ESC 2016: Russia vs Ukraine

It's a shame the aftermath of the ESC is so political. It is hard to discuss music when the general tone is harsh and unforgiving.

I am happy that Ukraine won. It is a daring and demanding piece of music and ot your usual happy little pop song. While I would have hoped for something slightly more commercial, I'm happy that experimental and alternative sounds stand a chance in the contest.

Several times when I tried to make this point I was met by the question if I was happy now as LGBT rights in Ukraine are almost as bad as the ones in Russia. I beg your pardon?

This was the year I really tried to keep politics out of this. Russia ditched the hypocritical peace anthems that made me see red in the past so I decided to follow suit and judge them on musical merit.

In my humble opinion the Russian song was good but not excellent while the performance was state of the art, partially very impressive, partially very cold and technical. Add all these things together and I think a third place is a really fair outcome. A result most countries would be really happy with.

Then of course the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is not an easy one. Especially not at the moment. Had a look at the Ukrainian tv news that seemed happier about being Russia than actually winning. And the tone of the many articles declaring Eurovision dead and hopeless, published by Russian "news outlet" RT, is nothing but ridiculous. At least it was nice to see Ukraine scoring highly in the Russian televote and vice versa.

Time to take a deep breath and remind ourselves this is just a song contest?