the same deal as Tamara Todevska for me: Filipa just generally outsold her lowtempo song by injecting her heart into it. It transforms “Há dias assim” into a lovely song with an undercurrent of fierceness and saudade.
I personally find Filipa even better than Tamara though, because there is an evolution here: Filipa is visibly nervous at the start and overcomes them midway the performance, proving to the world that she’s both human and confident. If I don’t care about the song, the least I can be given is a personal connection with the performer so I can root for their success and that’s precisely what has happened here ^_^
Whoa we’re already at 150? Lol. Only 30-60 days worth of updates left to go. 😬
