All About Latvia

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We’ll be liveblogging the Eurovision Song Contest Saturday night, but in the preparation of this shining example of the -decadent West- popular culture, let’s take a history walk.

Here’s almost every Latvian Eurovision song ever.

2000 - the group Brainstorm performed “My star.” The group came in third, after Russia and Denmark, which won that competition held in Sweden. Not bad for a debut. Latvia was selected as the last 25th country to participate in the contest replacing Greece, which withdrew.

2001 - Arnis Mednis represented Latvia in the contest with a song “Too much”. Unfortunately, his performance was not found among the vast universes of YouTube. He came 16th.

2002 - Marie N (also known as Marija Naumova) with a song I wanna earned Latvia the right to host the next Eurovision Song Contest. She came first.

2003 - F.L.Y. performed Hello From Mars, which didn’t fair well among the earthlings on the European continent. They came 24th.

2004 - The rules were changed to accommodate more countries-participants. Latvia was represented by Fomins & Kleins with Dziesma par laimi, A Song About Happiness. Happy or not, the song didn’t qualify for the final.

2005 - Valters un Kaza sang The War is not Over. They came 5th.

2006 - Cosmos performed I hear your heart. Talented though they may have been, they came only 17th.

2007 - bonaparti.lv with Questa Notte. They came 16th.

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A cup of hot chocolate, cozy clothes and a hefty amount of patience - that’s all I needed to enjoy this year’s Eurovision song contest. You see I am in Michigan, thousands of miles away from my home land, the host of this year’s Eurovision song festival. With 220 television channels I get through my cable not a single one of them broadcast the contest. But thank God for broadband - and my father-in-law, who allowed me to use his computer.

At the time of this writing, number 18 - Norway’s Jostein Hasselgеrd has just finished singing about how he wasn’t afraid to move on. But two countries participants stand out in my mind so far - Germany and Russia.

German scary looking Lou, who seemed to have undergone several plastic surgeries, sang a song with a typical meaningless non-English native title “Let’s get Happy.” Songs like that frequent here in the United States - only on Saturday Night Live, a comedy sketch show.

Here are the lyrics:

Let’s get happy

Dub du dubn da dap da
Dub du dubn da dap da
Dub du dubn da dap da hahhh – ooh

Last night in the discothek
All my friends seemed to look and wait

just lookin’ for trouble
Cos everything’s drivin ‘em mad
(chor: yeah drivin’ ‘em mad)

No fun  not a smilin’ face
And down at heart in so many ways
Hey baby what’s on
And why’s everyone so sad

Let’s get happy and let’s be friends
For tomorrow never never ends
And our world will be all new
Let’s get happy and let’s be gay
All our troubles they will fade away
And the promise i will send you
Hits you on a brandnew day
Dub du dubn da dap da - yeah
(choir: on that day everything will be okay)

See that girl with the high heel shoes
Wanna know why she’s got the blues
Don’t ya stop rockin’
And get the ball rollin’ tonight
(choir:yeah get the ball a rolling tonight)

Everyone’s kinda cool and stressed
Gotta move  or you’ll miss the best
Whatever you do now
You just gotta do it right

Let’s get happy and let’s be friends
For tomorrow never never ends
And our world will be all new
Let’s get happy and let’s be gay
All our troubles they will fade away
And the promise i will send you
Hits you on a brandnew day

Choir: dub du dubn da dap da
Dub du dubn da dap da
Dub du dubn da dap da that’s right

On a brandnew day
We will be on our way
We will have lots of fun together

Let’s get happy and let’s be friends
For tomorrow never never ends
And our world will be all new
Let’s get happy and let’s be gay
All our troubles they will fade away
And the promise i will send you
Hits you on a brandnew day

Choir: let’s stop feeling sad and down
Let’s just take off from the ground
Let’s get happy

But when Russian duo Tatu stepped on the stage, I thought something unusual was going to take place. I think it is the result of all the publicity and the duo’s capriciousness. But I was wrong: nothing took place except for what was supposed to. The girls sung their song, which surprisingly was in Russian, and thus, perhaps, would limit their chances to win the contest.

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