What better way to start 2016 than with WATERLOO by ABBA, the 1974 Eurovision winner and the first Swedish winner. Many of you played their HAPPY NEW YEAR yesterday – I did not but heard it no less than 4 times on the radio.
This song set the tone for Swedish success at Eurovision and it is no surprise it is among our club’s top 12. It is also the oldest entry to have made it. As we are heading for Stockholm in May, we will interact with Abba songs a lot and even attend the ABBA museum,
Another surprise song (for some). The Norwegian 2015 entry A MONSTER LIKE ME sung by Morland & Debrah Scarlett. It is the only Norwegian song among the 12, ending out candidates such as Fairytale.
This is the first of several Swedish entries that reached the final 12 – UNDO by SANNA NIELSEN.
The song is from 2014 and composed by Fredrik Kempe. It has been covered in Afrikaans by Linda Kilian and she won an OGAE award for for as best new comer in 2015.
The second song under consideration is the 2015 entry from Belgium, RHYTHM INSIDE sung by Loic Nottet. This is quite a surprise entry for me, I did not expect it to be among the top 12. Its Belgium’s only entry.
I must say the song has grown on me since hearing it the first time.
For the next 5/6 days, we will look a little closer at the 12 songs from which R O W member’s top song will come.
We start off withMAKING YOUR MIND UP by Bucks Fizz, who won the 1981 Eurovision song contest for the United Kingdom.
It is a good song to start off with as R O W members are asked to MAKE THEIR MINDS UP and vote until 10 January 2016 for their top Eurovision song.
Most of you probably are aware by now that Ian Fowell was selected by the award committee to receive the first OGAE R O W award for most special member (outside of South Africa).
There were originally over 20 nominations, narrowed down to 5 and then a committee voted and Ian was selected above Michaela Sowden of Australia, Tamas Vamas of Hungary, Gerry Avelino of the USA and Calvin Phillips of the USA.
Ian is very active on our website and you see several posts of him per week.
We hope his health will improve so much that he can join us in Stockholm in May 2016 where the award will be handed to him probably at our R O W lunch.
Congratulations Ian and also well done to the other 4 who narrowly missed out – maybe 2016 is your turn?
Hello to our wonderful fan club!
| Group A | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Séverine – Un banc, un arbre, une rue (Monaco, 1971) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bucks Fizz – Making Your Mind Up (United Kingdom, 1981) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nicole – Ein bißchen Frieden (Germany, 1982) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Charlotte Nilsson – Take Me to Your Heaven (Sweden, 1999) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Helena Paparizou – My Number One (Greece, 2005) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Verka Serduchka – Dancing Lasha Tumbai (Ukraine, 2007) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Friend in London – New Tomorrow (Denmark, 2011) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ott Lepland – Kuula (Estonia, 2012) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Krista Siegfrids – Marry Me (Finland, 2013) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Il Volo – Grande amore (Italy, 2015) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Group B
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Hello everyone! Tamas, Ronny and Luc put forward a suggestion for a little bit of fun in the lead up to the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest. This is a variation on what Tamás is undertaking within the Hungarian Eurovision club, with his guidance. What we are asking is not easy. It will require determination, hard decisions and some cutthroat moves.What is Rest of the World’s favourite Eurovision song?!?How are we going to work on this over sooooooooo many years and fabulous entries??? Well, it is like this…Three rounds.Round 1:Each voter has 20 nomination points. A minimum of 5 of these must be prior to the year 2000, and no more than three nominations for a single year. For example, if you wanted to spend 15 votes on 2015’s Eurovision songs, you cannot. Only three are allowed for any given year. Sounds difficult (and it certainly is!) but it only involves each person to select 20 songs (at least 5 prior to the year 2000). This will form the foundation of the following rounds.Round 2 will consist of the top 60 votes songs from round 1 allocated into pots and each person will be asked to select 2 songs from each pot.The songs with the most points will form the selection for the final round. This time, it is about allocating points to each song in the typical Eurovision style (12,10,8,7… Etc.).We have decided to open the Round 1 voting period for 10 days.All correspondence should be directed to escvotes@gmail.com ! Voting/nominations close at midnight 13 December Central European Time.If you have any questions, post below (unless you just want to be mean – in which case email).We will provide further information about the following rounds in future posts.This is our first opportunity to earn points for the 2017 ticketing list. Those who participate will receive points for completing all three rounds in our search for our favourite song!Cannot wait to see what our wonderfully eclectic fan club choose!
OGAE Rest of the world got 107 packages and so far 64 people have successfully bought their packages. We do hope the others will report success within the next 2-3 days and then the most busy period will be over.
We are very happy that a wide range of nationalities will attend under the R O W umbrella.