Eurovision Flashback Athens 2006: Lordi Win With “Hard Rock Hallelujah”

Eurovision 2006 in Athens, Greece

After fourty-five years in the Eurovision wilderness, with the help of Demons and a hard-rock sound, Helsinki cruised to victory in Athens. Lordi won the contest with 292 points – a record at the time – and successfully smashed the untouchable status of ballads and dance-songs as the only viable Contest choices. Notably too spider-cam was introduced, enabling panning and sweeping shots of the performances on stage in Greece.

The Winner

There’s something quite special about Lordi besides the fact that they were so obviously not Eurovision in the slightest. It was a left-field play and could quite easily one imagines have gone awry were it not for the strength of ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ as a song. It’s composition was a breath of fresh air and Lordi brought an altogether different kind of fierce to the Contest.

The Best Of The Rest

Tina Karol nailed it for Ukraine. Kiev makes divas like none of the other ex-Soviets and Tina’s ‘Show Me Your Love’ was a bizarrely folksy, dizzying and distinctively Ukrainian upbeat affair. The great big note and twirling Cossack dancing of the piece was truly fabulous. Carola may have failed to score any twelve points but she added some star quality to the Contest, and the enormous train was just plain amaze.

http://youtu.be/iTAz3Gx-1QE

Unsung Heroes

Poor Anna. She only came 9th and has forever been written off as one of Greece’s worst results at the Contest. Anna rasped through her performance like no other and her tangled mane of blonde hair was ‘Everything’. The wild head-shaking segment at the end also totally sells her performance. Ireland’s Brian Kennedy is also often unfairly overlooked. The message of his song was beautiful and the understatement of the performance was refreshing amidst the swirling pool of chaotic Eurovision bombast.

The Losers

Evidently after Chiara Europe’s resounding answer was “we don’t, we don’t, we don’t.” Poor Fabrizio. Nil points is embarrassing but a single point is even more humiliating. Not quite hideous enough to receive no points enough but not meriting of anything more than a single point. He performed with gusto with the backing dancers though so he gets points for that at least.

Angus Quinn contributed this report from the U.K. You can follow him on Twitter at @Angus_Quinn17. Then like our Facebook page to keep up-to-date with all the latest news and gossip.