Alexander Howard18 said:We gave it a shot last year with Beyoncé—so, uh, well, you saw how that turned out.
What does it actually look like when you send off a track that nobody’s even listening to back home? 🤣
The winner is obviously going to be whichever country ends up having the most neighbors. It’s just basic math at that point.
I assume you’ve already outgrown Eurovision—moving on to more sophisticated, serious music, I suppose—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves by making arbitrary judgments about what counts as "quality." Besides, how many neighbors does Turkey actually have? Or Greece, Israel, Norway... not to mention Ireland, which is surrounded by quite a few neighbors—though I’m betting you couldn't list them all if your life depended on it. 😛 How many times did they actually push it all the way to the top?
There is something fundamentally different about competing in the Olympics—it’s about stepping up to the plate in those specific athletic disciplines that have actually managed to capture a global spotlight.
Oh, please. What kind of "international significance" are we supposed to find in shooting clay pigeons? 😬
And then there’s that other thing—some third-rate song contest that lost its relevance a long time ago. It just boils down to two massive gaps.
So, what kind of weight did that competition actually carry back then compared to how things work now? To be honest—and I’m being quite serious here—everything used to feel more significant, more precious. Nowadays, everything is just... right there. You can access an entire discography with a couple of clicks on your phone, whereas before, you actually had to cross state lines or travel halfway across the country just to find a specific record. It was an ordeal. Back in the day, actors, singers, athletes—they felt like they belonged to a different world entirely. Now? You can just stroll down a street or leave a like on their Instagram post. That’s why things lose their gravity—not because the quality has dropped, but because the distance has vanished. 😉
It’s essentially a solid tradition of getting all these different countries together—it’s a positive thing. In the grand scheme of things, the actual quality of the songs isn't even the main point. It would be better if they were higher caliber, sure, but it’s not some massive tragedy if they aren't. I actually think—contrary to what most people claim—that song quality is actually trending upward compared to the seventies or eighties, back when the entries were laughably bad, barring a few rare exceptions. Nowadays, a track like "Rock Me Baby" probably wouldn't even make it to the finals, let alone win. Or Ding a Dong, Digi Lu Digi Ley or Babysocks 🤣 . This, this or this might not be high art, but it is incomparably better than the old stuff. Our problem here in the States is that we spend all our time trying to figure out the perfect "formula" for Eurovision, acting like we’re mentally stuck in the eighties. We end up sending absolute garbage that nobody in Europe wants to hear—honestly, nobody even wants to hear it here at home. We should just be sending music that people actually enjoy listening to locally; at least then there’d be some value in it. And no, whenever we fail to make the finals, it’s not because of lobbying or because everyone hates us—we simply didn't earn it. Anyway, the whole point of Eurovision is just being part of the club and participating. When you have about forty countries showing up, that’s no small feat, regardless of what anyone says. It’s much like the Olympics—which are basically the same thing, really—just a fleeting moment of entertainment where the most important thing is showing up and being part of the group for a little while. Those who want to nitpick it should just let the people who love it enjoy themselves. Why deny them that?
When you lack basic competence, the smartest move is to just stay under the radar—don't stick your head out, don't make waves, because there's a chance people might actually notice how useless you are. Or worse, they might realize you're just sitting there collecting a paycheck without contributing a damn thing. I’m talking about the entertainment editors over at PBS, assuming a role like that even exists anymore.
We share deep historical, cultural, linguistic, and economic ties with those countries—not to mention family connections and a shared future unlike anything else we have.
It would be an interesting thought experiment—if Mark Wahlberg actually decided to sign up for this forum, would calling him a "primitive jerk" count as targeting a public figure, or would it just be considered insulting the community? 😍
edit: looks like we've already circled back to the exact same question 😁
Look, I’ll just say it—calling people "livestock" isn't some grand insult—it’s actually just a technical term for a specific group of animals, many of which end up as pets anyway. This thread is meant for photos of those creatures, and any other animals that share our space. A little wordplay in the title isn't hurting anyone.
Besides, I don't have a single enemy in the world. 😉
Sophia Wells72 said:Here’s an American classic: Videosex - "Videosex '84" http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/...Videosex_a.jpg Lionel Hampton - "Air Mail Special" http://static.rateyourmusic.com/albu...es/s424729.jpg The Carpenters - "Please Mr. Postman / This Masquerade" http://static.rateyourmusic.com/albu...s/s2604951.jpg
Last.fm has this one glaring issue—it just lacks a dedicated crew (at least from what I can tell, and if they do have one, they aren't exactly pulling their weight) to actually vet and clean up the data. Take Rate Your Music, for instance; users there input the data themselves. I’ve submitted a few entries myself, but those details don't see the light of day until a moderator verifies everything is accurate. It's the same point I keep making. Last.fm was a solid concept at its core, but until they get things organized, it'll remain a backup option for me. 🙂
My main issue is that the radio rarely plays anything I actually enjoy—most of what comes on just isn't my style. Music blogs tend to lack any real objectivity, I don't really bother with podcasts, and Last.fm is a total mess—it’s just confusing and doesn't offer much depth. Then there’s Rate Your Music, which is probably the closest thing to IMDb out there, but the problem is certain voting blocs—kind of like the groups you see here on Reddit—who just dogpile their favorite genres with high scores regardless of actual quality. It skews the rankings, though I suppose it can still be useful if you approach it with a healthy dose of skepticism. As far as I'm concerned, AllMusic remains the most logically organized corner of the internet dedicated to music.
+ For me, the priority is reading reviews for albums I haven't heard yet, since I obviously can't listen to everything in existence—as much as I might want to. Once I've actually listened to an album, I don't feel much need to check what everyone else thinks about it.
If you’ve never actually sat down and done it, you can't really claim to know if it’s useful or not—whether it actually helps you out or just wastes your time. 😛 Personally, I tend to mix things up. I’ll listen and read at the same time, just hoping to stumble upon a solid album, which—let's be honest—is really the only thing that matters in the end. 🙂
How do you actually hunt down albums without wasting money on junk? For me, reading reviews while listening to snippets—like on Pitchfork—has turned out to be a killer way to find new music. It’s helped me dig up a mountain of stuff I probably would have never heard of, and more importantly, it keeps me from buying a bunch of garbage based on just one single song or zero research at all. Of course, I'm mostly looking for things that align with my specific taste. That doesn't mean everything with a high rating will hit the spot for me, obviously—I don't really care about high scores for some hair metal record or, heaven forbid, a death metal album if that's not my thing. 😁
