Neighbourvoting in ESC…
Mkay. Because of the reasons I have no better things to blog about, and also because I’m listening to “Rockefeller Street” and eating some old ESC candy, I decided to talk about this for a while.
The Neighbour, or friendvoting (Kompisröstning) in Eurovision Song Contest. Every year, people whine about it, or, ratherly, they whine about the eastern countries voting for each other. You know, like the eastern, the western and the scandinavians… and so on. But to make it a bit more clear, or maybe more complicated, I’ll divide them even more. (The countries within these () are countries that usually participate but did not this year)
The eastern are sorted as, in:
Block “1”: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia
Block “2”: Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Slovenia, FYR Macedonia, Bosnia&Herzegovina (Montenegro)
Block “3”: Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, (Czech Republic) Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia
HOWEVER, Est, Lit, Lat also works under
Western, Block “1” (The vikings): Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland
Block “2”: United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, San Marino Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, (Andorra), (Monaco), (Louxembourg).
Then we have Israel and Malta that doesn’t have any significant “friend”. These are the groups that we would consider “always” vote for each other. But did you EVER consider, that it may have to do with other stuff than neighbouring?
Over the 8 years I’ve been into Eurovision and taking an active role, I’ve been favourising Moldova 4(!!) times (2005, 2007, 2010, 2011), Malta(‘04), Slovenia(‘03), Lithuania(’08) and Finland(’06) once.
As you can see, mainly my favourites HAVE been in the eastern countries, wih a few exceptions. But yet, I have one that is within the Viking belt. 2006, Lordi entered with ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ and it was within a few more (like, Moldova) amongst my faves and I voted like crazy for Finland. Becasue, you know, they were my favourite,and in my opinion, the best song for the year (Myeah, I liked Molodova, Swiss, Germany, Ukraine too…)
And, can’t it be the same for Eastern countries? That the song they vote for – is the song they like the best?
No – I’m not naiv, I DO know that friend voting is happening, mainly in the yugoslavian countries (block 2), but can’t it just be the music they like the best? I don’t intend to sound like a racist – but I rarely like the eastern kind of music, which I believe is very cultural for them, but I do fall alot for the more western countries. I know this doesn’t make any sense at all, considering Moldova is a high rated country for me, but when I look at the other faves apart from my No. 1, it’s mainly western countries. And no,that is not because they are my neighbour. But because they have the best songs, the kind of music I’m used to and like.
And that goes for eastern too. The cultural music I don’t get and don’t like, that is _THE_ thing at their place. It is the shit. So OF COURSE, they vote for that. They vote for what they think is the best song. And then, that it just happens to be so that the song is from their neighbouring country, musn’t have anything to do with it at all.
This year, 2011, We had ONE Eastern block one country, ONE Western country and ONE Viking country in the top. It can barely be more mixed, don’t you agree? In 2005, Malta ended up on second place short after Greece, and they don’t have a single neighbour country.
What does all this prove?
That if your song is good enough, you don’t need any neighbours.
Over and out.
Sara Hammerzmith 
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