Overthinking Eurovision 2013: Sweden and Switzerland

In our latest look at Eurovision, Matthew Wrather tackles two countries whose names he can’t mix up: Sweden and Switzerland.

In this installment of our Eurovision 2013 coverage, Matthew Wrather looks at two countries whose names he could never mix up, Sweden’s Robin Stjernberg with “You” and Switzerland’s Takasa (formerly Heilsarmee) with “You and Me.”

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8 Comments on “Overthinking Eurovision 2013: Sweden and Switzerland”

  1. Rob #

    Emil Ramsauer is so old, he toured with Franz Ferdinand.

    Reply

    • Matthew Wrather OTI Staff #

      Mark has been bugging me to implement a like button for comments. Gotta get around to that.

      Reply

      • DanAlt #

        We’re pretty happy with the “Top Comments” plugin, but I just realized it hasn’t been updated since 2008. Still – it seems to work just fine for us.

        Reply

  2. Seminymous Coward #

    I’m a bit disappointed that the video failed to mention Heilsarmee’s members are all in the actual Salvation Army and have performed in its uniforms. I was more disappointed to hear about it in the first place, though; I watched the music video in full in ignorance of their affiliation first, so it was a pretty rough case of artist/work mismatch for me.

    Reply

    • Matthew Wrather OTI Staff #

      Was that not clear? Yes, they’re all actually soliders (which, I learned while researching this, is what you call Salvationists).

      Reply

      • Seminymous Coward #

        I rewatched the video and didn’t catch it this time either, but there’s always a chance I’m dense.

        Anyway, rereading my comment, it came out more negative than I intended, so I’ll explicitly note that enjoyed the piece overall, like the rest of this series. It’s been a delight.

        Reply

        • Matthew Wrather OTI Staff #

          I’m really glad, because we’re having a blast doing them.

          Reply

  3. mim #

    The salvation army has also been known to outright exclude gay members (if it’s from certain missions or from the organization isn’t clear though) Either way, while this is an interesting observation, it probably has less weight than implied. There are after all quite a few songs that have been altered or disqualified due to overt politics.

    Trivia:
    The swedish church actually agreed to same sex marriage back in 2009

    Eurovision is mostly seenas a gay male interest, at least in host country, on par with showtunes.

    The most famous drag act is actually After Dark, which has been in the Eurovision qualification competition twice, but never won.

    Reply

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