escYOUnited
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Estonia ESTONIA 2020 - Uku Suviste - What Love Is
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Bsimmons
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What happened to "never reacting to my posts?". If all Brits have memory as good as you maybe you can still turn back the Brexit?
wtf
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How about they keep Eesti laul as a festival, but try to choose next entry internal?
Estonia will never go full internal, Eesti Laul is too big of a music event and TV show for that. And Finland proved that it's not that effective at all. I wouldn't trust ERR with their artist choices either.
Alaska49
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this thread sure gets cleaner with no american flags here... x
anyway, yes, there is rarely an excuse to go internal. eesti laul used to be the best NF around, and tomi rahula drove it to a dumpster. just get rid of him. it's easy to blame the televote but it's his direction that left the voting people with little choice this year and last year. storm ended up doing better than expected because of a handful of factors that i don't see being repeated for uku, the two biggest ones being that storm was second half amongst weirder entries (something i didn't think would be that much of a factor before it happened, admittedly) and just that victor crone is an endlessly charismatic person. uku, on the other hand, is po-po-polyester ohhh yeah.
anyway, yes, there is rarely an excuse to go internal. eesti laul used to be the best NF around, and tomi rahula drove it to a dumpster. just get rid of him. it's easy to blame the televote but it's his direction that left the voting people with little choice this year and last year. storm ended up doing better than expected because of a handful of factors that i don't see being repeated for uku, the two biggest ones being that storm was second half amongst weirder entries (something i didn't think would be that much of a factor before it happened, admittedly) and just that victor crone is an endlessly charismatic person. uku, on the other hand, is po-po-polyester ohhh yeah.
Bsimmons
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I gave it a big fat 0 points and I am not sure what pisses me more: a) I have to see Kirkorov`s face in upcoming months more than humanly is possible to stand or b) I have to mute my TV during Uku`s performance.
I will be disappointed in Europeans taste if it goes through. Which probably means it does.
I will be disappointed in Europeans taste if it goes through. Which probably means it does.
wtf
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The fact that Tomi Rahula is wishing for three semifinals when the two we already have are filled with enough garbage already.
Please be joking! Is he delusional? Moving it from 20 to 24 was already unnecessary.
At this point, I'd be expecting them to go back to 10 songs and 1 final like 2010.
Nemo89
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I don't know your sexual tastes. Where is the problem? I courting women and you menOMG you think i'm straight, that's so cute33333334567
but you're also not reading what i'm saying lol. I refer *SPECIFICALLY* to italy from BEFORE THEIR RETURN. ie: 1956-1993.
They have good boppy songs from that period but they're the exception, not the rule.
Joking aside, it is useless for me to talk about Italy's songs from 1956 to 1993-1998. It is like saying that Uruguay is still a great national football team because it has won two World Cup or Hungary is extraordinary because they had a great champion like Puskas. What you are talking about are "dead statistics". Numbers. Do you want a musical example? Ireland and France, among the nations with multiple titles, are no longer at the great levels of the past. However, it does not seem to me that Italy, apart from one last place with Modugno, has never made a bad impression. You must also consider that in the past century, without taking anything away from the great artists who participated and some deservedly won the ESC, Italy has always snubbed the competition. Do you want proof of what I say? Among the "Big 5" we are the nation that has participated less times in the ESC. Do you want cheerful songs? Catchy songs? You trust me, you don't know the baggage of Italian music in the least. We never brought these songs, both because winning meant investing in another festival (after the Sanremo festival, the "Cantagiro", the Festivalbar, the Castrocaro festival, "Un disco per l'estate" etc...) and because we Italians are famous in denigrating songs that would be considered masterpieces abroad. In conclusion, in the last 10 years you have looked at what the Italian musical movement has done. Those are "live statistics"
VikingTiger
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What happened to Eesti Laul this year? Used to be really interesting and felt relevant. This year I didnt find anything there that really cought my interest. Not too fond of Jaagup. But not a big fan of this either. Very in the middle of the road for me.
Franzilein
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Low-key want this to qualify, so our two dreamy anthem bois from France & Estonia can duke it out in the final 
Still not sure who would win that race.
Still not sure who would win that race.laululind
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I wouldn't mind three semis, simply so we got to hear more songs. It's the only way we ever get to hear any after all. 
Let's have 10 semis and we've almost solved the question of "were there really no better songs?" Anyway, I don't trust the juries to actually pick the 10 best songs if we went back to only 10 of them. For all we know, many of the half-decent ones might have been ranked 11-24, and we would have had an even worse show going with only 10. Weren't Rändajad & Siren both back-up choices back in the day? Without blind luck, one of our best entries might never have been. One can always just skip watching the semis and tune in for the final, if the amount of crap is too much to handle Now if we got a little more actual variety among those 2-3 semis, that would be even better! I wouldn't mind them going back to studio-semis to save money, tho' the live ones weren't as poorly done done this time around. Would be nice to have more dosh spent on stagings instead tho', many of them were really empty and bland in 2020.
Regarding the Tomi Rahula debate, the picking of pre-selection jury is really his biggest influence on the chosen songs. He can't tell them how to vote, but fact is back in the early days, there were more people from Purga's circle of friends who clearly had more alternative taste. That said, with the new 1-5 rating system, having a few people with different taste might not even matter. They could slap high marks on all the indie stuff, but if the majority of other jurors give those songs 2s or something, it won't be enough to make a difference. That's why I'd much rather they went back to making a top-25 list rather than ranking every song. No way to rank something down that way.
Anyway, even if we had a bunch of cool alternative songs in the lineup, our televoters would still have picked Uku. Would have been a more varied show, but the end result would probably have been the same. Not picking Uku's song to the lineup at all would have worked tho'. Oh well, maybe he'll give it a rest now that he's finally achieved his biggest dream. Or he'll turn into another Laura and be back again in a year or two. Hopefully with a more modern song then.
Let's have 10 semis and we've almost solved the question of "were there really no better songs?" Anyway, I don't trust the juries to actually pick the 10 best songs if we went back to only 10 of them. For all we know, many of the half-decent ones might have been ranked 11-24, and we would have had an even worse show going with only 10. Weren't Rändajad & Siren both back-up choices back in the day? Without blind luck, one of our best entries might never have been. One can always just skip watching the semis and tune in for the final, if the amount of crap is too much to handle Now if we got a little more actual variety among those 2-3 semis, that would be even better! I wouldn't mind them going back to studio-semis to save money, tho' the live ones weren't as poorly done done this time around. Would be nice to have more dosh spent on stagings instead tho', many of them were really empty and bland in 2020.Regarding the Tomi Rahula debate, the picking of pre-selection jury is really his biggest influence on the chosen songs.
He can't tell them how to vote, but fact is back in the early days, there were more people from Purga's circle of friends who clearly had more alternative taste. That said, with the new 1-5 rating system, having a few people with different taste might not even matter. They could slap high marks on all the indie stuff, but if the majority of other jurors give those songs 2s or something, it won't be enough to make a difference. That's why I'd much rather they went back to making a top-25 list rather than ranking every song. No way to rank something down that way.Anyway, even if we had a bunch of cool alternative songs in the lineup, our televoters would still have picked Uku.
Would have been a more varied show, but the end result would probably have been the same. Not picking Uku's song to the lineup at all would have worked tho'. Oh well, maybe he'll give it a rest now that he's finally achieved his biggest dream. Or he'll turn into another Laura and be back again in a year or two. Hopefully with a more modern song then.
So here goes, like I promised, trying to examine Eesti Laul It's almost like some kind of an essay, but I tried to point out how the issues with Eesti Laul can be deeper than people notice.
First of all, it's probably easy and the first instinct to blame the main producer, but think about it for a moment. If you didn't know that that position changed last year, would you actually notice anything different? As far as I know, Rahula hasn't really made any sweeping changes that would obviously affect the song quality or diversity (other than the fee for non-Estonian songs, which should be a positive) and most of those common complaints have been raised for years before him. The big overlap in the artist lineups of 2019 and 2020 and a particularly average song being the popular favorite and winner in both years are probably what makes these years stand out negatively to fans (so if he did in fact change how the preselection works, he clearly is at fault). Anyway, to some degree I think the situation is comparable to what TVTropes calls a Franchise Original Sin - when a movie/book series has significant problems which, in hindsight, were actually present earlier, just milder and less noticeable until they grew more prominent and often, resulted in a flop or the end of the franchise. Many of the things people don't currently like in Eesti Laul are similar, they started under the radar or are rooted in the very founding of EL (more on that later), simply becoming much more blatant in recent years.
One thing that Tomi Rahula could definitely be blamed for is that he doesn't seem to have a vision of Eesti Laul's future and its position in the Estonian music scene, which I think is needed because EL has kind of an identity crisis - it's not just an Eurovision song selection like Eurolaul, but at the same time, if we dropped out of ESC I'm not sure it would have much of a reason to exist. See, Eesti Laul was created after the Kreisiraadio debacle and during the nadir of Estonian public's interest in ESC, and so it was supposed to select a song that we like and then share it with Europe nevermind what they think of it, but ultimately it was still an Eurovision selection - it wouldn't have existed if we never took part in ESC and what changed was simply our approach to the selection and ESC itself, with a little more of a "patriotic" sentiment. It did work as something noticeably different initially because both the public and musician interest in Eurovision was low, and for several years, people involved probably genuinely didn't care much about ESC. And it likely helped that after going crazy for all sorts of "foreign" stuff and downplaying Estonian culture/language when we first reintegrated with the democratic world, by the mid-2000s we were more proud of and ready to openly display that. But after the bad feelings from the non-qualification streak and Kreisiraadio faded, as well as younger people growing up who didn't even really experience those things nor Estonia's earlier success, it wasn't all that surprising that Eurovision regained some popularity and Eesti Laul more and more embraced its status as an Eurovision NF, although whether it had to get to the point of having Måns Zelmerlöw and Jon Ola Sand as guests is a whole other thing.
The context of the larger Estonian music scene is also important. The world is becoming more globalized in general, especially with the ubiqutous internet and social media use, and music from different cultures is increasingly similar; obviously it affects Estonia too. Generally, every country's music scene will be more isolated from others the further back in time you go, and here, the music industry by 2000 was at this early level of having just become reasonably stable and similar to the ones in other countries, after largely starting from scratch during the wild 90s. Since the aforementioned falling interest in Eurovision also came shorty after that (due to us pretty much having reached the peak - winning and hosting - and artists realizing that taking part doesn't automatically result in an international career) it goes a long way to explain why Eesti Laul in its early years could still be this fairly different thing and how its later "internationalisation" was, to some extent at least, inevitable.
This doesn't explain away all the complaints though, and following on from earlier: in my opinion the HOD and ERR need to come up with a more specific, integral place for EL in our music scene, sort of like Sanremo apparently has in Italy, and build up the brand to the point where there are more reasons to take part besides just going to Eurovision. It hasn't really been achieved so far (even though they've somewhat tried) and I feel like this is the core source for most of the issues; what exactly is Eesti Laul supposed to be? What's its goal?
Early on, one of the non-ESC-related benefits of entering was the exposure for younger or more niche artists, and many pop singers fresh off Idol or lesser known bands boosted their careers through EL, but currently it seems more viable to promote your music through social media and Youtube - just take a look at those rap sensations like nublu or 5MIINUST and plenty of others as well. EL isn't that old so it may be easy to forget that in 2009, record labels were just starting to upload official content to Youtube and modern smartphones+social media were pretty much a new thing - by now, artists don't necessarily need a traditional TV show for publicity and it has to find new ways to stay relevant.
And while Estonians like Eurovision probably more than many other nations do, it still has some reputation issues and not every artist - particularly non-pop ones - is interested in participation. Take Trad Attack!, a popular group combining folk and modern elements who would be an obvious fit for ESC, but they already have an international career, representing your country doesn't appear to be a "national pride" thing either and so they, as far as I know, haven't shown any interest. Similarly, Kerli entering was a longshot; and I'm not even gonna bring up the rappers or EDM producers, Wiwibloggs putting nublu in their wishlist aside. The thing is, despite all the reputation Eesti Laul has for being indie-friendy and open to all sorts or different genres from industrial metal to drum'n'bass (which, to an extent, it is), there's a clear pattern of those acts not reaching high places and often not even qualifying for the final. Most of the EL winners have been fairly generic, "safe" songs and the vast majority of superfinalists or their songwriters are established names, not to mention that Eurovision isn't particularly open to most genres either, so that likely will turn away those kinds of artists in the future. And at the same time, even the pop acts who've won and gone to ESC aren't usually returning (it doesn't seem to be considered that big of an honor to just participate in Eesti Laul, without ESC aspirations) - Elina Born and Sandra Nurmsalu as a solo artist are token cases and Laura has taken part so much it's not really a surprise that she came back. Our music industry is small enough that frankly, we start running out of potential participants this way, which also explains why there is less chance of finding something truly striking.
In conclusion, Eesti Laul is still relatively new and it has time, but it has to find its niche - something where it can stand on its own and where it would be relevant even if we did quit Eurovision.
It's almost like some kind of an essay, but I tried to point out how the issues with Eesti Laul can be deeper than people notice.First of all, it's probably easy and the first instinct to blame the main producer, but think about it for a moment. If you didn't know that that position changed last year, would you actually notice anything different? As far as I know, Rahula hasn't really made any sweeping changes that would obviously affect the song quality or diversity (other than the fee for non-Estonian songs, which should be a positive) and most of those common complaints have been raised for years before him. The big overlap in the artist lineups of 2019 and 2020 and a particularly average song being the popular favorite and winner in both years are probably what makes these years stand out negatively to fans (so if he did in fact change how the preselection works, he clearly is at fault). Anyway, to some degree I think the situation is comparable to what TVTropes calls a Franchise Original Sin - when a movie/book series has significant problems which, in hindsight, were actually present earlier, just milder and less noticeable until they grew more prominent and often, resulted in a flop or the end of the franchise. Many of the things people don't currently like in Eesti Laul are similar, they started under the radar or are rooted in the very founding of EL (more on that later), simply becoming much more blatant in recent years.
One thing that Tomi Rahula could definitely be blamed for is that he doesn't seem to have a vision of Eesti Laul's future and its position in the Estonian music scene, which I think is needed because EL has kind of an identity crisis - it's not just an Eurovision song selection like Eurolaul, but at the same time, if we dropped out of ESC I'm not sure it would have much of a reason to exist. See, Eesti Laul was created after the Kreisiraadio debacle and during the nadir of Estonian public's interest in ESC, and so it was supposed to select a song that we like and then share it with Europe nevermind what they think of it, but ultimately it was still an Eurovision selection - it wouldn't have existed if we never took part in ESC and what changed was simply our approach to the selection and ESC itself, with a little more of a "patriotic" sentiment. It did work as something noticeably different initially because both the public and musician interest in Eurovision was low, and for several years, people involved probably genuinely didn't care much about ESC. And it likely helped that after going crazy for all sorts of "foreign" stuff and downplaying Estonian culture/language when we first reintegrated with the democratic world, by the mid-2000s we were more proud of and ready to openly display that. But after the bad feelings from the non-qualification streak and Kreisiraadio faded, as well as younger people growing up who didn't even really experience those things nor Estonia's earlier success, it wasn't all that surprising that Eurovision regained some popularity and Eesti Laul more and more embraced its status as an Eurovision NF, although whether it had to get to the point of having Måns Zelmerlöw and Jon Ola Sand as guests is a whole other thing.
The context of the larger Estonian music scene is also important. The world is becoming more globalized in general, especially with the ubiqutous internet and social media use, and music from different cultures is increasingly similar; obviously it affects Estonia too. Generally, every country's music scene will be more isolated from others the further back in time you go, and here, the music industry by 2000 was at this early level of having just become reasonably stable and similar to the ones in other countries, after largely starting from scratch during the wild 90s. Since the aforementioned falling interest in Eurovision also came shorty after that (due to us pretty much having reached the peak - winning and hosting - and artists realizing that taking part doesn't automatically result in an international career) it goes a long way to explain why Eesti Laul in its early years could still be this fairly different thing and how its later "internationalisation" was, to some extent at least, inevitable.
This doesn't explain away all the complaints though, and following on from earlier: in my opinion the HOD and ERR need to come up with a more specific, integral place for EL in our music scene, sort of like Sanremo apparently has in Italy, and build up the brand to the point where there are more reasons to take part besides just going to Eurovision. It hasn't really been achieved so far (even though they've somewhat tried) and I feel like this is the core source for most of the issues; what exactly is Eesti Laul supposed to be? What's its goal?
Early on, one of the non-ESC-related benefits of entering was the exposure for younger or more niche artists, and many pop singers fresh off Idol or lesser known bands boosted their careers through EL, but currently it seems more viable to promote your music through social media and Youtube - just take a look at those rap sensations like nublu or 5MIINUST and plenty of others as well. EL isn't that old so it may be easy to forget that in 2009, record labels were just starting to upload official content to Youtube and modern smartphones+social media were pretty much a new thing - by now, artists don't necessarily need a traditional TV show for publicity and it has to find new ways to stay relevant.
And while Estonians like Eurovision probably more than many other nations do, it still has some reputation issues and not every artist - particularly non-pop ones - is interested in participation. Take Trad Attack!, a popular group combining folk and modern elements who would be an obvious fit for ESC, but they already have an international career, representing your country doesn't appear to be a "national pride" thing either and so they, as far as I know, haven't shown any interest. Similarly, Kerli entering was a longshot; and I'm not even gonna bring up the rappers or EDM producers, Wiwibloggs putting nublu in their wishlist aside. The thing is, despite all the reputation Eesti Laul has for being indie-friendy and open to all sorts or different genres from industrial metal to drum'n'bass (which, to an extent, it is), there's a clear pattern of those acts not reaching high places and often not even qualifying for the final. Most of the EL winners have been fairly generic, "safe" songs and the vast majority of superfinalists or their songwriters are established names, not to mention that Eurovision isn't particularly open to most genres either, so that likely will turn away those kinds of artists in the future. And at the same time, even the pop acts who've won and gone to ESC aren't usually returning (it doesn't seem to be considered that big of an honor to just participate in Eesti Laul, without ESC aspirations) - Elina Born and Sandra Nurmsalu as a solo artist are token cases and Laura has taken part so much it's not really a surprise that she came back. Our music industry is small enough that frankly, we start running out of potential participants this way, which also explains why there is less chance of finding something truly striking.
In conclusion, Eesti Laul is still relatively new and it has time, but it has to find its niche - something where it can stand on its own and where it would be relevant even if we did quit Eurovision.
Last edited:
MooseShoes
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Okay, I had been following Eesti Laul a bit and had paid attention to the comments here that "Beautiful Lie" probably wouldn't win so "What Cheese is" winning didn't come as a shock. Gave it a few days and just listened to the final performance with fresh ears and...
... couldn't recover from a fit of laughter after he did that spoken word "suprises" at the beginning.
This is getting a purely for the fact that there are other songs I'd rather listen to less, and for the fact that I find myself singing the chorus to this in a bad-grunge voice at various times of the day.
On another note, I don't think we can really compare this to the negative reaction that storm got last year as I think there were other factors involved. Some found the song a bit derivative, some didn't like the fact that a Swede (who'd been to Melfest previously) was representing Estonia, but I think most of all people thought his vocals weren't up to scratch.
... couldn't recover from a fit of laughter after he did that spoken word "suprises" at the beginning.
This is getting a
purely for the fact that there are other songs I'd rather listen to less, and for the fact that I find myself singing the chorus to this in a bad-grunge voice at various times of the day.On another note, I don't think we can really compare this to the negative reaction that storm got last year as I think there were other factors involved. Some found the song a bit derivative, some didn't like the fact that a Swede (who'd been to Melfest previously) was representing Estonia, but I think most of all people thought his vocals weren't up to scratch.
wtf
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Queen approves 
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АНИ ЛОРАК on Instagram: "Как же я рада, что участник из моей команды в проекте 🎤 «Голос» - Уку Сувисте - стал победителем эстонского национального отбора и будет представлять свою страну на конкурсе «Евровидение - 2020» в Роттердаме! От всей души жел
132K likes, 656 comments - anilorakMarch 2, 2020 on : "Как же я рада, что участник из моей команды в проекте 🎤 «Голос» - Уку Сувист..."
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Reader
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I’m still a tad upset about what happened to Rasmus. I mean, the song was promising, and he did perform it well prior to Eesti (while sitting still though). And then, he was out of breath and looked aggressive during his semi, and looked lethargic during the final. There was no staging concept, no staging support or prompts (cardboard house in the semi aside). Was it his management team that didn’t bother or did Eesti organizers think its not worth of it?
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Nemo89
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In addition to yours? Bazinga of Bulgaria.