{"id":205,"date":"2009-05-12T16:35:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T20:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=205"},"modified":"2009-05-12T16:35:52","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T20:35:52","slug":"eurovision-2009-first-semi-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/eurovision-2009-first-semi-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision 2009 &#8211; First Semi-Final (Live)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re waiting for the results now to see who&#8217;s going to the final on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m proud to say that Sweden&#8217;s entry has turned out better than (at least I) expected it. However:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Malena&#8217;s choice of dress was tragic!!! On the white background she disappears and despite all her spray-on tan, she looks washed out. On the black background she looks like a very tanned ghost.<\/li>\n<li>What&#8217;s up with those background dancers? They&#8217;re totally useless, distracting and badly choreographed.<\/li>\n<li>Malena did seem to have some trouble hitting certain notes, but hopefully those background dancers were hideous enough to distract from any vocal shortcomings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KP07YbJCSAI\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KP07YbJCSAI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Iceland&#8217;s song (&#8220;Is It True&#8221; &#8211; Yohanna) was stunning. And I liked Finland (&#8220;Lose Control&#8221; &#8211; Waldo&#8217;s People) too, but then again I&#8217;m happy to listen to Europop anytime, anyplace.<\/p>\n<p>OK, we&#8217;re still waiting for the results.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, it just wouldn&#8217;t be a Russian event without a military band, Kosak dancers and sappy folk songs&#8230; Hey, only the balalaikas are missing&#8230; Eeeeekkk, I hope this intermission will be over soon.<\/p>\n<p>France, Russia, the UK, Spain and Germany qualify to the final automatically. The rest we will know soon.<\/p>\n<p>OK, here we go:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Turkey<\/li>\n<li>SWEDEN!!!!!! yay yay yay yay!!!<\/li>\n<li>Israel<\/li>\n<li>Portugal (this one I&#8217;m surprised that it got through)<\/li>\n<li>Malta (huh?)<\/li>\n<li>FINLAND!!!! yay yay yay yay!!!<\/li>\n<li>Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/li>\n<li>Romania (whenever I hear this song I have a feeling that a rather large chunk of its lyrics is missing)<\/li>\n<li>Armenia<\/li>\n<li>ICELAND!!!! yay yay yay!!!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m happy, all my favorite songs will appear on Saturday in the final. And once I find a better video of Malena&#8217;s performance, I will replace this one. This is the only one that appeared on youtube immediately, still during the broadcast.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s an interview with Malena right after she arrived in Moscow:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qVfEndlYsa8\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qVfEndlYsa8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PS. What I can&#8217;t figure out is why Arash is representing Azerbaijan&#8230; I read that he has Azerbaijani roots, but still&#8230; This means that practically anyone, from any European country (and beyond) can represent any other country in the Eurovision song contest&#8230; Which, at least in my opinion, is kind of pointless&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re waiting for the results now to see who&#8217;s going to the final on Saturday. I&#8217;m proud to say that Sweden&#8217;s entry has turned out better than (at least I) expected it. However: Malena&#8217;s choice of dress was tragic!!! On the white background she disappears and despite all her spray-on tan, she looks washed out&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/eurovision-2009-first-semi-final\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3180],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-eurovision-2009"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}