Euro kitsch finds perfect home in Azerbaijan
(BAKU) - With skintight metallic outfits, topless hunks and sparkling blindfolds, this year's Eurovision Song Contest showed its usual lack of understated style in an equally over-the-top oil-rich city.
The Azerbaijani capital Baku certainly has plenty of glitter, with its Crystal Hall -- built in the shape of a crystal -- topped with swirling lasers and dripping in lights that changed colour to match each competing nation's flag.
In case anyone was in doubt about Baku's love of glitz, they only had to look back across the bay where three skyscrapers called the Flame Towers ran a non-stop light display of Eurovision symbols and flags across their facades.
Not to mention the neon-lit clocktower in the shape of one of the oil derricks that has pumped the grand yet chaotic city with serious money since the 19th century.
To reinforce the point, one of the video sequences about Azerbaijan shown between the acts was called "Land of Energy" and dramatically hovered over an oil rig before cutting to the lights of the city.
Baku has embraced Eurovision in a big way. The Eurovision logo is on buses and a shiny new fleet of London-style cabs. It is emblazoned on open-air video screens, flags and in the seaside park.
One of the fans watching, Amir Vernau, a nurse from Germany, wore a matching silver lurex suit and facepaint. "I love glitter and for me, the Eurovision Song Contest and glitter must be together," he insisted.
There's nothing subtle about Azerbaijan's bid for supremacy as Eurovison hosts and that fitted perfectly with most of the performers' philosophy that more is more.
While British entry Engelbert Humperdinck, a classic pro from the 1960s, went for a classic black suit to perform in a song that sadly for the crooner came second-last, most other contestants wanted a bit more sparkle.
Lithuania's contestant Donny Montell sang "Love is Blind" in a rhinestone blindfold. Before ripping it off and breaking into a cartwheel.
France's Anggun squeezed herself into a shiny metallic gold dress and performed with three hunky topless gymnasts in equally tight white trousers.
Greece's song "Aphrodisiac" required singer Eleftheria Eleftheriou to wear a sparkly ultra-short skirt and toss her long Shakira-style hair.
Cash-strapped Greeks were undoubtedly hoping the voters would be thoroughly turned off, thereby avoiding the expense of hosting the show next year.
Pastora Soler, who represented Spain with her ballad "Quedate Conmigo" ("Stay With Me"), had admitted that the local broadcasters jokingly begged: "Please, don't win!"
It took Russia's heartwarming Buranovskiye Babushki -- grandmothers from a provincial village -- to put things in perspective with a simple but dignified stage show involving a model stove and a large tray.
The group of women have charmed audiences with their homespun appeal, even if they have sharpened up their dance moves in lime-bark slippers, and they scored a widely predicted second place.
Ultimately though the Swedish entry Loreen, performing "Euphoria," swept the audience away with a classy dance duet and irritatingly catchy "Going u-u-u-u-u-u-up" chorus.
But those waiting with bated breath to see if she would breach Eurovision etiquette in a big way by commenting on the country's rights record, after being briefed by activists, were disappointed.