(nb to eds: the polls aren’t automatically closing on time - it might be something to do with the time on our sever - will check. currently closing them manually)

I am a racist. They all look the same to me.

Haven’t decided who to vote for. I like the brash production and sheer melodic gumption of RUS, but loathe his voice; I really like the boy band vocals of ESP but am somewhat bored and put off by the blah arrangement.

Tom I am off to Japan for ages tomorrow, I don’t know when GER is next slated to thrash our paltry opposition (or indeed who they are) but I’mma send you my track today.

It was Philip Glass, not Reich iirc. Beaten by my own dodgy selection (in that Manu Dibango is not Togolese but the featured vocalist on the selected song was).

I’m still not holding with the French team selection despite assertions its “clearly a French record” seeing as the artist under whose name the single was sold was American. If Prince moves to Italy and releases a single solely in Italian with an Italian backing band, does that mean I can claim Prince for Italy?

It is surely only a matter of time until we get random Googlers skewing one of the votes.

The only one I’ve had a serious nationality problem with is the Spaniards (and I ended up voting Russia on the merits), but their strong presence on the Spanish charts could be an argument in their favor. (Whereas letting Nelly Furtado represent Portugal in the Pop World Cup was absurd, and I voted against, to no avail.) The French entry was clearly a French song, Croatia made an honest mistake, and Oskar is close enough in time to his Russian days to count as Russian. (And Google searches credit the song to The Oskar or to The Oskar & Psycholovers, so it’s not as if he’s now just one member in an American band. Of course the first Google hit is us!) I never did like the “If your parents are Ukrainian (let’s say) or if you lived somewhere forty years ago you get to count as that country” rule. (I questioned (at least in my own mind) the eligibility of Gogol Bordello and Steve Reich/Dizzee Rascal in the Pop World Cup, though the Reich tune was one of my favorite entries [I forget how I voted, though], and I think I preferred Gogol Bordello’s opponent anyway.) Maybe there needs to be a Rule Clarification.

Oskar “How To Find Bin Laden”: This is catchy and hilarious, with an underlying tunefulness that delivers a lot of emotion without telling us that that’s what they’re doing. Reminds me of Thomas Rusiak’s Teddybears STHLM collab, “Hiphopper,” which works in much the same way, and which Jessica also introduced me to. Excellent job, Jessica!

Camila “Yo Quiero”: Smooth acoustics, w/ fast gentle vocals that contain disguised barbs. Very nice.

Spain would have gotten my vote in many of these matches, but I go with the Russo-American lunacy.

Easy win for Russia, says I.