Oh Vienna! Eurovision Final Thread

[SuffolkNWhat]

Here we go, 25 minutes until Eurovision 2015 kicks off in Austria.

Get the drinks in, it's going to be a long one!

Israel Sweden then Serbia. Voted israel

Is this the Vienna Symphony?

austria has a great brass band umpa tradition.
bit disapointed by the lack of females in the brass section.

Right - I'm off to make some toast on the vain hope it might soak up some alcohol

I loved Slovenia, Russia and Serbia.

Welll that was mike and the mechanics... unstoppable plagerism

Woooh Conchita!

Austrian tv must be a hoot if these lot are a measure

Well this is riveting....

Oh yes, Austrian TV is so much worse.

Serbia early leaders

no surprises there.

we haven't won this year...

Sweden the fav have it I think...

there is no tv license in austria, it's all pay tv.
that explains a lot

Italy could do this.. I bet they are on the phone to the EU, can we have some money please?

portugals dress is the same as the host on the right... hence they cut her off!

The 1-7 points noise sounds like a burp.

We have one point. We need to leave the EU

Two! God bless neighbourly voting...

Think I must have had some ancestor from Montenegro in my lineage because their songs always seem to touch something deep in me. The only time I ever hear their songs is on Eurovision and I always love them. I wish all countries would sing in their native language like Montenegro does.

Apart from Montenegro I loved Greece and Latvia.

I'd love to hear more languages too. Not just because the songs in English have such atrocious lyrics a lot of the time but because of the cookie cutter quality to the contest when so many songs are in English. Fair play to France, who nearly always sing in French.

And look at how poorly France and Spain who sang in their own languages fared. As soon as the rules were relaxed on singing in English virtually every entry was in English because it opens up a wider audience. I think the Italian entry did better because we're familiar with that kind of singing in Italian and the theme was easy to understand.

I think the problem with the French and Spanish entries was that they were shite, not that they weren't in English. We did dreadfully and our song was in English. The common denominator is a terrible song (and probably fewer neighbours who used to be part of the same country as you and feel inclined to award you points on that basis).

Ireland and many other countries that didn't even make it to the final also sent English entries.

I think the neighbourly vote thing is overblown. (I also see nobody complaining in the UK when Ireland awards the UK a vote or two despite the poor song fielded.) If anything, the sabre waving of neighbouring states to Russia on the political level should have meant fewer votes for the Russian entry. The song got votes from from almost all the ESC members because it was a good one, and very well sung.

I think we should be questioning the taste of the Irish for awarding us 2 points.

The neighbourly voting thing need not be sinister. People in neighbouring countries may just share cultural tastes and stuff, which makes them more likely to enjoy their neighbours' entires. We don't have the same neighbourly proximity and we insist in entering songs that even people in the UK don't like, so I'm not sure why we'd expect anyone else to like them either.