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Eurovision Rocks!

Posted by on May 9th, 2014 with 2 Comments

Eurovision Lordi

The Munchkin crawls into bed this morning.

“Eurovision starts tonight, Mum”, he announces excitedly. He starts humming the tune from last year’s winner Denmark quietly to himself.

“What was your favourite last year?” he asks.

“That song by Denmark, the winner”, I reply.

“Mine too! Although I liked the Viking guy too”, and moves into his rendition of last year’s Iceland song (I was going to write the name of the song in, but you should see the accent letters! How do I type those?)

We banter on like this… discussing and singing our favourites from the past few years until it is time to get on with our day.

Hubby and I were late-comers to the whole Eurovision thing, and have only started following it for the past 7 or 8 years, and yet it has become such a big part of our family culture and vernacular (rather like musicals were for me as a child).

Long after the main event, we have enjoyed numerous evenings re-watching our favourites on YouTube, bopping and belting away. Songs that have never hit the Australian Charts are enjoyed over and over again – Eastern European Kind of Funk, Satellite, Euphoria (I’m particularly fond of the version the children’s choir performed in the 2013 Opening in Malmo, Sweden), Only Teardrops, that Icelandic one!

We giggle over Hubby’s enthusiasm for sparkly silver shorts like the Lithuanian guys. I am teased about my girl crush on Lena (have you ever seen her version of Love Cats? LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!) Munchkin bounces around the house singing Marry Me!

I also love how this one event has opened up a whole world for the Munchkin – both musically and culturally. He loves to sing and dance, and Eurovision provides some great role models for males in performing arts. Men perform in a whole gamut of roles from Monster to Viking, Average Bloke to Diva, Lover to Grandfather. And if you want to wear sparkly shorts or a volcano dress, that’s OK too!

He has probably picked up a better understanding of European geography, history and politics in the process as well.

Yes, Eurovision is incredibly daggy and silly, but isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why it has become such a huge hit with Australians? So much so, that we even have a guest artist, Jessica Mauboy, performing this year.

So this weekend, we’ll light the fire, play dress-ups, eat pizza and delight in the spectacle. We’ll laugh at Julia’s and Sam’s commentary, cheer on our favourites, follow the Twitter feed (#SBSEurovision) and deal with the earworms for the next couple of weeks, or months, or years. I wonder what new surprises will become part of our lives this year.

Are you watching?

PS. In case you were wondering… No, we don’t suffer from an intolerably tired Munchkin by keeping him up half the night. He is allowed to stay up a bit later, and then we record the rest and replay the next day. It really is a weekend long event at our house!

Image: Lordi, the 2006 Winners (from our first Eurovision experience). Photo credit: Indrek Galetin reproduced under Creative Commons license via Wikipedia.

PPS. Here’s Lena doing Love Cats!

2 Comments

  1. Maxabella says:

    It’s just so refreshing to know that there is a place in the world that still things being utterly uncool is totally cool. x

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Hi, I’m Cath

Cath Connell

Creating my amazing life one tiny moment at a time. Bringing the Hubby, a Munchkin and about a dozen tomato plants along for the ride.

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