Maggie's Farm

The Euro-MidEast international Eurovision song competition each year is usually one of my favorite shows. Each country's entry is usually superb, and making a choice of winner difficult. This year, however, the sameness of many of the entries, and the increased prevalence of English from almost all countries, made the choices easier, for me anyway. There's usually griping, with much justification, that there's much favoritism in the final rankings. Here's my favorites from the 25 semi-finalists: Greece, France, Spain (with extra points on top of artistry for being in native tongues), and for a lovely performance Azerbaijan (in English). Azerbaijan won the competition, maybe because its entry didn't have the hoochy-koochy, look-alike theatrics of so many of the others.

Here's a sampling of the top 25. After that, click around for your favorites and other countries entries. Nice way to idle away a few hours.