Eurofission

Watching the annual farce that is the Eurovision song contest I can't help wondering if this version of it has reached the end of it's lifespan.

Putting aside the obvious political voting that goes on, the songs themselves consisted of the most forgettable collection of dirges I think there has ever been. The songs have always been rather cheesy and often infuriatingly annoying, but at least it threw up fairly memorable tunes on a regular basis.

Puppet On A String, Boom Bang-a-Bang, Waterloo, Kisses For Me, All Kinds Of Everything, Making Your Mind Up - whatever you think of those songs it's hard to deny that they were memorable. When last night's winner from Serbia was played for the second time - I couldn't remember it! Half an hour after the show ended there wasn't a single tune that had stuck in my head - apart from the UK entry and that was only because it has been played incessantly on TV and radio for the last week. By this time next year it will be a long forgotten tune. Last years winner was remembered for the appearance of the band - the song itself completely forgotten. Does anyone remember any of the winners from the last 10 years or so?

This isn't sour grapes, by the way. The UK entry was truly awful and didn't deserve to do any better than it did - but there is little point putting forward a good song anyway as no one would vote for it anyway. As the contest has grown in size and the standard of the presentation has gone up, so the standard of the songs in the Eurovision song contest has gone down. They are now so awful, so formulaic, so forgettable that there is little future that I can see for this show in it's current format.

It's time for western Europe to go back to it's roots, leave Eurovision to the eastern Europeans and start a new competition just for themselves. Perhaps then we might get some decent tunes - but even if we don't, at least it will be shorter.