It was a moment of idiocy:
an
innocent search for Boom Boom Boomerang that opened up a world of pain:
for we suddenly realised that every single Eurovision Song Contest was
on YouTube. And then, in an alcohol induced blood-pact, we swore an
oath: we would watch the lot. Or rather we would watch as far as 1998.
Since that year, our music correspondent Evan Paris has led a dissident
nation of drunken journalists armed only with 58 points and a communal
biro in a mission to vote for the ten best tracks Europe has to offer.
It's all part of a ritual enshrined in AView dogma: every May we get
down in front of the telly with half a dozen bottles of beer, and pass
judgement on the Eurovision Song Contest. There is no point whatsoever
in this, as by the time our votes are presented to the world, the
winning song has already been selected. Rather the aim is to try to
educate the people of Europe for the next time around, but then the
people of Europe have probably forgotten all the songs by the time
these votes are up. No. In short what are presented here are merely
drunken ramblings, recorded for no very good reason. And now those
ramblings stretch back as far as 1956 and the very first Eurovision
Song Contest. In addition, we have gathered together all the
results in a pair of unwieldy tables designed to thrill and amaze even
the doughtiest Tuftian. And we've compiled lists of what in our minds
are the best songs and the best contests the continent has ever
experienced. This then is a spotter's guide to the forgotten highlights
of Eurovision past, from Aspelund to Zetterlund: a European travelogue
if you will, picking out the
things worth seeing and those best avoided. We've endured this at times
brilliant but occasionally utterly dreadful ordeal on your behalf. We
are martyrs to the course of European harmony.
- Evan
Paris,
Harrogate.