EUROVISION!

I’d like to apologize for being so late in writing about the Eurovision song contest. I've seen dozens of articles about Evgeny Pluschenko performing in this contest and I couldn’t tell if it was that big a deal or not, but now I realize, it’s very much kind of a big deal.

Apparently, the contest has been around since 1956. It’s an annual contest held among members of the European broadcasting union. Each member station chooses a song and singer to represent its country in the competition. Each country has a set of votes, which can be decided by televoting or other means. The most votes wins.

Anyway, the reason you are reading about the contest on this site (finally) is that apparently, Russia just won its first Eurovision title. And Evgeny Pluschenko’s skating accompanied singer Dima Bilan’s winning performance of the song "Believe!."

This is no amateur singing contest, mind you. The winning song was produced by Timbaland, according to The Guardian.

Congratulations to Russia! And congrats to Pluschenko – he snagged himself an incredible amount of exposure from that one performance. You can check it out here.

From what I can tell, Pluschenko is not really performing on a lot of ice, so he's basically waving his arms dramatically and kind of jumping around (although that picture is pretty impressive). Still, it appears to have been effective.