Back in 2013, in my Idol Musings blog devoted to the TV show, I wrote about the Beach Boys song Good Vibrations. The context was Final 6 Week, and the Idolists had two themes to perform: the Burt Bacharach-Hal David Song Book and Songs You Wish You Wrote. Here’s what I wrote about the latter.... Continue Reading →
Gotta love Eurovision. Where else can you have a song contest featuring loving odes to saunas, espresso, and, uh, the joys of sex? And the song about sex got the fewest votes of the three? What the Hell Just Happened, as the U.K. entry may have sung (they did). Apparently, unrequited love is better than... Continue Reading →
Who’s going to win Eurovision? I don’t know, but I do have some idea. I’ve learned that there are strong clues in the betting markets. I’m fascinated by the intensity of Eurovision betting, and because I’m obsessed with analyzing numbers, I set myself to study how close the betting markets were to the Final results.... Continue Reading →
You’re welcome. Once again, I spent the month of March eagerly consuming and evaluating the release of each country’s Official Music Videos - all 37 of them. This year, I took the additional step of watching videos of many of the winning performances in each country’s national contest to get a sense of what the... Continue Reading →
Periodically, I like to check up on ex-Idolists to see how they are faring in the real and challenging post-Idol world. I have to admit to being surprised by the success of two of them, given how harshly I evaluated them during their respective seasons. Biggest Hits Adam Lambert: Adam has been getting rave reviews... Continue Reading →
Nikka Costa Dirty Disco Prince made it a habit of pulling talented female musicians into his orbit, and one of those is Nikka Costa. After a six-year hiatus, Nikka is feeling the funk in a way that is not to be messed with. The spirits of Paisley Park are very evident on her new album... Continue Reading →
[Scroll to the bottom if you want to ignore my blather. It's fine. But come back to the blather. It's good stuff.] There are many reasons why I look forward to each year’s Eurovision Song Contest more than the year before, but the simplest one is that it gets better every year. Recently referred to... Continue Reading →
Ray's Musings 