I'm not going to pretend to be even the slightest bit surprised as Belarusian television announced today that they changed their entry for Baku.
But of course. Why should you send a song to the ESC just because it won a national final?
The new choice is boyband Litesound - probably with their Eurofest entry. But who knows? Maybe they will get another song? Maybe all members of the band will be replaced? Maybe the television heads will have another change of heart before the deadline?
Litesound - We Are The Heros (Belarus 2012 perhaps)
I don't weep for the rejected winner as this new song is a lot stronger, but the problem still remains. Why bother to stage a national final when you know you will disagree with the voice of the viewers? Why not select internally and save everyone involved a lot of time, money and effort?
Besides, on a first listening I found the Litesound chorus a tad too similar to the song below. Will the choice of song be modified too, or is this the final decision?
Who can say?
Amanda Fondell - All This Way
But you're ignoring the reason why the song was switched, there were rumours circulating before the contest that the whole thing had been stacked for Alyona Lanskaya to win and after the show there was such public uproar that they were forced to investigate and found that two of Alyona's song writers were on the jury, and that a large number of irregular televotes had come in.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to sound like a dick, but ignoring the reason why something happened just to make a snarky remark about Belarus is a bit lame.
Well, Belarus has never really played this game by the book, have they? They select entries, withdraw entries and replace entries as they please.
ReplyDeleteThey can do whatever they like, they have the same freedom at selecting their entries as everyone else has.
But this is not the first time that they stage a national final and then replace the winner (completely or partially) either there is a reason or not.
If there were rumours about someone rigging the vote, why not have jury only? For instance?
Well, I guess I'm coming from the perspective of being in Belarus and seeing the reactions of the crowd and the friends I made. They were all shattered that Alyona had somehow won and had the knowledge it wasn't fair, but that emotion transformed into resignation within minutes that "That is just how things are in this country".
DeleteSo unlike Ukraine, I think justice was served in Belarus this time, so they at least deserve some points for doing the right thing (this time).