Eurovision: Running Scared

Want to know today’s “mind and heart” of Europe?

According to Eurovision, “After fifty-five years and after featuring some 1,100 songs, the contest has become a modern classic, strongly embedded into Europe’s collective mind and heart.” Who can deny it?

Eurovision 2011 took place in Düsseldorf, with 66,000 in the arena and 100 million watching on television and forty-three countries competing for the top honor, the song that best captures today’s European spirit.

This year also had a Eurovision first: two pairs of identical twins competed, the Twiins of Slovakia and Ireland’s Jedward.

The 2011 winner is Azberaijan’s Eldar & Nigar singing “Running Scared.”

For your window into Europe’s “mind and heart”, here is the winner, the other top ten finalists, and a few others that are just irresistible in that “what were they thinking” kind of way.

For better or worse, this is our world today. On to Baku for 2012.

- Bill Reichblum

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 5:32 am and is filed under On Culture - . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.