Shine!

May I introduce to you Holland's Eurovision songfestival entry for this year in Moscow: "Shine" performed by the Toppers! I saw sunday night's finals live on tv and this year the Netherlands opted for a different decision making progress than the previous years. The artists are long known (I think since end of  last year already) and tonight the winning song was chosen which they will perform in Moscow. A jury of 5 professionals gave their votes for six different songs that the toppers presented in a live show on tv and besides the professional jury the audience at home had the possibility to vote too! One third of the votes was given by the professionals, the rest by the audience. For the professionals, the song "Shine" was number 2 while the audience put it on number one so with all votes combined "Shine" became the winning song.

The three men who will perform at Moscow are very popular artists in the Netherlands. The "Toppers" as they call themselves are together since a few years and easily fill the Amsterdam Arena or similar big arenas for several days for extremely popular sing-a-long concerts. Shortly after they had been announced to be the artists for the dutch entry for Eurovision last year, one of their original members (Gerard Joling) decided to quit and for him a new member joined the Toppers (Jeroen van der Boom). Originally consisting of two gay members, now only one is left: Gordon! He is also the one who was very eager to get to the contest for his home country. He and Gerard Joling became immensely popular on tv as two very queer, very gay, very funny singers/entertainers with their own reallife soap, the Toppers concerts and many other tv shows they present with more or less huge success. Rene Froger is the third member, a very popular singer. After Joling left the group they brought in newcomer Jeroen van der Boom.

I like the chosen song, it was Jelle's and mine favorite too. It's a nice, happy, singable song. It's for sure not the winning entry, it's not eastern european enough I think... ;-) But still, I typical, yet nice eurovision song with a twist... though a little something is missing but in general it's a nice and worthy song for the contest. 'Nough talking, now listen to it:



Grand Prix hugs (in Germany the Eurovision Songfestival is known as the "Grand Prix")!