Russian Duet Tatu Ranks Third in Eurovision Song Contest

It looks like the contest only gets hosted in countries that wish to join the European Union
The ntorious duet Tatu came in third in the Eurovision Song Contest – one of the best results that Russia ever managed to achieve in the European music festival. Russian singer Alsou came in second in the contest a couple of years ago.

Russia was represented by a very unusual contestant at the 48th Eurovision music event - a pop duet that had already become famous worldwide. Russia could never before boast of a pop singer known all over the world - in Europe, in the USA and in Japan. Yet, Western pop stars never come to participate in Eurovision - they have nothing to do there.

The idea of Eurovision, the contest, appeared in the 1950s as an attempt at cultural unification of Europe. There was a certain intrigue about it back in those years, during the Cold War era. Nowadays the world has the European Union, which has a joint currency, so the idea of the contest looks far-fetched to a certain extent. However, there is always a point in talking about peace and friendship, and one can use the contest for political PR goals as well.

The 48th Eurovision Song Contest took place on May 24th, in the capital of the republic of Latvia, Riga. The organizers of the festival wrote the following line in the booklet of the CD that contains the performed songs: "Riga hosted the contest, which gave a unique chance to a small Baltic country to represent itself to other European states on the threshold of Latvia's joining the expanding bloc. Latvia combines the dynamic energy of a young nation and a justifiable pride in an extensive history." It looks like the song contest only gets hosted in countries that wish to join the European Union. This is in fact exactly what happens: this year Eurovision was hosted by Latvia, last year it took place in Estonia, next year the contest will be organized in Turkey. Everything is legal and honest, and all the three countries want to become EU members. Such countries as Norway - ones that do not think of joining the European Union - do not ever win the contest.

Speaking of Tatu's appearance on the show - they gave a horrible performance. However, their song sounded very modern on the recently released compact disc of the festival. Eurovision songs are not primitive; they are competently done, but always stereotypical: typical melodies, typical tunes, a bit of Latino style to make them a little bit livelier.

Tatu's performance was not mischievous: the two girls did not kiss each other, they did not take their clothes off, they did not wear tops with obscene writing on them. The voting was totally unbalanced, though. Great Britain did not vote for the Russian duet at all, in spite of the fact that Tatu's single "All the Things She Said" had topped the British charts. Greece gave ten points to the Russian performers. Latvia voted for Tatu with 12 points, so the two Russian girls did not manage to climb higher than third place on the list of winners.

After the results of the contest became known, Russian pop stars claimed they were humiliated. They said that the girls did not give a scandalous performance, but a voice of reason could be heard from two people only. Reporter Sergey Sosedov said that you have to learn how to sing in a duet. TV host Oskar Kuchera said: "This is a song contest; now what does kissing have to do with it?"

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