Eurovision again

On Sunday I posted several songs that I liked during Saturday's final of the Eurovision Song Contest. There were two acts that I didn't post, one because it was not my taste at all (the Icelandic entry) and one that I will not be able to post anyway.

One part of the final is always the interval act. After all the performers have performed their best (ahem), it is time for the European, Israeli and Australian public to vote. By phone or by app. It takes some time. Once the time allotted is over, the votes need to be counted and verified to make sure there are no mistakes. 

Now, during that time you could of course put the screen to black, go to commercials or something. You loose your viewing public within seconds and that is of course not wanted. So, over the years the organising countries have come up with the interval act. A local children's choir, clog dancers, a compilation of the winning songs of that country. Anything to fill the time and as with the main show: sometimes hair pullingly bad. 

Sometimes though, the act outshines the show itself. Like when Ireland had to organise the contest after it had won the year before (when they had also organised it due to a win the year before that). It was 1994 and they were looking for an act. In the end they ended up with a troupe of dancers. If you have heard or even seen Riverdance : They started at Eurovision.

Mostly though, the interval acts are as I said before: anything to fill the time. Then a couple of years ago, Sweden had to organise and apparently had enough cash lying about to hire a big star: Justin Timberlake did (part of the) interval act and was brilliant. He was funny, he was nice, he was a showman, he was a singer, he was spot on!

This year it was Israel who had to organise the contest and someone decided to hire another big star. One million dollars later and Madonna had agreed to come do a few songs. She would do an old favourite (Like a Prayer) and a new song. It started off well: the set looked good, the performers looked good. Then she opened her mouth and the whole thing came crashing down. Atrocious. Serhat, the artist performing for San Marino, had been off-key during his performance, but he sounded like one of the Wiener Sängerknaben compared to Madonna!

Fortunately the second song was lip-synched, preventing more bleeding ears. 

Yes I know, Marlene Dietrich is no longer with us, but she would have been perfect!
Everybody knew and loved her, friend and foe alike.

However, my question is this: why on earth do we have all those foreign (read American) stars. Have we not got any good performers from Europe? Queen are British and even with the American Adam Lambert, they would be a good choice. U2 are Irish and quite well-known. Enrique Iglesias is half Spanish. A-ha is Norwegian, Roxette is Swedish, Aqua is Danish. Even the Netherlands can boast some really decent performers which I bet would be able to do a better job than Madonna. Just a thought to this year's organisers...