My Ears ! My Ears ! It's Eurovision

I'm not quite sure why we sit through Eurovision every year. It's like one of those tragicomedies. At least, that's the way the Brits see it. The rest of Europe curiously sometimes take it rather seriously.

There's a few silly things about Eurovision.

There's the partisan neighbourly voting, where Serbia votes 12 for Montenegro and Montenegro votes 12 for Serbia. The Scandinavian countries vote for each other. Greece votes for Cyprus and each of them never vote for Turkey. The Balkan States have joined this trend by voting for each other.

And then there's the musak. Don't get me started on the musak.

Ok, some of it is ok. I liked the Polish entry this year, it made up for their infamous milkmaid vignette from last year. This year's infamy on the stage was reserved for Austria who burned a piano which mysteriously still kept on playing despite being : on fire ... and the pianist walking away from it.

I did like the stage show which won but ... isn't this about the song, not the show ?

I thought I'd remove the corruption from my ears by doing my own Eurovision song contest. Yep. It's another dive into that big music library to see what I can find on Youtube ... The rule for this one is to have only one song per country. Let's go !

First up, I applaud Ireland's choice to approve same sex marriages. Good on ya ! And there's a pop pixie from over there who posted a very happy twitter message about it. It's Lisa Hannigan, here with Lille and a wonderful pop up book.

What a wonderful start and so much better than anything that we heard yesterday. Next is following the French theme from Lille, it's a band I'm keeping my eye on called The Plastiscines. They've done one fantastic song and a number of mediocre songs. But I still think they're worth a listen and I'll pick up their albums when they get cheap. The wonderful song is Barcelona. Very catchy.

Have I got anything from the Spanish ? I don't think I do ...

I do have a delightful bit of crazy from Iceland. Yep. Bjork - delightfully barmy, Possibly Maybe ?

Over to the Scandinavians. I did love the stage show for the winner yesterday but I say again ... song contest ? Here's a wonderful song from Sweden, you'd have to be a Frequent Flyer to visit all these countries. It's Nina Persson's post-Cardigans project - A Camp.

Norway have a couple of contenders here. There's A-Ha and then there's Lene Marlin. I pick Lene because ... yep. I love that female voice (and you've probably already familiar with A-Ha), especially when it's singing songs like How Would It Be (from the Lost In The Moment album)

One from a few places is the Swedish-Finnish-Czech singer Lisa Miskovsky. Another who I'll end up collecting her albums because there's another wonderful voice here. Perhaps it's a bit too polished in the production though. But with songs like Midnight Sun, I'll be singing along.

Over to the mainland of the continent again and it's Caro Emerald. Another wonderful voice and catchy jazzy songs too like A Night Like This.

Australia were invited along this year and played along with the spirit of it but ... It didn't have nearly the power of Untouched by The Veronicas. Certain songs grab me and I end up buying everything that a group comes out with. Untouched is one of those songs. Wow, just wow. They're too fast for me to sing along to but that doesn't stop me bopping away to it in my chair.

To close out, we have to have something quintessentially UK. Something only we could come out with. It's gotta be the Wurzels with The Combine Harvester.

Wait.

I think I hear screaming and running.

Ok. Ok. I'll spare you the Wurzels. Here's someone far more tuneful. It's Kate Bush with Oh England My Lionheart.

Cya ! And listen to good things.