Dear Mr. Swann:

This is honestly a strong field of finalists.  There are three or four songs on this list that I legitimately liked.  I would not envy the man who had to come in and make a fair decision as to who deserves to win.  But luckily you don’t have to make that choice, because one of those finalists is Moldova, and like I said if Zdob shi Zdub doesn’t win I am going to come back and smash up the place.  I am pretty sure that you wrote in to one of the podcasts with your exact latitude and longitude, Mr. Swann!  That was not entirely wise, Mr. Swann!  So choose Moldova.  Choose life.

If it makes you feel any better, you’ll be rewarding a hell of a song.  For most of its running time, it suffices itself with merely being quite good.  But when those horns kick in — oh my! — right there, for ten seconds, or whatever it is before they drop back out again, I would put Zdob shi Zdub up against any band in the world.  Even without the threat of physical violence backing them up.

– Jordan

Tim –

I came to Eurovision prepared to hold it at arm’s length, like some radioactive isotope you have to handle via those thick rubber globes embedded in a Lucite wall. The idea was to pull a reverse de Tocqueville; the American pointing out what culture reveals about the European character. But after listening to every song, there’s one I’ve fallen in love with: “In Love For a While,” from Switzerland. I’ve downloaded it, memorized it, and caught myself humming it on a crowded subway.

It’s not going to win; this is a small, cutesy number, in a contest that eats small and cutesy for lunch. But this song makes me happy, honest to blog. It’s a song about the giddy excitement that a new relationship brings: “I knew right from the start, life is good for a while.” That’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? Remember seeing that person’s name pop up in your inbox and feeling your heart race? Briefly considering how long to wait before replying? And then replying way too soon, because you just can’t help yourself? The song is the first warm Saturday of Springtime. It’s finding the perfect couch for your new apartment. It’s the promise of happiness to come.

But there’s a touch of slyness behind the giddiness. “I know you and I are in love for a while,” goes the final lyric. That titular “for a while” cuts two ways. It can mean “for a long time,” as in “I don’t think Osama is going to be releasing anymore tapes for a while.” But it also acknowledges that the bliss might end. Even as the singer is reveling in the sunshine, she knows it won’t always be sunny. Maybe the relationship will last five months, maybe fifty years, but everything is temporary… and that’s what makes everything special. Being “in love for a while” emphasizes how fleeting life’s pleasures can be, and therefore how truly worth celebrating.

– Matt

Look, Tim —

I’m going to level with you. This was a tough. I wanted to make a challenging pick – a meaningful pick – a pick that was different from my fellows. I didn’t want there to be an OTI consensus to put pressure on you, and perhaps there still isn’t. I wanted to find a choice that felt right to me and could maybe also feel right to you. I watched all the videos of all the finalists at least twice. It was brutal.

I saw cases for a few of them. Germany’s song is sexy. Slovenia’s song is sung by a very attractive Slovenian woman. France’s song makes me want to find and defeat Kefka, which is always a good thing.

Estonia’s, Serbia’s and Switzerland’s songs were all snappy and well-performed, but none to me commanded my attention except as academic exercises. I already know your feelings about Jedward, but I would have skipped the boy bands altogether anyway. And the “save the world” songs are rubbish.

I tried to write this recommendation about Italy’s song, which is probably the best song in the bunch – except we’ve all heard songs like it a million times and it seems out of place in this contest. Italy knows it can make music that is too good for Eurovision – it doesn’t feel compelled to stoop to conquer. News flash: every country has some music that is better than all the music on Eurovision. Given these wonderful weird choices, it was hard to go with the latest track off NOW: That’s What I Call Italian Crooning 34.

Besides after I tried to start my case for Italy with “Which of these songs makes you want to do all your favorite things – savor a glass of wine… sit outside on a fine spring day… make love…” all I wanted to do was have sex to “I Love Belarus,” and it took like 25 minutes to shake off how awesome that would be and get back to work.

I tried to write it about Bosnia and Herzegovina’s song, which is of a kind with a lot of fine old country songs and has some sad wisdom about life – except the English lyrics have almost no poetry to them, and the music has no spark – it just doesn’t earn half the sweet sadness to even be the B side of the last track on a C.W. McCall album.

But in the end, there is only one song on this list that deserves to win Eurovision – that stands astride the others like a colossus. I tried not to look directly at it, I tried to find some other way of writing this, but there really was no help for me. There was no other way.

You need to vote for Moldova. You need to vote for Zdob shi Zdub. “So Lucky” ought to win Eurovision.

I even talked with my sister hundreds of miles away, who got her Masters in France and works in international relations, so she knows a few things about Eurovision. I tried to talk myself out of repping Moldova. But in the end, I needed to rep Moldova. And you do, too.

In the end, Eurovision is an annual ritual where Europe discovers itself anew – it finds a new face for itself that it wants to celebrate, and it invests in this face both pride and humility, both meaning and absurdity, and, most importantly, when it works, the joy of life and glory of music. With this in mind, there is no better Eurovision song in the final than “So Lucky.” Period.

And I would say this even if I weren’t both a trombonist and a unicyclist.

– Pete