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And Finally Artist News
Russia shuns beards with alternative Eurovision(s)
By Aly Barchi | Published on Thursday 29 May 2014
Russia is holding not one, but two, singing competitions to take on Eurovision, Billboard confirms. Because apparently it took a glamorous lady with a handsome beard, aka this year’s Eurovision queen Conchita Wurst, for Russia’s publicly anti-LGBT governing authorities to realise that the Song Contest is, in fact, quite camp. And all the richer for it, I say.
But the Russian Ministry Of Defence doesn’t say. And it has now proclaimed that a brand new international competition it is organising, that aims to find kids and teens with musical talent, is “an alternative to bearded Eurovision”.
The final of the clean-shaven comp takes place this coming Monday, hot on the heels of the news that Intervision – a Eurovision rival staged in the then USSR a few times in the late 1970s – is coming back. A return of Intervision has been mooted for a while, and it’s now been confirmed that a song contest for former Soviet Bloc and various Asian countries will be staged in Sochi later this year.
Certain Russian officials, of course, were disdainful of Wurst’s Eurovision win earlier this month, with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin saying on Twitter at the time: “Eurovision showed European integrators their Euro-prospect – a bearded girl”.
Bearded ‘lady’, if he pleases. This bearded lady:
