A woman triumphed who wears a flesh-colored jersey and very long fingernails and frees herself from a narrow “tanning bed” (Peter Urban). Loreen’s song “Tattoo”, written by six authors, begins with a Abbasch phrase: “I don’t wanna go/ But baby, we both know/ This is not our time/ It’s time to say goodbye.” Loreen is now the only person besides Johnny Logan to have won the Eurovision Song Contest twice – first in 2012 with “Euphoria”.
Finland’s Käärijä came second with the populist dance routine “Cha Cha Cha”, as announced by the bookies. At the beginning of his lecture, he freed himself from a shack. In third place: the Israeli Noa Kirel with “Unicorn”, whose production was probably the most convincing of the competition.
The coronation celebrations in London had hardly ended when public interest changed venues: the ESC was hosted by the BBC in Liverpool on behalf of Ukraine. For a week we learned that Liverpool is the birthplace of the Beatles and that the citizens of Liverpool are not English but ‘Liverpudlians’ and ‘Scousers’ – and proud of it. Also, they are cordial.
Camilla and Charles opened the arena at the Royal Albert Docks and at the start of the telecast Duchess Kate and Andrew Lloyd Webber played some cadenzas on the piano from ‘Stefania’, last year’s Ukrainian winning song. The experimentally dressed Kalush Orchestra also performed the song again indoors. And now we’ve had enough of the flute! And also from the flute that the short man blew between drummers and amazons for Moldau!
In his last broadcast, Peter Urban bravely commented on postcard views of town halls, bridges and libraries from Great Britain and Ukraine. The toilets, Urban had previously noted, were close to the speaker’s booth. The show lasted four hours, which was lengthened by asking the so-called jury votes. The juries overwhelmingly agreed on Loreen, and this vote was not reversed by public opinion either. Behind Loreen and Käärijä is a big gap to Noa Kirel and Italian Marco Mengoni with “Due Vite”, one of the few traditional songs in the competition.
Italy is the only country in the “Big Five”, i.e. the countries that have always been qualified, to have succeeded. France and Spain, Great Britain and Germany failed spectacularly with, how to put it?, wanted contributions that no one wanted. Lord Of The Lost singer Chris Harms always reads the last page of a book first. He would also have liked to know beforehand how the competition would end. With the last rank for Lord Of The Lost namely. The band seemed to have walked into the arena by accident. Harms shouted “Liverpool, make some noise!” in a hall that had been noisy for two hours.
You can plan anything, but the Eurovision Song Contest is like the high seas.
Now the German boatswain disembarks. The noble Peter Urban said goodbye without further ado: “It was a pleasure and an honor for me. Yours, Peter Urban.” We will miss two things above all: Peter Urban was never narrow-minded. And he was never pathetic.
At the most pathetic festival in the world (after the coronation).