Lithuania 2013 - Gerai Gerai & Miss Sheep - War In The Wardrobe

There are some countries that you'd fancy going to visit on the basis of their failed Eurovision contenders alone, and for me Lithuania has always been one of them.

Take this slightly bonkers piece of Baltic electropop. It lilts along insistently in a nicely 90s kind of way, with a gently unhinged lyric and a moderately not-quite doolally dance routine and it makes you smile, quite calmly and happily.

It's nothing to get your gran excited, but it's got enough interesting little difference nodules to make you want to hear it again.

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Lithuania 2013 - Timohi - Time For Life

Now we're talking! After all that amateurish Swiss cobblers, our mates in Lithuania have finally kicked the live shows off with proper Eurovisionistic gusto. And this here is all you want…

A couple of jocular skinheads in regional fabrics and homemade instruments bouncing out a happy-go-lucky little folk pop gem? Perfect!

It did take us a fair while to realise it was being sung in English, mind…

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Switzerland 2013 - Marcello Alexander – Im Hotel Mama

When I first started watching this clip, I thought that it was most probably some kind of Swiss in joke, featuring some locally well-known comic setting himself up for some jolly jape at the end. But the more I watched, the more I realised how completely straight, and completely brilliant it was.

From the barrel-chested singer and his independently moving hair, to the old folks digging his singalong sounds and the unfeasibly fast-flowing torrent in the background, this clip is near perfect. How sad that it will almost certainly be going nowhere near the Swiss final.

I'm always hearing the fanboys wittering on about how songs should more closely represent their nation - well how much more Swiss can you possibly get than this?!

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Switzerland 2013 - Los Angeles The Voices - Wild White Horses

The Swiss open application process has up to now attracted something like 175 entrants, and they are for the most part pretty amateurish and unlistenable. There are also a heck of a lot of international entries, with acts from Greece, Sweden, Spain and Barnet all throwing their hat into the ring. But it's an entry from The Netherlands that has induced the most mirth in Apocalypse towers.

Featuring broad-chested Gordon from the late lamented Die Toppers, the snappily named Los Angeles The Voice look like an aggregation of well-weathered session singers clubbing together to sing the old songs for the Sanatogen circuit. Yup, they're like an opera-free Il Divo gone to seed.

But the one thing this song has that nearly every other song in the Swiss selection is a melody, and no matter how ludicrous the donkey dabbling chorus is, you'll have this bleeder stuck in your head all day.

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Switzerland 2013 - Lys Assia und New Jack – All In Your Head

Oh my life. When I first heard that Uncle Ralph Siegal was writing a new song for lovely nan Lys Assia with a view to representing Switzerland again at next year's Eurovision I fully expected  it to be another syrupy ballad about the old days.

When someone told me that it was going to be a hip hop tinged pop tune with a bunch of young lads with the rather out-of-date name New Jack, I thought one of my fellow Eurovisionists was having a jolly jape.

Then I found this little snippet.

Oh my.

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Switzerland 2013 - Männerchor steili Kressä – Sultan Hagavik

Remember the dour situationist choir who warbled out a slightly drunken hymn about helping strangers in last year’s preliminaries – no, probably not. Well this year they’ve returned, and in a clever(ish) nod to next year’s hosts, have treated us to a mournful retelling of a well-known furniture giant’s customer catalogue.

Don’t these fools realise how many of Eurovision’s most closely adhered to rules they’re breaking with this song? If they get to Malmo they’ll be disqualified for sure!

What's that? Oh yeah…
Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips.

Switzerland 2013 - United Passion featuring Lyane Leigh - ...Oh No! (Mi Corazón)

It's September 12th. A scant four months since we all packed up our souvenir oil paperweights and staggered home from the last Eurovision Song Contest on Baku. And yet today Swiss telly has published their first nine contenders for the 2013 edition, due to take place at the back end of May in the Swedish city of Malmo.

And quite by chance, the very first song I chose to play from the 2013 season was pure Eurovision Apocalypse gold.

What begins as a quite serviceable little girl fronted club tune takes an unexpected left-hand turn bang on the thirty second mark as quite possibly the two worst rappers you've ever seen start to mumble and gurn through some piss weak rhymes. And better still, the video looks as though it was filmed on a 2003 Nokia camera phone.

Welcome back Eurovision, we've missed you!

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

Georgia 2009 - Gay Stalin - I Want You Back

Think you've seen Georgian Jocker Anri Jokhadze somewhere before? Ladies and gentlemen, let me tweak your memories and reintroduce you to the quite astounding Gay Stalin!

2009 was the year when seemingly everything in the Georgian final seemed to be having a less-than-subtle dig at their burly neighbours north of the border, and we can only imagine they created this gem to raise some bushy eyebrows in the Kremlin.

But aside from all that nonsense, it's also fun watching the many, many costume changes not always going to plan!

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

San Marino 2012 - Valentina Monetta - The Social Network Song (OH OH – Uh - OH OH)

If you listen really, really closely, that dull squeaky sound you can hear is a turd being polished...

Oh my San Marino... what have you done?

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

Slovenia 2012 - Eva & Nika Prusnik - Malo Srece

Although most of the attention in the Slovenian final went on the two songs in the superfinal, the Prusnik twins also had another couple of crackers up for contention - not least this little slice of Yugo-nostalgic shuffle pop.

OK, so their pasty beige shorts were a tad unseemly, but the song itself was an infectious, jazzy, Andrews Sisters-for-Tito kind of number. And on this kind of form, one suspects that this won't be the last time we'll be seeing this pair in the EMA - and maybe even, if we're lucky, the bigger show itself...

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

UK 2012 - Engelbert Humperdinck - Love Will Set You Free

So then, Engelbert's song for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest has finally been revealed. We were torn whether it would be a Cash/Jones/Diamond style career reboot, or a return to the familiar crooning lounge style that made him the huge name (heh!) he is today. So what have we actually got?

Oh my... it's lovely!

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

San Marino 2012 - Valentina Monetta - Facebook Uh Oh Oh

Erm San Marino? Did you read the section in the rule book about songs containing brand names? (Or did they sneakily annul that one this year?) What's even worse is that our mad old German uncle Ralph Siegal wrote it. Whatever the heck were they thinking? A three minute advert for huge global business? With the range of arcane advertising licencing laws around dotted around Europe? That's surely never going to happen? Is it?

Oh, and the song itself? Cringeworthy cobblers!

We can only hope they've got a killer song on standby...

***STOP PRESS***

The EBU have posted a cease of desist order on this curious little ditty, informing them that they've either got to remove all references to the trademarked name of Facebook, or supply an entirely new song by the end of next week. It's a Crazy World, eh...

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

Sweden 2012 - Thorsten Flinck & Revolutionsorkestern - Jag Reser Mig Igen

One if my favourite things about the Melodifestivalen is that every now and again, something so intrinsically Swedish pops up that it leaves the rest of us in Europe scratching our heads as to what's going on.

This year's contest dealt us a rather skittish gentleman called Thorsten Flinck. As a noted actor, rabble rouser and general character he's both beloved and feared by the Swedish public - think a kind of mash up of Nick Cave, Ray Winstone and any murderer Paul Bettany has played - and his slightly smokey and unsettling shanty sailed through the second chance round and into the final.

As to be expected, the international juries hated it. But as the televotes started to come in and Thorsten had yet to register a score, for one brief, beautiful moment you could hear the collective worry of a nation muttering "Oh shit, we've sent Flinck!" under their breaths. Now that would have been a chuckle!

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

Russia 2012 - Farinelli Balls - Breath Away Song

As sophisticated a nation as Russia undoubtedly is, a limp popera tune about an 18th century castrato sung by a gaggle of pregnant goths and a man in a blouse sporting a floppy quiff was perhaps just a bit too high concept, even for them!

Friki spotters are going to particularly enjoy this one.

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip

Greece 2012 - Eleftheria Eleftheriou - Aphrodisiac

I'm not saying Greece are skint or owt, but they held their national final under the escalators in a shopping mall.

For some reason My Lovely Horse keeps springing to mind. Still, I suppose they went for the most Greek sounding one of the four...

Videos from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clip