The Useless Critic 2.0

In case you missed Eurovision this past weekend - and if you're an American, you likely did - there were some truly talented acts among those competing for this year's prestigious title. There were some pretty boring acts, and there were only a few of truly strange contestants this time around (bummer).  Sweden's act Tusse was pretty talented; his joyful and uplifting track "Voices" was actually one of the few that seemed rather memorable to me. Turns out he's releasing it in French - which makes sense, as Tusse is Kongo-Kinshasa born. Tusse is enormously popular in Sweden from what I can tell, having won both Melodifestivalen (Sweden's precursor to Eurovision) and Swedish Idol. He's a talented guy, and I'm sure we're just seeing the start of what is bound to be a long and prolific career.   (you might not be able to watch this outside of Sweden so, see below) The French version of "Voices" is available for streaming here .  Also, whi...

After listening to Lena Meyer-Landrut sing 'Satellite' for about the thousandth time, I thought, "Hey, why don't we have an American version of Eurovision?" The U.S. could go head-to-head with the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and other titans of the new world. Lo and behold, several Google searches later, NBC had considered the idea, albeit based on U.S. states competing against one another rather than sovereign states. NBC recognizes the appeal of the show , and reportedly wants to launch a similar contest in the United States which would involve contestants from every state eventually competing for national recognition. Audience involvement, just as it happens in the Eurovision contest is critical. As viewers are ultimately those who pick the winner, often via a tele-voting process which involves casting votes via telephone calls or sending an SMS. In Europe, the audience of each country is not allowed to vote for their own contestant, which allows for a more im...