Lena Meyer-Landrut

Okay. Yesterday ended up being quite an extreme day. NOT unusually, I woke up late, took a long time to get out of bed, knew I had to go out and do some shopping, ended up not quite following the previously worked out plan. Instead of my previous idea of going to my regular supermarket and doing some grocery shopping as well as buying some beer to drink while watching this year's Eurovision Song Contest, I went to a different, smaller supermarket and bought much fewer groceries and some beer. Then I took a cab home, because what I had bought was heavier than I had planned. In the cab, I told the driver that the contest was going to be crap (well, crapper than usual) because I had watched the second semi-final two nights before and all the songs which were classic, traditional Eurovision fare had been knocked out, and the bloody contest had lost its sense of humour. I wasn't expecting much.

Later, I spoke to Susan on the phone, just as the broadcast was starting, and I told her no, I couldn't turn the volume down because the Eurovision Song Contest was starting. I said I would call her when it was over and we hung up. Well, there were still a couple of fairly eurovisiony songs in there (from Rumania and Denmark (you can always rely on the Scandinavians)), and a couple of surprisingly good, astonishingly credible ones, from Ukraine and Germany. I had never heard songs of that ilk nor calibre in the contest before, and I voted for Germany. Beforehand, there had been some talk about the German song being a bit like Björk, and I dismissed the possibility as ludicrous, because after all it was Eurovision. And it wasn't really LIKE Björk, but it wasn't as UNbjörkish as I had expected, and I really liked it, and voted for it, as I said.

Then the voting started. I was pleasantly surprised that the first two maximum scores went to Denmark, and that Germany also got a few points from each of those votes (the songs I vote for generally crash and burn from the beginning). And then, what do you know, after a few more rounds of voting, Germany was in the lead. Well, it wasn't going to last, but I enjoyed the rare thrill. Then it went a bit further ahead. And before I knew what was happening it was 34 points ahead and I was cheering every score it got. Not too long after that it became clear that the song I had voted for was actually going to win. And it did; just the second German winner ever (after Nicole in 1982), and the first ever really quite credible sounding Eurovision winner in the history of the Universe ever. Here it is on Youtube, the winning performance taken from German TV. For reference, HERE is Nicole's reprise after winning in 1982, and here is Guildo Horn's (still amazing) 1998 performance in Birmingham, England, the previously most talked about and loved German entry.

Yeah, Lena...