#and aside from 5 maybe being vocal unit I'm not getting strong unit vibes from the other tracks

[lesbiancarat]

u know I say track #5 is probably vocal unit since it's a slower song but part of me wonders if this is gonna be another all ot13 mini album

[deep-hearts-core]

2015 - final

originally posted 5/25/20

France I know I really strongly disliked this back in the day, but I like it a little better now. Lisa is a great singer and the song is good. I guess the problem is that it isn't really a standout compared to the sheer volume of good songs this year - this one just doesn't hold up against the likes of Warrior, Love Injected, or A Million Voices. There were aspects of the staging I liked and aspects I disliked - it was good at the beginning but got weird later on, especially once those drummers came marching out. Could have been done a lot better.

United Kingdom In contrast to the French entry, whose biggest crime is really that it was uninteresting, this song is just plain bad. That set piece was genuinely the only good thing about it. It's a bad song, and this is only exacerbated by the poor use of backing vocals and an unsettling stage presence from the two leads. Alex is way too intense while Bianca is saccharine. Why did she keep pointing at him like that? SMH. The light-up costumes were, admittedly, kinda cool, and I appreciate the flapper aesthetic for what it is, but they didn't do anything for this train wreck of a song. Australia A solid debut in the contest! Guy's vocal power and control are just astounding, and the song is energetic and fun. Guy and his backup singers had a lot of presence and seemed to be really enjoying being up there. I liked the prop streetlights. While not one of my favorite songs out of the year this is pretty good and the 5th place was definitely justified. Austria Deserved better than what it got! I'm Yours is a good, mellow number that's decisively about platonic love. Dodo Muhrer has a pretty nice voice too and I think the simple staging really worked for this here. I did also like the flaming piano but I think that it felt kind of anticlimactic at that point in the song... if it had happened towards the end, maybe? But yeah this is actually one of my favorite host entries from the last few years.

Germany Like with Austria, this deserved better than nul points. I really enjoyed the staging of this, I thought it was pretty creative and captured the vibe of the song well. Amy Winehouse wannabe that she is, Ann Sophie still is a good singer and, for the most part, a good performer, even if she has no idea what to do with her hands onstage. Spain Edurne has trouble keeping in key, and keeps moving back and forth between vocal registers. The staging isn't necessarily bad but feels awfully over the top - although that costume change is legendary whether it's over the top or not. Performance troubles aside though I like Amanecer as a song. It feels really cinematic.

Italy Having difficulty formulating my thoughts about this one. I love Il Volo's voices. They sound really great together and alone, and are strong and stable throughout the whole thing. I think popera is nice as a concept, but it's not a genre I myself prefer. And I think the staging was kinda stagnant - definitely more could have been done with the background screen. So while this is good, it's not a personal favorite. My top 40

Latvia

Russia

Greece

Sweden

Portugal

Austria

Norway

Lithuania

Montenegro

Belgium

Ireland

Italy

Belarus

Australia

Georgia

Poland

Switzerland

Estonia

Germany

Czechia

Romania

Serbia

Denmark

Hungary

Armenia

Iceland

North Macedonia

Slovenia

Azerbaijan

Moldova

Netherlands

Malta

Spain

France

Israel

Albania

San Marino

Finland

Cyprus

United Kingdom

Austria and Poland sure were higher than I expected... hmm. Other than that this is more or less what I expected the sorter to spit out at me. This was really a toss-up between my top three, though - the last time I ranked 2015, my winner was Greece and I think I had Russia in my top 5.

Voting/intervals Y'all, they took forever to get the show started. Half of this opening sequence could have been cut or used in the interval. The "building bridges" video set to What If was cute though. I also really liked the compilation of winning moments. Austria didn't do the greatest job at hosting but they interacted a lot with the history of the contest in the interval acts and I really enjoyed that - this and the voting mishaps compilation were I think my favorite intervals of the year. Voting thoughts: 1. wow, can't believe Cyprus only got 10 points from Greece! And Greece only got 8 from Cyprus! 2. I can't with the Azeri guy saying "I'm a little bit surprised, but anyway..." at most of the Azeri results. 3. God, I feel so bad for Polina. The fact that it got bad enough that Alice felt the need to reprimand the audience... hoo. 4. Mans is so funny in the green room! He looks genuinely so surprised whenever he gets a douze, and honestly he is just vibing, he doesn't seem that nervous and is really just enjoying being there. Guy and Mans also seem to have a cute friendship, after Sweden gave douze to Australia Guy got up and gave, like, finger guns to Mans. 5. Ah, this year was "12 points from Russia go to Russia"! Iconic voting moment.

Thoughts after watching One thing that's been nagging at me during this rewatch is accessibility? How did Monika get onto the stage during the parade of flags if the only visible way up was stairs? Did the Polish delegation take a secret detour? I assume there is a separate, unseen way for artists to get from the green room to the stage and back again, but Monika is explicitly shown on the route in the middle so I really wonder about that. An analysis of disability in Eurovision might be really interesting - although I'm not the right person to write it. Yknow... I watch the show with German commentary, and even though Germany got zero points, the commentator never made it about bloc voting. All he said was that there were just too many good songs - from all over Europe. The most he said about Germany's lack of points really was, when Ireland voted, "I need to go have a word with the Irish commentary". I feel that's an example the rest of Western Europe ought to follow. I have mixed feelings on the Austrian hosting. I think the hosts were really awkward a lot of the time, especially Arabella, and some of the interval acts were either boring or cringeworthy. On the other hand, though, this is one of my favorite stage designs of the contests I've watched. All in all this was really a quality year full of amazing songs, never mind how the hosting was. I really love this year - the contestants and the music both were just awesome. And, as I've said before, I think Mans is a great winner. I like his song, but also... he really embodies what Eurovision is, theoretically, all about! He's just really happy to be there, and he's happy to participate when called upon, whether that's doing commentary, hosting, or participating in skits such as in 2017 or 2019. He really cares about the contest and, in that sense, he's one of my favorite winners as a person.