Yes, 75/25 made it possible.
Windows95man is heading to the Eurovision Song Contest. He climbs out of Dr. Eggman’s capsule with less underwear than Let3 dared to show in Liverpool and struts around the stage in tech-geek ridiculousness before climaxing in pyro that comes out of his tight denim shorts.
It’s the Eurovision Song Contest, baby.
Maybe The Scores Don’t Matter?
Now, if we had a 50/50 jury/televote split, or even a 60/40 split like Norway last week, we would have had a different winner. Sara Siilpola and ‘Paskana’ will be a song that I will remember for a very long time.
The staging of this number oozes class, sophistication, and simplicity at its finest. The concept of having one light source, a lamp dangling and swaying from the ceiling, that moves and alters the mood of this heart-on-the-line ballad is masterful and a prime example of the attention-to-detail that UMK can deliver. Competitively in a 75/25 televote friendly split, this can’t compete with the joyousness of everything (ahem) crazy and party that Windows95man brought to Tampere, but there’s so much there that the team should be proud of as a way of setting a dark, intimate mood in the Song Contest.
And if we had a Norwegian 60/40 system, then Sara Siipola would have had the ticket to the Eurovision Song Contest, and that would have been great, too.
Yet we can’t ignore that Windows95man brought the house down tonight in the Nokia Arena. A cultural quirk here is that the audience all get on their feet before every song starts performing – but they stayed on their feet all the way through for ‘No Rules’. It’s a silly Eurovision entry, but the style of charisma, retro charm, and I dare say actually impressive vocals by Chase (known across Finland for his role in ‘Paw Patrol’) means this is far from an embarrassment for the Finnish nation.
Silly has a place at the Song Contest just as much as classy and sophisticated does. Every part of human emotion should be portrayed through the rollercoaster of a 26-song Eurovision Grand Final, and you all know with 100 percent televoting in the Semi Final, Finland should be sailing through to Saturday night in May.
We very easily get ourselves into a classification problem as we follow the Contest religiously day by day. We call songs that give us pleasure as being ‘guilty’. You should never feel guilty about the pleasure you get from music. Music is there to tell deeply personal stories just as much as it is there to make you feel euphoric. Never is an emotion wrong, and as long as music makes you feel something then that music has succeeded in its purpose of creation.
Windows95man is a creation lots will feel joy from in Malmö. If we are those who will miss ‘Paskana’, we always have ‘Paskana’. It always belongs to us. Even for me, one who analyses and over-analyses the Song Contest until the cows come home, sometimes you need to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and don’t care what’s wrong or right.
When it comes to what works in music, there is only one rule. There are no rules.