Good evening Moscow: Eurovision 2009!

Good evening Moscow! 
 

Yep, it's that time of the year again. In fact, it's only hours away! Glitter! Glamour! Awful music! Bad haircuts! Fake tans! Hilarious accents! Comedy metal! Suits that suddenly turn into dresses! Ice skating! Petty nationalist voting! England making a fool of itself! Lots of completely unnecessary exclamation marks! !!

It's also the night we get to see how well Greece has managed its annual assignment of combining whiter than white® clothes, an insanely complicated dance routine (culminating in a clever flip, jump or leap), and a girl named Maria into yet another irresistibly catchy tune! The night that Eastern Europe puts fear into the hearts of, well, pretty much everyone else!

  Want to know who will win before the show even begins? Just us this handy chart and a calculator!

 
It's the Eurovision Song Contest! aaaaaagh! The TV equivalent of staring at a 12 year old girl's Myspace profile for 5 hours!

Let the madness begin!

A few past favourites:

 

Kate Ryan - Je T'adore (Belgium)

Les Fatals Picards - L'Amour à la Francaise (France)

Texas Lightning - No No Never (Germany)

Sebastien Tellier - Divine (France)

Mihai Traistariu - Tornero (Romania)

Rodolfo Chiquilicuatre - Baila el chiki chiki (Spain)

When you come, bring the sun

And for this post we travel to Europe...starting up north and heading south, towards the sun...

Iceland:
*Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
This track (see lots of naked people playing in a forest... aka the video, here) is a taster from their new upcoming album, which will go by the title 'með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust'. Pretty catchy eh? Though it can also be loosely translated as "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly", which is something you could at least attempt asking a sales assistant at your local record store for. They probably won't understand you, but still. It's better than ( ).
Their summer tour will take them across the world, from Mexico to Norway,
while Letters have no Arms will be lucky enough to catch them at Benicassim

Sweden:
*El Perro Del Mar - How did we forget
Taken from her beautiful new album From the Valley To The Stars
*El Perro Del Mar - Loneliness
*A Smile and a Ribbon - The Boy I wish I Never Met


France:
*Sebastien Tellier - Divine
France's 2008 Eurovision entry, and the reason why the French are just so much cooler than most of the world.
*M83 - Kim and Jessie

and 12 points go to me for not making any cheap Eurovision tie-in comments ;)