We’re really thrumming up to the day that the Eurovision Song Contest gets interesting now, so hold onto your hats.

And the Eurovision news is really coming in thick and fast, if the contest’s official website is anything to go by. Why, just yesterday we learnt that the Maltese entry has a side-job as a secretary. This sort of hard-hitting breaking news is enough to leave us giddy, we don’t mind telling you.

So here’s the Eurovision 2009 profiles for Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy from Ireland and Noa and Mira Awad from Israel…

Ireland · Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy, Et Cetera

Which Ireland will we be seeing at Eurovision this year? The annoyingly twee Ireland or the horrific bellowing turkey puppet Ireland? Well here’s the exciting news – this year there’s Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy, who are easily the most contemporary-sounding Irish Eurovision act in decades. True, that means they look and sound like they’re from an earnest 1985 documentary about kids with learning disabilities who’ve formed a band, but it still counts as progress for Ireland. What’s their song Et Cetera like? Rubbish. Next.

Israel · Noa and Mira Awad, There Must Be Another Way

For Israel – possibly the least European country on the face of the Earth – Eurovision has always presented two opportunities. Like the rest of the continent, there’s the opportunity to force-feed the world three minutes of worthless discopop, but there’s also a chance to spread a message. That message is invariably based on the theme ‘Look, we know everything’s pretty buggered up over here, but we promise that we’re not all bastards’. And that couldn’t be made more clear than There Must Be Another Way by Noa and Mira Awad. One’s a Jew and one’s a Muslim, you see, and they’ve put aside their religious differences to sing in perfect harmony. To sing a really bad song in perfect harmony. A really bad song that you wouldn’t be able to hum if someone held a gun to your head. Ich.

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