Eurovision freaks this season prefer outfits in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Photo: REUTERS
If London could be compared with Moscow, then Liverpool with St. Petersburg. There is also a lot of water, low brick buildings, much fewer migrants compared to the capital, ship docks (the Titanic was put on the water there) and wind. If London is super-progressive, then Liverpool is rather canonical, calm and conservative. It is all the more surprising for the residents of the city to see on the streets not cheerful and loud fans of the football club Everton or Liverpool, but representatives of the LGBT community – the profile audience of Eurovision 2023, who moved from Ukraine to Britain. The final of the competition, which Russia again ignores, is scheduled for May 13. And “KP” offers to admire the typical representatives of this show – those who are going to take not with their talents and voice, but with outrageousness, provocation and hairy male legs from under an evening dress.
Finland
Our neighbors obviously had heard enough of the songs and seen enough of the clips of the Little Big * group, which until recently rehearsed in the Leningrad region (from there to the Finnish border is within easy reach!), and decided to look like Russian colleagues. Soloist Ere Peuhenen made bangs with a barcode and a mustache, like Ilya Prusikin*, dressed up in an acid tank top with a spiked collar over his naked body and saddled the members of the Käärijä band in pink latex outfits (including men) on all fours. Rap, electronica and metal in the song “Cha Cha Cha” mixed into a slurred mess. Does it matter? Most importantly, the guys powerfully declared themselves. Now bookmakers believe in their victory!
Croatia
The performance of the Croatian band Let3 turned out to be no less eccentric – fat and shaggy men in makeup, either the vice police or George Michael’s dancers in shorts and stockings, jumped around the stage to the children’s song “Mama Š” (the essence of the text is that mom bought tractor). No, this is not a one-time promotion. At home, these comrades became famous for cultivating the ideals of feminism and LGBT.
So in the prim UK, the Croats decided to speculate on the fashion agenda. As they write (“KP” physically did not find the strength to check it), Let3 often perform without clothes. So the British this time, one might say, were lucky.
Germany
Since one of the most popular German bands Rammstein will never perform at Eurovision, you can send at least their clones to the contest. Apparently, they decided so at the national selection in Germany and sent the gothic industrial metal band Lord of the Lost to Liverpool with the song Blood & Glitter about sparkles and blood. The band’s frontman Chris Harms on stage was more like Taisiya Povaliy: he performed in the costume of the Firebird, painted his lips, eyes, stood on his heels and bared one leg. The soloist’s hair and face were copiously smeared with sparkles – apparently, so that the audience could understand the meaning of the composition. Or so that men who are used to dressing the same way in everyday life do not be greedy to vote for the opposite German.
Australia
Only a careless schoolboy can represent Australia in Europe. But the organizers of the show were generous and allowed the island nation to participate in Eurovision back in 2015. Since then, the artists of this country have never won the competition (they climbed to a maximum of second place). But regularly continue to enjoy the show. This year, the Voyager group was brought to Liverpool from Perth – these guys, fortunately, passed by the “blue line”, but visually they will not yield to any freak in the show: the song Promise will be sung by a bearded man, a woman in amulets, two bald bespectacled men and charismatic leader Daniel Estrin (by the way, a German!), whose half of his head is shaved, and on the other, a thick gray mane reaches his chest. The perfect team to win. Why is Perth not joking?
Italy
Here everything is according to the worked out scheme. Inspired by the victory of Conchita Wurst at Eurovision 2014, the representative of Italy, Marco Mengoni, decided to practically repeat the success of his colleague. True, thank God, there were no evening dresses. During the performance of the Due Vita song, the singer dressed in leather pants and a blouse embroidered with rhinestones, not at all like men’s clothing. This part of the wardrobe sparkled like diamond scales, and together with the earring in her right ear and Mengoni’s feminine plasticity, she created the image of Conchita, who was disillusioned with the travesty strategy and embarked on the path of correction – she had already cut her hair and refused the dress, but had not yet thrown off women’s blouses .
* recognized by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as foreign agents
