Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2009: The Kids of Kyiv
You can be forgiven for not knowing that there's another Eurovision going on this weekend - because not many countries seem to want to enter it. The seventh edition of the Junior version of our favourite Contest takes place in the Ukrainian capital on Saturday night but despite the high hopes the EBU had for the event when it began in 2003, just 13 nations will be lining up in Kyiv's Palace of Sports (the same place that Proper Eurovision was staged in 2005) to have a go at winning the trophy, with the majority of entrants coming from Eastern Europe.
Ukraine welcomes youngsters all to Junior Eurovision 2009
Although there is no UK entry - ITV stopped entering in 2006 after minimal interest from the British public - and no TV station in Blighty is screening the show, you can catch a webcast of it right here. Remarkably, this competition has a huge following in Belarus, a country which has only struggled out of the Grown-Up Eurovision qualifying stages once in six attempts but has won two of the seven Kiddy Eurovisions so far. However, 2004 Junior champs Spain and five-time participant Greece are among the 11 nations who have taken part in the past who won't be in Kyiv. The reasons for withdrawal are largely about zero interest from the public, while others, including Spain, have stopped entering over worries about putting children (entrants' ages range from 10 to 15) through such a competition.
If you still want to know a bit more about which junior voiceboxes will be belting out a tune for their respective homelands tomorrow night, never fear. Boom Bang a Blog has provided clips of all 13 entries for you in this very post, along with our opinions - and also that of our regular guest blogger, Ewan Spence (My thoughts are on the top in each entry, Ewan's are underneath). You can also follow Ewan's live tweets as he watches the JESC (as it's called for brevity) on twitter.com/ewan.
Can you really sum up a Junior Eurovision entry in one line? Well, we had a go.
Here are the 13 songs taking part at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. Each song has to have been written by a composer below the age of 16 and be 2mins 30 secs and 2mins 45 secs long. During the voting, everyone starts with 12 points, so no child winds up traumatised in the event of nobody else voting for them.
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Jamie McLoughlin - The news editor of Southport Visiter reveals all about his musical hobby that more people should admit to having.
Okay do you realize this is JUNIOR eurovision?
And seems like you can't do ANYTHING but complain. Are they paying you to do this? Haha...
Rebecca, thanks for the comment. Yes I realise it's Junior - the clue of course is the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. But the second clue is the last word... Contest. And that means that they will all be judged. In the case of a number of contestants they've taken two or three attempts at the national Finals to qualify for the contest. it's a fun world out there, but entertainment is a rough business.
After all, Mimi Sanden is only a few months younger the Keji Tolsa in this year's full contest, and there was no complaints over Tolsa.
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for your comment - but can I gently point out that neither Ewan nor I were complaining about the songs, we were offering our opinions on them. There is a very big difference.
And to be honest, not everything we said was negative. In fact, I tried to be as positive as possible while keeping a humorous tone.
Once somebody submits a song for a competition, they have to be ready for opinions to be made about them - that's the very nature of a competition. I'm sure that any youngster who goes out on stage and sings will have had more than a few knockbacks on the journey they took to get there, encapsulated in words far, far harsher than you'll read here.
Great post, I agree with your blog.