PorchDrinking Playlist | EUROVISION!

March 29, 2016 | Danny King

I love watching countries compete against each other in any (non-violent) form. World Cup, Olympics, PR battles; I’ll follow all of it. But my favorite competition, by far, is Eurovision. It’s essentially a contest to make the most all-around appealing pop song, which results in a ton of nonsense dance-songs, guilty pleasure ear worms, crazy train-wrecks, and even a couple of great tunes. When I lived in New York, during the month before the competition, I would spend every night writing insanely long and detailed profiles of each contestant. I never actually showed them to anyone (the only surviving full one from 2010 is 17,090 words.) The entire contest is an exercise of pure, unabashed joy and I love every minute of it. ABBA is the only well-known winner (they won in 1974 with Waterloo,) but in recent years snippets end up being shared around the internet, like Moldova’s “Epic Sax Guy.”
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