Europe is bankrupt and bleeding towards an awful unfixable fiscal finish. America may be even worse, only they are better at covering things up. Small wonder then that two weekends ago, hundreds of millions of shrieking wild-eyed entertainment-lovers went bananas for the finals of Eurovision and American Idol.
About 120 million television viewers watched Eurovision in Baku, Azerbaijan, an oil-rich pocket of Eastern Europe where a special stadium was built for the final, a better one than ours; it had 45,000 lights. About 132 million voted on American Idol's final night, a world record, said Ryan Seacrest, the show's "Thunderbirds Are Go" compere. These are enormous numbers; these numbers defy belief.
Both shows are shamelessly corrupt. Eurovision has been wrecked from within for years with block voting and countries ganging together like packs of wolves to destroy the unwanted.
Poor United Kingdom. They used to win all the time, now they get trashed, humiliated and whanged into wheelie bins every year. They revived 76-year-old Engelbert Humperdinck from his nitrogen chamber this year and gave him a reasonable song.
English critics felt there might be a chance. Britain after all has a better history in pop music than the rest of Europe put together times 12. But no, in a field of 26, the United Kingdom finished 25th. Worse, they beat only Norway, by one point.
Norway is the worst country in the history of Eurovision, finishing last 10 times and on four occasions, failing to score a single point. Even worse, if anyone could be musically worse than Norway, their 1980 entry was a song about the construction of a hydro-electric power station.
Visually, though, this show was stunning. Circus trickery that makes Cirque du Soleil seem mundane whirred across the stage at dizzying speed with lasers and strobes sending epileptics staggering from the stadium in droves. Just about all the singers were arrestingly beautiful, except the six Russian grandmothers we featured on this page a few weeks ago.
Dressed by blind people, vocally trained by deaf people, and choreographed by people who were facing the other way, the toneless grannies were even more dire in the final than they were in the heats. They finished second.
American Idol is not officially corrupt, but as mentioned above, America has always been better at covering things up. The truth will come out in years to come, as it has before in game shows, sport and politics, anything involving serious money. No voting figures are revealed. We are not meant to wonder why the best singer does not win, the Adam Lambert Syndrome, or why this year for the fifth year in a row, an attractive American white boy with a guitar won ahead of a raft of infinitely more talented singers from other ethnic backgrounds. American Idol has chosen to trumpet its heartland, so white boy with guitar, Phillip Phillips, now there's a name, defeats the 16-year-old Filipino-Mexican Jessica Sanchez, who could do things with her voice Phillips, and most of the world, could only dream of. Did I mention Phillip's dad wore a gun?
Amazing. Aren't you usually asked to leave your guns at the door?
In the final, Phillip played it safe with songs that drove right down the middle of the American rock road, safe songs, American songs. It was, at best, exceedingly pleasant. Jessica covered classy difficult stuff because, well, because she can. She was much better. The judges said the two were neck and neck, and then gave Phillip a standing ovation for his final song, a spineless piece of late '60s folk. Randy Crawford said the song was perfect in every way. The New York Times, incredulous at the result, said it was dreary and dull, but the 132 million unreleased voting numbers had been rung in by then.
No matter. It's only entertainment. It's where we go when times are hard, to make us feel the world is a good and honest place after all. Thank the Lord.
- Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
