Eurovision 2012 - The Official Album

This week we got a shiny copy of the official Eurovision 2012 album in the post, so we thought it’d be a good idea to put down just a few of our thoughts on what turned out to be a very entertaining year for the show.

While it seems, as usual, to have rubbed up the ‘serious’ music fans the wrong way, with the usual ‘We should pull out forever!’ cries, personally, we reckon the real irony is that the show actually felt pretty close to a fair chunk of the dance pop in our own charts this year. Take the excellent Swedish entry from Loreen for example – Euphoria could easily be the latest global smash from David Guetta or even the follow-up to Tulisa’s current club anthem.

If there’s one genre that really speaks across borders, it’s dance, and the longer the UK resists this, the more they’re likely to lose out. In all truth, it’s no surprise Humperdinck’s Love Will Set You Free stalled at second to last – it was a torrid, stale old snoozefest of a song that felt 40 years out of date.

Honourable mentions need to go to the vastly underrated Danish entry Should’ve Known Better, and France’s whistle-athon Echo, an up-tempo stormer of a track if ever there was one. What all these entries proved time and again was the importance of a stonking great pop chorus, copious dollops of fun, and outfits that actually kept your eyes glued to the screen rather than wandering back to that beer you’d been nursing all evening.

As a showcase in the art of the three minute pop song across Europe in 2012, you can’t go far wrong here.