Moopyvision 2000-2009: Round 8 - Greece, Finland, Israel & Azerbaijan RESULTS (1 Viewer)

4th: Laura Voutilainen - Addicted To You (101pts)
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God this is just DREADFUL :D I don’t know which part I find funnier - that this limp bit of turn-of-the-century funk-disco got funded to the gods by the record label that was convinced it had a genuine Eurovision winner on its hands, or the genuine ROAR OF RAPTURE it gets at the end from even an admittedly friendly audience in Tallinn. You’d think they’d just watched Fuego!

Anyway it came 20th and got Finland relegated again :disco:



1 x 12 (@win_the_game - you UTTER PERVERT :D)
1 x 1 (@Kratz)

God, white wine is a hell of a drug
 
Obsessed with that one male backing singer of Finland 2002 making sure you hear him louder than his colleagues and trying to outsing Laura come midway :disco:
 
2nd: Hanna Pakarinen - Leave Me Alone (190pts)
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Quite the big hire this one. After scoring the biggest win in contest history to date with Lordi the year prior and bringing the jamboree back to Helsinki for 2007, those chilly Finns turned to their inaugural Idol winner for the home baton duties and summarily agreed keeping on down that “I hate everyone at school and my parents” hard rock furrow was very much the way to go for the foreseeable. A little more down the Evanescence tack of that subgenre - a canny decision, given they were still having hits at the time - this didn’t do too badly, nabbing a respectable enough 17th place, about middle of the pack as host entries go and their second best result of the decade. Birrova stormer and all :disco:



6 x 12 (@Suomi, @Jacques, @auretz, @Soldi, @Diddy, @Tisch)
1 x 4 (@Marina Salty)
 
Which means, winning it by six points...

1st: Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah (196pts)
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HIM. The Rasmus. Being the nation with the highest suicide rate in the world. Finland had all these obvious contributions to the metal canon going for it in the years leading up to their first win, yet for some reason at the contest itself - bar the occasional delightfully daffy outing like Lapponia or Bye Bye Baby - typically opted for a bit of dull balladry or light lounge tango. Hard as it is to imagine now, with their recent powerhouse resurgence, for a solid fifty years they were essentially the unwanted ginger stepchildren of the contest, runting hand in hand with Portugal with a sum total of zero wins, and zero top fives to their name.

And much to Carola’s horror, a woman more beautiful than she stepped up to the plate in 2006, and decided to change that. Mrs Lordi/Eileen took to the keyboards… and screamed her way through every single chorus :disco:

Finland, you have received from the public - 292 points!



7 x 12 (@Pingu, @Eyes, @VoR, @ButterTart, @Marina Salty, @dmlaw, @ZenGiraffe)
1 x 4 (@win_the_game)
 
Obvious, but deserved. One of the more consequential winners of this century for sure. Arguably the first since Diva to really resonate with the wider UK public, too.
 
Obvious, but deserved. One of the more consequential winners of this century for sure. Arguably the first since Diva to really resonate with the wider UK public, too.
Probably the first to really sow the seeds of the MASSIVE British fandom that ended up popping along to one of the Liverpool rehearsals as casuals, I reckon.
 
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And as nobody else has, here is some recent footage of disgraced 2 to Tango star Jari Sillanpää, who I believe was a genuinely major star in Finland before the drugs & porn scandal.

 
Finnish sentencing laws must be crazy - he got a €15k fine for the child porn.
 
Right who's next. Oh yes: GREASE (sp?)

Could somebody get all the contestants together please. What? Sakis is in the men's loos again? Oh for heavens sa-Helena put DOWN that BOTTLE OF BIOTEN your HAIR CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE!

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2001: Antique - Die For You
2002: Michalis Rakintzis - S.A.G.A.P.O.
2003: Mando - Never Let You Go
2004: Sakis Rouvas - Shake It
2005: Helena Paparizou - My Number One
2006: Anna Vissi - Everything
2007: Sarbel - Yassou Maria
2008: Kalomoira - Secret Combination
2009: Sakis Rouvas - This Is Our Night
 
9th: Michalis Rakintzis - S.A.G.A.P.O. (20pts)
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God I really wanted to give this a 12 :D

Some pieces of art are never truly understood in their own time. Eileen, entering Eurovision for the first time out of costume, was born in Athens in 1957 and went to London to ply her trade in a mechanical engineering degree, before knocking about for most of the 80s doing local Kraftwerk Greek non-union equivalent bip bip bop bop synth noise for a while, finally deigning to tip his drum machine towards entering the pancontinental parade in 2002. In the national final he managed to overcome a truly astonishingly low-rent effort from local star Peggy Zina, who was QUITE the sour madame in the aftermath.



S.A.G.A.P.O., of course, went on to finish a mere 17th place 1st in Tallinn, but not with all the points, which was taken as an expected disappointment by an audience at home that hadn’t cared all that much, and Greece refused to host the following year out of shame. S.A.G.A.P.O. went on to influence future Eurovision winners Statements, City Lights and 1944, and - in what I’m informed isn’t actually @Suomi having me on - ended up being revived on Greek TikTok last year, giving Michalis/Eileen one last little moment in the sun. Bless :D



2 x 4 (@Kratz, @Suomi :disco:)
12 x 0 (@Pingu, @Eyes, @Soldi, @Diddy, @Tisch, @ButterTart, @Marina Salty, @Ill Advised, @D5K, @Music, @dmlaw, @Kevin7)
 
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8th: Manboy - Never Let You Go (52pts)
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Presenting the surely unrivalled winner of Moopyvision Boob Rate 2000-2009 (honestly - they’re practically OBSCENE!): MANDO!

An 11 year old Pen was truly mesmered by this objectively unremarkable bit of balladry, imagining the ADULT MATURE LIFE he’d have decades on, listening to this with a glass of wine in a city flat and experiencing adult emotions and relationships. Well that queeny little virgin should’ve thought on, because instead twenty years later he’s listening to this song with a glass of wine in a city flat experiencing zero adult relationships and typing up the results of an online song contest three years late because he spent most of the time in between taking drugs and having sex with strangers! But isn’t that maybe the most adult emotion of them all? :disco: (Don’t answer that)

Not much to write home about here - Mando was a big star in Greece in the 80s who finally opted to enter for Greece in the contest in Riga, but came a listless 17th with 25 points, half from you know who. Pretty much what you’d expect, especially in such a stacked year with plenty better elsewhere. It says a lot that this is one I’ve got a pretty soft spot for in both the Greek and 2003 lineups, and I can’t stretch to giving it more than a 4 for either. Thank god for freaks like @win_the_game :disco:



1 x 12 (@win_the_game)
1 x 0 (@Jacques)
 
Although she does lose some points by default for beating out Sabrina LIFE-AFFIRMING SULTRY DANCE ANTHEM:



Also a young Angelica Agurbash having a lazy low energy day before she got motivated a few years later.

 
7th: Sakis Rouvas - Shake It (59pts)
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Remarkably, a sprightly THIRTY TWO YEARS OLD here. As the placing indicates, this is pretty low-rent stuff. Crucially though, for the first time ever it was low rent in EXACTLY the way the viewing audience wanted from Greece, but which bafflingly Greece had never really seen fit to satisfy them with at any point - bar one, which we’ll come to later - over the prior 30 years of entering. Duly such, despite having barely anything to it it notched up a very competitive bronze finish, not too far behind that year’s big Ruslana/Zeljko face-off. The Greeks took the note and barely diverged from the formula for the rest of the decade, with fairly handsome results…



1 x 8 (@Ill Advised)
3 x 0 (@Penelope, @VoR, @auretz)
 
6th: Sarbel - Yassou Maria (70pts)
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God, bless this baby queen :D

Looking like a young Rishi Sunak on his first freshers LGBT Society night out - with a truly horrendous boot of an outfit I’m astonished didn’t win the Barbara Dex that year (awarded to Verka Serduchka, in the first obvious example of the morons that ended up dominating the voting for the thing completely missing the point of what it was all about) - Sarbel, who despite looking barely clear of his acne years is astonishingly TWENTY FIVE here, got trotted out in 2007 to do the latest iteration of The Noughties Greek Entry, with plenty of bouzouki, breasts and leg-wiggling in tow.

This one genuinely verges on something of a comedy classic for most of it, with a truly mortifying dance routine - I’m not surprised he apparently can’t bear to hear it now :D Anyway, in keeping with a recurring theory that the Eurovision viewing public generally wants to hear an offensive, narrow-minded interpretation of a nation’s culture whenever it tunes in, and will generally reward whoever’s willing to stump up with some requisitely decent-written/performed goods on that front, this got what felt for all intents and purposes like a default 7th at the end of it all. Lucky for him that he can’t stand it now though, because I can’t imagine it got all that much TAMTA - REPLAY after the fact!



1 x 10 (@D5K)
1 x 0 (@win_the_game)
 
That said, I do think the smooth-faced ingenue look ended up working better for Yassou Maria - it really would have looked properly ludicrous with a MAN'S MAN fronting it :D
 
Not, of course, that I imagine he looks all that much like a man's man when he goes off to the clubs he no doubt goes to these days :disco:
 
5th: Anna Vissi - Everything (104pts)
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Christ, it really says it all about how strong this Greek lot are that this one’s out in fifth.

A genuine megastar in Greece - @Marina Salty, help me out, would a description of her as essentially the closest answer to Madonna there be accurate? - Anna was a Eurovision veteran with a couple of 80s entries already (for Greece and her native Cyprus respectively) under her belt. So when Helena brought the gong home to Athens, Anna was a relatively obvious choice to be the star to represent them on home soil.

Cue what can only be described as one of the great megastar perfs of contest history - street-teamed to DEATH online by Greek fans in the leadup to the final - as a reputedly sick as a horse Mizz Vish pulled out a true maestro vocal for a heartrending power ballad up there with the likes Celine would be capable of, audibly accompanied by an arena in full song for what had already been a huge domestic hit going into the fortnight. It turned up with a very respectable 9th at the end of it all, which I’d have thought was pretty fair shakes considering, but which apparently ended up being greeted as a massive, even shameful disappointment by the media. Sod ‘em all hun, you killed it!



1 x 12 (@Diddy)
1 x 0 (@ZenGiraffe)
 

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