GERMANY 2011 - Taken By A Stranger

Every time I hear the title of this song, I immediately think of the Kim Wilde classic Never Trust A Stranger. Which is infinitely more catchy than this. Oh well.

Another thing I struggle with about this entry is the fact that Germany is sending the same singer that performed their winning entry last year. That is SO WEIRD. Nobody's ever done that before. And statistically, it's bizarre that they should think it would work - following trends doesn't work in the ESC, because whichever type of song has won in any year, it's almost a guarantee that something pretty different will win the following year. So I'm not really able to follow their logic here. In the performance of the song that I've seen she even wears a dress that looks extremely similar to what she wore on stage here last year. It's beyond weird.

But alas, I do quite like the song. The lyrics are quite strange, but then again they're not written by native English speakers, so it's not that surprising. You expect strange lyrics in the ESC. :-) The melody's very good, quite ambitious. Not catchy. That's not a plus. It may require more than one listen to really get to grips with ... it's not what you'd call accessible. It reminds me of the Ukrainian song last year, Sweet People. That was a very good song too, but too ambitious for the ESC. They did well with it - ended up 10th - but had deserved to do better. But it was no surprise that they didn't, because, as I say, it wasn't easily accessible. Ukraine did have the advantage of being heard twice, which Germany never has.

It's a good song, in fact very good, once you get past the total weirdness of the entry as such. But it may end up doing surprisingly badly. I hope not, but there you go. It depends in part on the presentation, which will of course look rather different - I hope very different - from what you'll see in the video below. (The EBU only permits six people on stage per entry in the ESC.)

This is Lena Meyer-Landrut - again! o_O - performing Taken By A Stranger by Gus Seiffert, Nicole Morier and Monica Birkenes (a Norwegian! We are indeed everwhere :-). They will be competing for Germany on Saturday, May 14th.

Widescreen here.

Lyrics here.