Checking Wiki again: “An exception was made in 2015, when Australia was allowed to compete as a guest entrant as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the event. In November 2015, the EBU announced that Australia was invited back as a participant in the 2016 contest after their success in 2015. Following their success again in 2016, Australia competed again in 2017.”

And Australia placed 9th out of 26 finals contestants, while Germany placed 25th. Which was better for Germany than the previous two years, when they placed 26th and last. We had our second win (after 1982) in 2010, when the song had a real, lilting rhythm, not the brain-dead late-disco garbage that the former East Bloc nations favored (they had missed the western disco craze by roughly ten years, but then seemed – at least in the ESC – determined to make up for lost time by keeping this dead music genre “alive” to excess – and if you’re thinking zombie now, you’re on the mark). The 2010 winning performer Lena (no opera singer by anybody’s standard, but …) also placed 10th in 2011 (with a decidedly worse song), and since then “experts” have apparently have had too much say in who and which song is selected for the ESC. Especially what song!

In 2013, a group called LaBrassBanda had crushed all other competitors in one part of the national voting for the artist to be sent to that year’s ESC, by taking first place in every of nine radio votes. They also took second place in the TV viewers’ poll, trading places in that part with the eventual participant. The “experts” were brain-dead beyond anything they had done before and since, placing songs/artists first and second that had make the radio and TV audience, excuse my French, puke! They also placed LBB second-to-last, which almost qualifies as a reason for an emergency incarceration in the barbed-wire-protected section of the loony bin.

Then in 2015, a then 29-year-old Blues-, Pop- and Rock singer and Songwriter crumpled competition with a 78.7 approval rating, possibly to his own totally unbelieving surprise, and (also probably for some personal reasons) declined to take part in the megalomaniac (my opinion) ESC competition, leaving the (by vote) devastated second-place entry to take part. That was one of the – I believe even zero-point – last-place finishes.

(P.S. any mod wants to move this outburst to the Rant Thread, be my guest – but it would be confusing there, without its context …)

_________________

_________________
Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

Heightened squirrel activity on the meadow today!

_________________

_________________

Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Trimmed my beard today (it’s getting warmer now …)

_________________

_________________

Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Had winter tires switched to summer tires on my car.

_________________

_________________
Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

_________________

Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Time to feed the cats their afternoon meal.

_________________
And as he looked into her eyes
Within the auburn of her hair
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored bright and fair

♥In a poly relationship with Kili and Tauriel♥

_________________

Tevildo, Prince of Cats

_________________
Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

_________________

Tevildo, Prince of Cats

_________________
Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

My car today passed the 86.000 km mark (53.449 miles).

_________________

I'm just here, on the computer, doing what I usually do.

_________________
And as he looked into her eyes
Within the auburn of her hair
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored bright and fair

♥In a poly relationship with Kili and Tauriel♥