Eurovision 2010s: 145 - 141
145. Samra - “Miracle”
Azerbaijan 2016
We continue maneuvering ourselves through ironically lovable carcrashes. On today’s menu we have this mélange of plated goldleaf and frizzy hairdo, from the fine vintage year of 2016. 🍷
Naturally, Samra kickstarts Postmodern Azerbaijan; a safe-sounding “modern” electropop song that is a barely disguised shitfest and overstaged accordingly <3 Of course the true unravelling only begins once Samra picks up her ~gilded~ microphone and starts beating together a misophonic nightmare. <3 Azerbaijan’s solution to the vocal mediocity? Force Samra’s dancers to provide backing vocals, the only people in the world (besides Hannah Mancini) who are even worse at singing than she is.😍 We truly are not worthy. 😍
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144. Getter Jaani - “Rockefeller street”
Estonia 2011
OMG Getter <3 I don’t think it’s hard for you to see why I stan her: She is probably... the most annoying entrant in this rankdown?😍 Constantly shrieking, constantly mugging the camera, constantly pulling silly magic tricks, surrounding herself with literal pre-teen dancers (or um Russians, who are known to not age between 12 and 37). Topped off with your usual nonsensical Lõhmus Lyrics: 1-2-7-3 DOWN THA ROCKAFELLA STREET.
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143. Pastora Soler - “Quedaté conmigo”
Spain 2012
Time for a little break from all the #2Hot2Trot garbage, so let me instead rate the weird anomaly that is “Quedaté conmigo” one of the rare cases where Spain got it right? 🤔
Now, most entries around Pastora rank here because they were entertaining trainwrecks, but this doesn’t apply to her. I rank Pastora this high because she wasn’t a living, screaming mess. 2012 was a year of utter disappointment so the few songs that actually impressed me were like PURE OXYGEN. It’s even more impressive that this entry came from Spain, of all countries: when Spain is never not loud and shrill, including when they send ballads (El <3 Dancing in the rain <3 Vuelve conmigo <3) and it’s nice to see them break character for once with a piece of cateyed realness. 😻
It is only fitting, imo, to rank her in the middle of deafeningly loud insanity, like an oasis of tranqulity, so that you can, hopefully, experience the full potential of the Pastora Soler experience, which I personally found to be a vey pleasant and calming one. 🤗
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142. El Sueño de Morfeo - “Contingo hasta el final”
Spain 2013
And now BACK WE GO to the deafening loudness Spain is usually known for! ESDM throw me for a bit of a loop, actually. Do I ironically stan *this* vocal mess? 🤔 I kind of do <3 Screaming Spanish ladies <3 Somehow avoiding last place lmfao. <3
It’s a tough question because “Contigo hasta el final” is in fact an AMAZING song. Yes, Ethno-folk banger <3 Bagpipes <3 Lowkey figments of epicness <3 This song just inherently feels like a ~journey~ through a magical world. It’s very, very underrated.
So yes, I definitely WANT to stan what a barefoot-walking Kraljic-esque catastrophe Raquel was (”WID YOU ANTEEL DEE EEEEEND”) but I mostly am frustrated that a song which I could’ve unironically adored has to be relegated to Ironic Love due to vocal imcompetence. It will only get worse from here on out...
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141. Nina Zilli - “L’amore è femmina”
Italy 2012
...because Nina has the exact same problem as EDSM except here I don’t even bother with unironic stanning. I’m all for self-fulfilling prophecies, but not when I’m the abused partner in a relationship.
Let us start with the good bits first: “L’amore è femmina” is... one of my favourite Eurovision songs of ALL TIME. Like legit. It’s one of only two songs that is on my off-season playlist. It’s a glittering diamond compressed together from feisty jazz, female empowerment and endless hairspray, a song whose fierce intelligence burns brighter than Chinese firecrackers. Check out the studio if you haven’t already. You won’t fall OUT OF LOVE with this song sent from above. 😻
Which brings me to the giant elephant in the room: the live performance of “l’amore è femmina” is GARBAGE. Nina and her backing vocalists were atrocious. So bad I can’t even spin in my usual nihilistic spiel of worshiping badness for the heck of it. This beautiful song was ~wrecked beyond all recognition~ by awful acoustics and it’s TRAGIC.
Which brings me to the hardest question of all: Where do I rank this? Here, in the high light green, along the entries I rate as seven-out-of-tens, I think is the best spot. Any lower is an insult to the song. Any higher is sugarcoating how bad the live truly was. Mind, there is still SOME spunk and feistiness to be found in the live and I don’t think the acoustics are Nina’s fault. Everyone had bad soundmixing, with technical difficulties killing off monitors hither and yon. The technical failures just hit Nina harder than most. It’s not much, but it gives the live a small silver lining.
So here we are, discussing one of two Eurovision songs whose studio version I prefer over the live performance, whom I ipso facto treat like a non-ESC song because the canonical version is too painful to live through. I don’t really want to dwell on “L’amore è femmina” being disappointing though. I still cherish the song itself, although the Eurovision version is sadly not as good. 😭
PS: The other song I mentioned will go next, and by now you should be able to tell which one it is...
As if that cliffhanger weren’t enough, the next update is the FINAL ONE for this tier :o Who will miss out on the unironic ~Love~ zone?
