835/917 Stefan Raab: Wadde hadde dudde da (Germany 2000)

Humor is difficult and in Eurovision almost impossible. Call me a Mr KillJoy, but so far I don't recall any good Eurovision entry that can be called funny. There have been of course numerous unintentionally ridiculous entries during the years, but if the song has been made intentionally to make the audience laugh, they seldom do, at least not me. The first German entry of the new millenium, the song number 835 managed to make some people smile, but I wasn't among them.

Stefan Raab got away with murder in 1998, when his song Guildo hat euch lieb, a pretentious comedy moment sung by "character" Guildo Horn managed to gather enough points for the 9th place. Two years later Raab decided to improve the result by singing himself his own entry, which was even more pretentious.

Raab and his team put on a great show, I don't deny that. Glittering clothes, suggestive choreography, lightning tricks, dashing girls (who would take off some superfluous clothing during the finale in a good Buck's Fizz fashion) and childish lyrics repeating the same phrase over and over again, managed to hide quite well the absence of any substance or even melody in this entry, that I can hardly call a song. The televoting audience seemed to have fun, they voted the song fifth in the final results (among 24 songs competing).

I disagreed violently, hating this "song" from the first time I heard it and after 13 years it hasn't come any better. Luckily this song and the 1998 German entry are not the only things to remember Stefan Raab by. In 2004 he wrote a decent ballad Can't wait until tonight for Germany playing guitar in the backing band. When Germany hosted the contest in 2011, he was one of the competent trio that served as hosts in the contest.

When thinking of Stefan Raab, these two moments are the ones I prefer to his 1998 and 2000 entries, which both deserve the lowest points on my scale.

My points 1/5.