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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Welcome to another Sunday Eurovision roundup. This week has had one final and eight semi-finals. If that seems like a lot, it isn't - next weekend has eleven semi-finals and four finals!

Best news of the week - Dimitry Koldun and his crazy magic song won the Belarussian preselection! Teenyboppers screamed in joy, and so did I. I don't know if it will do well but it will definitely make for an exciting performance.

In the middle of the week Spain had another semi-final and Rebeca of "I Love You Mi Vida" just made it through. The songs were cut down from 15 to 10, and my two favorites made it through, as well as a bunch of songs that weren't nearly as good.

This weekend seven semi-finals took place in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Romania. I was busy and thus unable to watch any of them, but mostly good songs made it through and I am looking forward to next week's semi-finals for all of them, especially Romania.

Finally, some songs from finals far in the future were released.Half-length clips of the Bulgarian songs were released. I'm rooting for "Back In Your Heart" by Grupata because they are a boy band. They're not even that good looking, but their song reminds me of better looking ones. All three German songs are out, and though none of them really stand out, but I get a feeling that the Monrose song would grow on me if I listened to enough. Georgia released all five songs by Sopho Kalvashi, and I'm not very fond of any of them (they're all good but are missing that extra something). If I had to pick I'd probably pick "On adjarian motives." Finally, the song titles from Croatia have been announced and as expected Feminnem are on the list! Once it's released I'll give a review.

Next week, Estonia, Malta, Poland, and Slovenia choose their songs. I haven't heard any of the Slovenian songs so I can't make a prediction. But for the others I predict Vanilla Ninja for Estonia, Claudia Faniello for Malta, and The Jet Set for Poland (all partly prediction and partly wishful thinking).

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Tragic

This past Monday Don't Stop The Pop did a fantastic post about girl bands. One group listed (#110) is Danish group S.O.A.P. After finding their video for "This Is How We Party" on YouTube, I realized (many others have too) the chorus of "Tragic" by BoA sounds nearly identical to the chorus of this song.
I don't know the writer of "Tragic" deliberately copied "This Is How We Party," but this many years after the release of both songs I really don't care. That style of pop music takes me back to middle school (even though I hadn't heard of BoA until high school, and hadn't heard of S.O.A.P. until this week).

Download - SOAP - "This Is How We Party"
Download - BoA - "Tragic"
Watch - S.O.A.P. - "This Is How We Party

Monday, January 22, 2007

Welcome to the Mp3 Parade


This past winter break, I hung out with my brother a lot and thus listened to a lot of his music. We realized that we both liked My Chemical Romance, but everything else we disagree on. Today's Mp3 is a b-side of "Welcome To The Black Parade", which is probably my generation's "Bohemian Rhapsody". The title is "Heaven Help Us" and it's good enough to have been on the CD instead of just a b-side.

Download My Chemical Romance - "Heaven Help Us"

Sunday, January 21, 2007

I'm in ur towers, working ur magic

Welcome to another week's Sunday Eurovision news roundup. I've slept horribly this week, so it's going to be a little short because I'm tired.

This Saturday Finland, Iceland, and Norway had semifinals. So far, my favorites from each semifinal made it through ("Leave me alone" for Finland, "Blómabörn" for Iceland, and I haven't heard the songs from Norway) so I hope that good songs, meaning songs that I like, keep making it through to the final.

From Belarus, Dimitry Koldun's new entry, "Work Your Magic", is now floating around on the internet and it is much better than the old one. It is about love, but it is also about magic, a little. However, the song gets its magic (or maybe its English) a little wrong. "When you cast your loving potion over me"? Everyone knows that potion is an item, srsly. You don't cast items! Still, it's great in an over-the-top sort of way and I hope that it wins tomorrow.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Eurosunday Kickoff 2007!

Usually there wouldn't be much to talk about this early in the year, but boy there is a lot of Eurovision news already! Two songs have been chosen and leaked on the interwebs, and many more preselection plans have been discussed with varying levels of excitement. I'll try to be writing this every week until May now, and cover my first impressions of the pre-selection songs, and then in mid-March rank the songs like I did last year. Today I will try to recap a month's worth of news in a couple of paragraphs.

Albania - This was the second song selected and released. I was in the minority last year because I liked the Albanian song, and I am probably in the minority again. Last year's song changed a lot from the original 4+ minute version to the 3 minute version, so I'll leave my final judgement for the final version,

Belarus - My favorite in the first preselection was "Summer Trip" by Litesound because it was very radio friendly and reminded me of summer car trips in the 90's. That didn't make it to the final three. I am disappointed with the actual final three, so I hope that Dimitry Koldun's as of now unknown song is better than the other two (especially since it is supposed to be about magic - at least, I hope it is actually about magic and not just magic as a metaphor for love) and wins.

Bulgaria - I'm not even sure how these got to be available, since all the songs aren't supposed to be decided until Monday. The entries I've heard are nothing special, but this was the only country from which I have heard a hard rock song, the song being "Videnie" by Balkandji. The song itself isn't that great, but it is does a good variation of the "copy last year's winner" method by adding traditional instruments and...guest vocals by R2D2? If they win the preselection they better put him on stage with them. It would be a million times better than Latvia's lame robot last year.

Estonia - I've only heard a few of the songs,but I really like what I've heard so far. Right now I predict that Vanilla Ninja will win since they got such a good result for Switzerland in 2005, and I prefer their new song, "Birds of Peace", to "Cool Vibes".

Latvia - I've only heard clips, and most of them were mediocre to me. My top picks are "In Our Life", "Take Of Your Mask", and "Little Bit of This", but I am not excited about any of them.

Malta - Like Estonia, I've only heard a few songs, but my favorite so far is "L-Imhabba Ghamja". I don't know how well it would fare in the preselection nor the big shows, but I imagine there could be a good dance routine. However, if they want to get last place again, they should pick "Starlight" because it would be hilarious.

Moldova - The first song selected for this year was actually selected in mid-December of last, and is "Fight" by Natalia Barbu. It was my favorite from the Moldovan preselection, and even though I have not heard 26 out of the 27 other songs it will be competing against in the semifinal, I think it has a chance to qualify for the final. You might think, "yes, it will qualify like you were so sure 'Je T'adore' was going to qualify last year." And you could be right and I could be wrong, but I'll wait until the other songs are selected until I talk about this again, and see if I still feel the same way about it.

Poland - After hearing a few songs, I am disappointed. The only song I remotely like is by the Jet Set, and I'm still a little confused about them because last year in the Polish preslection their song, "How Many People", was a total ripoff of "My Humps", and why anyone would want to rip off that song is a mystery. Another interesting song of note is "Open Your Mind" by Ania Szarmach, which sounds very much like something BoA would record.

Spain - Since the method of selection is a bit odd (the song and the singer are selected separately), I will give my opinion on the songs only and not the voice on the demo. As a whole the songs are of good quality. My favorites so far are "Tu voz se apagara" and "I love you mi vida". I also kind of like "Ain veri japi nau" from what I can understand of it, but I'm not sure how it would fare in the actual contest, because humor isn't guaranteed to be a hit.

Switzerland - The song hasn't been released yet, but based on the one song of DJ Bobo's that I've heard ("Chihuahua"), I'm probably not going to like it. But I have friends who swear that he is one of the best things ever, so the song could be good.

United Kingdom - Since Lordi's victory showed that angry teenagers watch Eurovision, BBC is hoping that moody ones also watch, and have thus started rumors that they are going to get Morrissey to be involved with this year's entry. Although I know who he is, I've managed to avoid actually listening to his music so far because I assumed that I wouldn't like it. After the excitement on every Eurovision news website (and some regular news websites), I checked out "You Have Killed Me" and I like it a lot more than I should. So I can only hope that this rumor is true, because already I like him a whole lot better than you-know-who (every time I mention his name I get flames, so I'm going to play it safe).

There you have it - probably my longest post ever. A trend I have noticed is that there is a lot of very "adult contemporary" rock in all the preselections that have released audio so far. What part of "hard rock" in last year's winning song title do these people not understand?

Friday, January 12, 2007

One of my favorite things is when artists put mp3s up for download on their official sites. Usually this is done by nobody of interest to me, but today is an exception, because it's Anžej Dežan!
He has relaunched his official website to include, among other things, mp3s of all his singles (including his newest, "Kot Romeo in Julija") and some live covers. My favorite cover is his performance of "Show Me Your Love". Also, there are some great new photos like the one to the left, and a feature called AD(VICE) where Anžej recommends books and music.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Happy Birthday Blog!

I've been writing this blog for a year!
For 2007 I've decided to make it official and just write about music as opposed to pop culture in general (I don't think I've written about non-musical matters since last February). So all my favorite music blogs can now link to me...I can be patient :-)
The two best recurring columns I started last year were Mp3 Monday and Eurovision rankings on Sundays, which will both continue, except that I will also be covering the Eurovision preselections because 1)it is interesting news that I am following and 2)I am pretty sure I will remember to post about it. So you can look forward to these two columns, and if I don't remember to post them please send me angry messages on Myspace or whatever.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Mp3 Monday New Year

Happy 2007 a week late! I was too busy New Years' Eve and New Years to post then so I'll post now. Tomorrow I will have an extra special post because it is the 1 year anniversary of The Goggles Do Nothing. Basically I will talk about the direction I want this blog to take in the new year along the lines of focusing on music only now, and make a lot of promises that I probably won't fulfill.

For today's mp3 I will break the promise I made in the above sentence by talking about a TV show. On the soap opera All My Children, there is a new transgendered character named Zarf, played by Jeffrey Carlson. The character is pretty badly written just as soap opera characters always are, but the actor is great, and as the character is a rock star, we get to hear him sing too. Today's mp3 is from the Broadway cast of the Boy George musical Taboo (which I admit, I saw) and is Jeffrey Carlson singing "Genocide Peroxide" in the same over the top fake accent that he uses on AMC.

Download - Taboo Broadway Cast - Genocide Peroxide