IRELAND 2010 - It's For You

YAY for Ireland ... !!! :-D

The Irish are the most-winningest nation ;-) in ESC history ... they have won a record seven times, four of which were in the 90s and three of these again were in consecutive years. It was a difficult decade for RTÉ. :-) However, those days are rather long gone, and for the past ten years or so Ireland has been really struggling. I'm sure we can all agree that the low point was the singing turkey doll. Brr.

I'm not going to go into the details of why & how it's been going so badly for Ireland in recent years BUT it would now appear that they have figured it out for themselves. This year the Irish song is so good ... !!! I was so happy when I first heard it - finally I can like the Irish entry again ... ! ;-) Major kudos for making a serious effort and sending something to be really proud of once again.

Before you say anything, yes, this is totally our song. I mean, there's always accusations of plagiarism being bandied about, but this is hardly even plagiarism ... this is just out and out the same song. o_O It is our song, too, not theirs - we chose ours more than a month before they had their national final. ;-) But it's really interesting. The similarities between these two songs are so striking, yet the less original one - the most recent choice - is the best one. :-)

Two reasons - partly the ethnic element, ie, the Irish entry has a bit of an Irish sound to it, the flutes and what not, whereas there is nothing Norwegian about the Norwegian song. If you didn't know it you'd never guess it was ours ... it could have come from pretty much any participating country. Well, most of them. ;-) Mainly though it's thanks to the singer. Try listening to the Norwegian entry first, and then the Irish. You may think that Didrik is a really good singer ... but you'll be cured of that delusion the moment the Irish singer opens her mouth. ;-)

In the last post I couldn't find anything I liked about the entry; in this one I can't find anything I don't like. There are some problems which may make it difficult for this song to do really well - it's a ballad, so it may get lost in all the other ballads this year, although it's certainly one of the very best of the bunch. Performing 12th in the second semifinal isn't going to help. We have one thing on the Irish ... our singer is a young hot guy whereas theirs is kind of a middle-aged woman. With a lot of young people watching & voting, he's a safer ticket than she is. But she is such a wonderful singer. Amazing voice, fantastic technique, great stage presence, she's perfect! :-)

Yay for Ireland this year and fingers crossed. :-)

This is the brilliant Niamh Kavanagh - who performed Ireland's winning entry in 1993, so she really knows what she's doing - singing It's For You by ... another bunch of Swedes, mostly. Lina Eriksson, Jonas Gladnikoff, Mårten Eriksson and Niall Mooney. They're everywhere ... !! This talented quartet will be competing for Ireland on Thursday, May 27th. Good luck to ye!!



Lyrics here.

Funny not-quite-story from real life: I brought the CDs to KAS and trilltrall's house yesterday and we listened to all the songs while we ate ourselves into a coma. trilltrall had never heard this entry before yesterday and he is a staunch Didrik supporter ... you may remember that he refused to wear black for Keep of Kalessin when we all watched the national final together. :-D He was really quite shocked by this entry. He wants to officially call foul on Didrik's behalf. :-D

But it's all to the good, because we don't want to win, remember?? ;-)