Zo schieten we niet op mensen. Hebben we een keer een toplied - Ik ben verliefd haakje openen - shalalie - haakje sluiten - en dan kiezen we zo’n gewoon, zeg maar doodgewoon, stemmetje om het te zingen. De eerste prijs lag echt voor het grijpen en nu wordt het weer maximaal middenmootje op het Eurovisie Songfestival. En vergis ik me of zingt Sieneke - ze ziet er uit als een gezellige moeke maar is zeventien - in het begin zelfs heel even vals? Deskundigen plenty bij drasties, dus kom er maar in.
Nog even in de herinnering halen. Pierre Kartner maakte in 1977 een liedje, waarvan na veel soebatten eindelijk 1000 singeltjes mochten worden gedrukt. Nu zijn er wereldwijd 30 miljoen exemplaren verkocht van zijn smurfenlied.
Doodzonde dat Sieneke gewoon niet smurft.

Zie wat deze tot vandaag bij JdeW geheel onbekende expert er van vindt.
Tim Fisher: Senior RNW Web and Radio Producer. Host of Euro Hit 40, Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s pan-European chart show.

On Sunday evening, in one of the oddest and most disappointing Dutch song contests, the Netherlands chose the act to sing the song ‘it’ had already chosen for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
As for the song - Ik Ben Verliefd (Sha la lie) - or I’m In Love (Sha-la-lee) - the only good thing about it is that it’s sung in Dutch; maybe that will disguise the total vacuous-ness of the lyric.
Believe me, I sat down to watch the National Song Contest with some vestige of hope. I’m always hopeful that the Netherlands will come up with something amazing. After all, the Dutch have won this Eurovision contest on four occasions since 1956. Last year, young Ralf even took the crown at the - much smaller - junior version of the competition, and his self-penned ditty was also in Dutch. read on>>

Go North, old man!
But, alas, the Eurovision is not so popular in the Netherlands any more. Perhaps a longstanding fan like me should move to Scandinavia where it’s still a big deal. For example, Norwegian broadcaster NRK - this year’s host for the main event in May - held it’s fifth and final episode of the Melodi Grand Prix on Saturday night. I watched via the miracle of internet and was pleasantly surprised at the standard of the songs and performers. In a country of just under five million inhabitants, around one million telephone and SMS votes were cast for the various songs during the course of the show, which also attracted the week’s biggest TV audience for any programme.

And what did we get one day later here in the Netherlands? Well, the song had already been chosen: longtime songwriter and performer Pierre Kartner (better knows to the outside world as Father Abraham, the man of Smurf Song (YouTube) fame back in the 1970s) was asked to pen the Dutch ditty last year. He’s had Eurovision experience after all, he wrote De Oude Muzikant - YouTube - (the Old Music Man) which brought the Netherlands 14th place out of 17 countries in 1973! Wow.

Unfortunately, his attempt this time isn’t quite his 1973 vintage. Ik Ben Verliefd (Sha-la-lie) was chosen as the Dutch song back in 2009, and features such great lines as “zo gaat het ongeveer” (that’s roughly how it goes).

“There’s hope!”
Vintage or not, all Dutch broadcaster TROS had to do was find an act to perform it in Oslo. They came up with idea of getting well-known Dutch artists to present and coach ‘young talent’ to perform the song in different arrangements. “There’s hope,” I thought!

Unfortunately, last night’s Nationaal Songfestival failed to produce any really interesting versions of the song (there were five), but it did end in chaos - which always makes good TV. The TROS may regard its membership as the “Largest Family of the Netherlands”, but it didn’t want them voting like the Norwegians, no… there were a total of five votes involved (an all time low, maybe?). One each from the four ‘experts’ (including two or three-time ESC winner Johnny Logan, and George Baker… he of Una Paloma Blanca, another 70s hit) and one vote from the entire studio audience. No sms-ing, no telephone voting for us - the great Dutch public suffering at home! The result: two expert votes for one act, the other two votes to one of the other five acts, and the single audience vote to a third.

So now it was between 17-year-old Sieneke and her barrel organ backed ‘typically Dutch’ version of the song, and the six-woman band Loekz, with their - vocally somewhat wobbly - attempt at making a more poppy sound. I was surprised the ‘expert’ jury managed to vote at all, none of them had looked particularly happy about the performances, though they tried their very best to say nice things.

Finally, clearly fed up with being pushed by the lovely but insistent Ms C van K., Pierre Kartner ‘plumped’ for Sieneke. And so this young 17-year-old (who can certainly sing, I give her that, and is very enthusiastic) gets to go to Eurovision 2010 in Oslo with her very Dutch version of a very Dutch song.

I wish Sieneke the very best, I really do. Perhaps she and her song will do what all the Dutch participants since 2004 have failed to do, get voted through from the Eurovision semi-final to the big Saturday night final! Ten of the 17 songs in each semi get a final place, so she has a more than 50-percent chance - and I would like to see NL in the final.

But I fear not, and even if does, much further than that it will not go.

‘Ach’ (he wrote to prove just how integrated he is) that’s just ‘roughly how it goes’ these days with the Dutch and Eurovision… Now, where’s my Norwegian phrase book?

This entry was posted on dinsdag, februari 9th, 2010 at 4:38 am and is filed under JdeW, English, Europa, Dutch on the World, World on the Dutch, Muziek, Sex Appeal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.