At last...

The video to Tsaryevna is done!Which is just as well,we were getting a bit bored with Dima K what with all the Jonatan/Ruslan/Euroband frenzy.It's a bit of an odd video I must say,but I like it.Even if the girl Dima's after does look a bit like him.Still,if you looked like Dima,you would fancy yourself really.

Eurovision Party at the Scala: the best bits!

So of course it was the Eurovision Preview Party at the Scala on Friday night- the most fabulous and camp night out I've ever had,it was wonderful!Myself and Keira were there right up until the end (which was just as well as I'll explain later),so seeing as it would be impossible to write about everything that happened in the 6 hours we were there,I'll just mention the best bits- not necessarily in the correct order,I'm very very tired indeed this afternoon so my memory's not too great :) I think most of the videos and pictures I've got on here are either from Tris2000 or the Schlagerboys (who incidentally I did notice down the front with their Maltese flags :) )

- Era Stupendo being one of the first songs we heard when we arrived.What better way to start the evening!

- Seeing the video to Hasta La Vista on the big screen.I have changed my mind about this song since my outraged posts about the new version of it.


- Seeing Ruslan sing Hasta La Vista! We were (understandably) insanely excited when we found out Mr Alehno would be there, so this was very exciting indeed.He looked absolutely lovely (pictorial evidence included),and anyone who says he can't sing (and I've seen quite a few) is very much mistaken.He has a wonderful voice.And as for the new version,I've decided it works much better live than the original.This one is more dramatic,and means there doesn't really need to be anything else going on on stage.Here's a video of (a bit of) Hasta La Vista.


- Myself and Morena wearing practically identical outfits.I felt officially Eurofabulous :) If only I looked as Maltese and lovely as her... Actually,I think I'll put the video here as well,Vodka has never been one of my favourites from this year,but I think it was much better live.


- Euroband.We had a feeling they might be fabulous and they really were.They seemed to really enjoy themselves too.They started off with a bit of Wild Dances,then My Number One (which you can see here),and then Ooh Aah Just a Little Bit,which was quite cool.Of course though,we were very excited about hearing This Is My Life...How fabulous?I'm having committment issues with Paolo at the minute,as much as I love Era Stupendo,I'm seriously thinking of dumping him and voting for Iceland instead.

- Ani Lorak's wonderful silver dress.It was the same one she wears in the video,even though we read somewhere the other day that Kirkorov spent an insane amount of money on a new one for her.Maybe she's saving it for the night.Or maybe there just wasn't much going on in the Russian showbiz world last week and they made it up.Either way,talking of Kirkorov,we were disappointed yet relieved at the same time that we didn't see him anywhere.Maybe he was there but just in a sulk that Ani is clearly a better diva than he is.Her hair's almost as big as his too.



- Páll Óskar's suit.I've never seen such a fabulous suit,and I bet you haven't either!He sang an English version of Allt fyrir ástina which I really liked.Probably because that's the only song of his I actually know.

- The DJ using the exact same decks that we used when we DJed at the union a few months ago.

- Dancing to Hero with a lovely (if not slightly drunk) man.

- Hearing loads of fabulous songs I'd somehow forgotten about- Sahlene's Runaway, Love Isn't Love by Carola (can't remember the Swedish name), Through My Window... Also,the intro to Tornero- as Keira said "I'd recognise that wail anywhere"

- Drag queens.They were everywhere.I loved them.

But the biggest highlight of them all came at sometime between 3 and 4am.We were rapidly giving up hope that this would happen,but then suddenly..."THAT'S THE WORK YOUR MAGIC REMIX!" Not only was it the Work Your Magic remix,it was also the same one that we'd played at the union at the International Festival.It was very exciting to say the least :)

Throw your life away,I know you're gonna get it back someday

Apologies for all the silly little posts I've done lately,but I'm insanely busy at the minute.Anyway,this is going to be another one- I've just had itunes on shuffle,and something came up I'd never heard before.Turns out it's by Zuma and is called The Winter of Your Heart.It's amazing,you'd never guess it was the same band who did Always Always.Go and have a listen to it on www.zuma.no

The most exciting times ever!

Ruslan's going to be in London on Friday night!!!!! That's all.

More exciting times!

Me and Keira are off to the Scala on Friday to the Eurovision party,I'm so excited!To be honest I only really want to see Euroband,but Ani Lorak's gonna be there so we're hoping to maybe get a glimpse of the Russian overlord himself,Filip Kirkorov.Also,according to esctoday.com,there's still another 2 acts to be announced- one of them being from this year's contest and one being a former ESC participant.I'd quite like it to be Dima Koldun please.Wouldn't be completely disappointed about seeing Jonatan Cerrada twice in a month either :)
Anyway,on the subject of Eurovision,I had my French translation exam today.We had to translate an article from the BBC about Sebastien Tellier's ESC song and all the controversy it's caused in France for being in English.That was quite exciting.I would post the video to Divine on here but to be honest I've gone off of the song a bit.So instead,here's Carla Bruni singing Quelqu'un m'a dit (Somebody told me).We're playing it on Sounds of Europe tonight.Along with the amazing Norwegian song I'm listening to right now.(Clue: it should have won Melodi Grand Prix and has fabulously silly lyrics) :)

Exciting times! For me anyway...

So I found out today I got my job in Kiel.I'll be working at what looks like an EU-related company (fabulous!) starting from September 1st.It's as close to Scandinavia as I can get,and from the pictures I've seen,it looks a little bit like Oslo in places :) Hopefully I'll get to nip down south in the winter to go and watch some ski jumping too...Just hope I hear from Paris soon and then everything will be sorted.
Anyway,what better way of celebrating than watching a nice video of Jonatan Cerrada singing Nada es Para Siempre on October 21st last year wearing a lovely lovely outfit?(And also the only picture of him that seems to exist of him at the Sentier on the night we saw him :) )

Dressed to kill and guess who's dying

This evening's going to be very nice I think,I have the house to myself,it's all quiet and lovely,and all I have to do is read a few Russian dialogues.Magic.That means I should have time to start updating my new blog Parlez-vous Europop at last.Might even watch Amélie as well so I can be all nostalgic.

Anyway,I got round to watching last night's edition of The Apprentice this afternoon- it's great as ever.This week I loved Simon description of Kent."The grass is green,the sky is blue,the women are orange."Classic!I'm also wondering why everyone seems to be so nasty to Lucinda all the time when she seems lovely.I'm glad she had a go back at Helene this week though.

Music-wise,as I said on the radio the other night,I'm finding it quite difficult to get into anything since we came back from Paris.However,last night I discovered Ólafur Arnalds.He's from Iceland -as the name might suggest- is 21 and is rather wonderful.I found out about him because he's on tour and is doing a gig with Yndi Halda,a band from Canterbury (nearish to where I live) in June in London.Anyway,if you like lovely,dreamy Nordic piano/violin music like the stuff Sigur Rós make,you'll like Ólafur.Have a look at his MySpace page.I particularly like the song 3055 I think.

Also,I heard this song yesterday as well,and I really like it.Shock horror,it's not even European.And it's a dance song.Madness.

Me again...

Oh,it seems the GU2 website has been sorted out now and you can listen to us on the normal 9 and 10pm links.Fabulous!By the way,just seen this video over on Electroqueer and I rather liked the song so thought I'd post it here too.It's Centerpubben by Danish duo Hej Matematik.Søren,the older one apparantly used to be in Aqua and the younger one (who we think looks quite like Dec) is his nephew.Interesting!

Panic...

I'm having a nightmare so far this morning- I took half an hour to translate a sentence earlier (well,it was difficult,but still,half an hour?) and I have a horrible horrible Russian grammar exam in 55 minutes.I hate Russian grammar more than anything else in the world- yes,even more than the Alphabeat song.Anyway,I've really been getting into this song since,well,yesterday so I thought I'd post the video.It's by Tina Karol and it's called Lyublyu Yevo (I love him).Much more chilled out than Show Me Your Love and not half as screechy as Nochenka.It's good stuff.We'll probably play it on Sounds of Europe next week.Which incidentally you can listen back to on www.gu2.co.uk (Although you have to click the 10pm and 11pm Tuesday links because there's an issue with the system at the minute).It was a good show this week- the Sergey Lazarev interview,tales of our trip to Paris,and some unintentional innuendoes.What more could you want?!

C'était le temps où on était heureux

I can't believe it's been a whole week since we saw Jonatan at the Sentier des Halles.Time goes so fast when you're erm,doing nothing.Actually it's been a pretty long month here in Kent,not necessarily boring,just long.I'm looking forward to getting back to Guildford at the weekend,seeing the boyfriend,doing the radio show and generally getting back to normal.Which will involve a hell of a lot of moaning about work no doubt :)

Anyway,just a couple of things to mention- apparantly that video I posted of Believe the other day was a leaked version and not the final one.Well seeing as my computer doesn't fancy letting me access esctoday.com this evening,I haven't been able to watch all of the proper version.But from what I did hear,the violins remain,so I won't bother posting it.

Also,I was quite surprised to discover last night that I don't mind Azerbaijan's Eurovision song.I hadn't given it a chance to be honest,I thought it would be a wailing ethnic ballad,but no,it's a mixture of a hardcore Mr Nobody and Vampires Are Alive.It's interesting.I can't say I like it and I really don't think anyone's going to vote for it,but it's a lot different to what I was expecting.So that's nice.

In other news,completely unrelated to music,I've been loving the new series of The Apprentice.I don't watch much telly-apart from Harry Hill on Saturday nights,it's mostly just Fabrika Zvezd 6 and the odd episode of Sex and the City on the internet when I can be bothered- so it's good to have some must-see viewing for a change.This series is hilarious- I particularly loved Kevin last night insisting that £4,25 is what you pay for tomato soup in Guildford (just proves people in Surrey have too much money :) ) and that he knows about Italian food because he eats in Italian restaurants all the time.Well,we have plenty of Italian restaurants in Guildford and in none of them have I seen carbonara served with chicken and a baked mushroom on the menu :)

I thought I'd also post this video- Le Vent de l'Hiver by Raphaël.
I must say,apart from Jonatan,I don't listen to any other French music- shameful I know.So I don't know anything at all about Raphaël Haroche other than that he's a bit Russian and he's really cool.I saw this video on French MTV last week and I really liked both it and the song.I can't say I really understand what the song's about,I don't get any of the references he makes in it,but it has a really interesting sound and the whole thing is just very...arty I suppose.I did think about buying his album Je Sais que la Terre est Plate when I saw it in FNAC in Bastille,but 22 Euros?!Think I'll wait for it to appear on Amazon :)

Un jeudi comme ça

Before I start,I feel I must just mention how ridiculously attractive Jonatan Cerrada is.We weren’t allowed to take pictures or videos at the Sentier des Halles, which was unfortunate although I can understand why. But looking at how good Keira’s photos of the Russian Winter Festival were, these ones would have been super fabulous :) Either way, I thought I’d better include a few pictures of the lovely JC from somewhere, and they don’t come much lovelier than these.

As I might have written on here before, I’m moving to Paris next spring to work for 6 months, so going over there for 3 days was a really good chance for me to get to know the place and I’m really glad I did- using the Metro with its terrifying doors of death and unnerving sulphuric smell would have been something I’d have hated to do on my own for the first time… Anyway, I digress. The main purpose of our trip was of course to go and see the wonderful Jonatan Cerrada, who, after the 2005 album La Preuve du Contraire, hasn’t done very much due to record company disputes etc etc. These 5 nights he was doing in Paris were going to be his first chance to test out a lot of the stuff from the forthcoming (Spanish) album. He seems to have been working on it for ages, hopefully it’ll be released soon… He started off with a Spanish song that I did know the name of but have now forgotten. It was very upbeat and dancy, which I imagine will be the theme of this album. Saying that though, he did do a few slower ones as well, like Pero te Juro, which was just as good. Oh, and he did a really good cover of Gloria Estefan’s Con Los Años Que Me Quedan, which I really liked, partly because it was Gloria’s Spanish songs that really started my obsession with foreign language music back when I was 12. There’s a MySpace video of him singing it on French (or Belgian?) telly in February. I feel a bit of an affinity towards Jonatan actually.It might sound a bit silly but it's nice to see someone else my age who's clearly very interested in their roots.Of course he's a bit more actively interested than I am,what with this Spanish album and the acting business in that Un,Dos,Tres series and being fluent in Spanish,but still...


As far as the French stuff was concerned, JC did all of our favourites (with the notable exception of À Chaque Pas I must say). Libre Comme l'Air and La Preuve du Contraire were the first ones, followed by Rien Ne Me Changera which I really enjoyed.That's my favourite song of his and of course I had to sing along to every single word.Seeing as we were packed in like sardines (we knew the Sentier was small,but I didn't realise it was THAT small),I hope I wasn't loud like I was at the Russian Winter Festival :) Mon Paradis was next,the song from the film Robots (which sounds very cute when said in French).This was never one of my favourites,but it was one of two that really stood out on the night just because he looked so happy singing it.I like it a lot more now,I don't skip it when it comes on the iPod.



After Con Los Años Que Me Quedan (I think- we tried to remember the right order of the songs but given that we got lost every single time in 3 days that we tried to find our hotel,our memories are not the best),there was a nice surprise.For some reason I didn't think he would do Un Dimanche d'Automne (a song that I've written about on here before),but it made sense really.Before the song,Jonatan explained about his family and in particular when his grandfather left Spain during Franco's rule,to go and work in Belgium like a lot of other Spaniards.Un Dimanche d'Automne is of course about Jonatan's relationship with his grandfather and that it is because of him that he is so interested in his roots.Anyway,it was a really nice performance and I'm really glad he did that song.Pero Te Juro and Nada Es Para Siempre were next,but it was the song after that I'll remember for a very long time.

I knew ages ago that Ruban Noir is about the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and that it's a very personal and emotional song,but you really can't fully appreciate it until you've seen Jonatan sing it live.It's such a contrast- the verses are sad and descriptive whereas the mostly spoken Spanish bits and the chorus are more personal and angry.It was the "et l'Europe s'est levée,le monde n'a tremblé qu'un peu" bit that (very very nearly) made me cry.I don't know,it's hard to explain,but in such a small place it was all very intense and the song seems so much more powerful.The fact that he sings it with as much emotion as if it all happened yesterday too...As he said himself straight afterwards "it's easy to create an atmosphere".Then he went straight into a cover of Suerte by Shakira,which was quite odd straight after Ruban Noir.Odd,but fabulous.

Piensa En Mí Como Te Quiero was next.I've posted about that one before too,although I'm not sure if it's Jonatan's song or someone elses.Either way it was good.Then came On Ne Connaît Personne which I thought was a very strange choice.Again it's one that I normally skip on the iPod as it's not one of the greatest ones on the album.But I like it a lot now :)


We knew he was going to do Baila (an anthem at Europop Mansions Surrey Branch during the month of September),because we'd heard him do it the night before.No we weren't stalking him,we just thought it'd be a good idea to go and find the Sentier des Halles before we went for real.Wouldn't want to get lost and be late now would we?Well,we nearly were,but that was the fault of buses.As usual.Baila was really good anyway.In typical Dima Bilan style,Jonatan milked it for all it was worth,before saying goodbye,running off stage and then coming back about half a minute later to do Je Voulais Te Dire Que Je t'Attends.If I hadn't have known the night before that he was going to do it,I would have been very disappointed,because that's my other favourite song of his.Anyway,he'd managed to change his top in the 30 seconds he was off stage- from a rather fetching green checked shirt to a very very sexy Dennis Petrov-in-the-Malinkiy Prins-video type white top.Ooh he did look good.The hair was on good form,the eyebrow piercing was still present and sexy as ever...NOT that I'm shallow of course :)

All things considered then,it was an amazing night.I hope the third album comes out soon,and I really really hope I get the chance to see him live again some time.I'd even go as far as to say it was as good if not better than the Russian Winter Festival.And that's saying something.

It's Hasta La Vista all over again

What's with everyone butchering their songs this year?First the Belarussians did bad things to Hasta La Vista,and now this...

Violins!It's quite nice at the beginning but I wasn't expecting it to go all the way through the song.What made this such a good song in the first place was it's simplicity.Hopefully it won't be the proper Eurovision version,but seeing as this is the official video,I fear it might be the one.Next week we'll find out Paolo's shoved a good old accordion into Era Stupendo...

Je suis de retour...

Bonjour everyone- Work Your Magic has returned. I know it’s only been 2 weeks but it seems like a lot longer since I last posted, especially seeing as there’s been so much Euro-related stuff going on. One of the biggest things of course has been Sergey Lazarev’s UK tour. It’s nice to see him finally over here- me and Keira have said for absolutely ages that his music is so British radio friendly that we think he’d do quite well over here. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about this tour until about 3 days before it started, and I wasn’t in Surrey when he did his Camberley gig and Keira and Andy from GU2 radio went to interview him. This was disappointing to say the least, but I’ve heard the results of the interview, and we’ll be playing it on the first Sounds of Europe show when we get back to Guildford (15th April). In the meantime, check out Fizzy Pop to read Paul’s interview with him in London. It’s all good stuff :)
Also, myself and Keira have just come back from Paris, which was great fun and very educational for me. More about that over on my new blog Parlez-vous Europop? What I will be writing about here though is our fantastic night at the Sentier des Halles, where we fell in love with Jonatan Cerrada all over again.