For those not familiar with European traditions and culture, every year since 1956 European public broadcasters get together to find a song to unite Europe in culture. In the UK, Eurovision is seen as a bit of a joke while the rest of the European Union see take it quite seriously. As a result it is often the case that the UK’s entry gets a low score while serious music producers across Europe are able to showcase a variety of talent which will never see the light in the UK because of inherent taught resistance to euro-culture, but will proliferate across more receptive mainland Europe.
Eurovision 2006 was possibly the most enjoyable Eurovision in the past 30 years. 2006 was the year that Goth and Rock culture broke onto the Eurovision stage with such ferocity that many returning countries in 2007 tried to mimic the whole scene too.
Unusually the contest started with quite sedate, run of the mill songs like:
Sense Tu Jenny (Andorra)
Je t’adore Kate Ryan (Belgium)
Other entries were more up beat such as Tornero (Romania)
and Congratulations Silvia Night (Iceland)
But while the tweeness of Switzerland’s Six4One’s If we all give a little was trying to capture the zeitgeist of peace and love arising from the conflict plagued noughties.
The shockingly bad UK entry, Daz Simpson and Teenage Life was like Timmy Mallet or Keith Harris trying to capture the gangsta culture.
But it was the winning entry, Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi (Finland) that resulted in the landslide victory that Eurovision needed to bring it back to centre stage.
Stegzy's Music Project 