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You're my lover, undercover - We would like to share this newest 12points.tv CD review: Helena Paprizou's compilation album. 

Helena Paparizou - Greatest Hits & More (2011) ****

It´s December, so it is litterally raining compilation albums, and when it comes to Eurovision artists this is an excellent oportunity to take notice of the essentials.

I cannot say it anyway else: Helena Paparizou's work is quite something! For her early work, when she was still part of Antique, you'd have to get your hands on another compilation CD, the Very Best (2004), that is quite pleasant too. Greatest Hits & More, that was released recently, comes as a very nice follow up to complete your La Paparizou collection!

Let's start with the More-CD. The first track, Baby It's Over, impresses. What a delightful song with such a lot of European hit potential, that it might even compensate for the Greek deficits. Play the song once and it will be in your head for at least three days. And if this for any reason wouldn't work for you (impossible if you ask me), then there still is Love Me Crazy, which is so eey-eey-eey great and just as easily gets stuck in your head.

The compilation part of this album presents us 40 of Helena's hits. Well, there was some cheating going on there, as not all songs really made it to the charts. Where Antique was a bit predictable now and then, Solo-Helena sounds grown-up like a pop diva should: always dramatical (she is Greek after all), sometimes luciously bombastic, sometimes rocky, sometimes in English, sometimes in Greek and sometimes just a sweet little nothing inbetween. It seems rock is very popular in Greece though, in my ears that part seems a bit empty and dated. My advise: Helena, more europop, less rock, please!

But anyway, Helena offers quite some variation on these three discs, showing she is the real pop diva from Greece with still quite some potential for the rest of Europe. As far as I'm concerned she should do a Carola or a Charlotte and just make a comeback on the Eurovision stage. She also has her roots in Sweden too after all. Just get some advice from the other two ladies...

Helena, come back!!!

A strange experiment for Eurovision, its "Nul Points" result was definitely a mistake.

"Who sails my boat?", the translation of this songs title, is an appropriate Eurovision question, if there ever was one.  It's certainly more interesting than previous Eurovision song titles posed, such as "What About My Dreams?" (Hungary 2011), "Why Me?" (Ireland 1992) and the dreadful "Love?" (Ireland 2005). I hope that for Remedios' sake, she wears some shoes if she's in her proverbial boat, because if it's made of wood she will get splinters within her bare feet.

Here's the result of the 12points jury: did the song sail or sink?

Song/Lyrics - 10/12
Surely the most daring of all 1983 entrants, the song stayed was the polar opposite to the Swedish entry that year ("Främling") and musically was a mix between flamenco and funk. And looking at the translated lyrics, the song is about nothing but passion - "The green of your green eyes, look at me/Look at me, so I can look at you, look at me/Look at me, so I can look at you." Meow! I wouldn't want to get in Remedios' way if she fell in love with me, especially because yours truly has a pair of green eyes.

Performance - 12/12
It takes a while for Remedios to warm up, just swaying back and forth at the start of the song. But that finger starts pointing, chastizing someone, and when she flips that hand up in a "don't fuck with me" move, what's not to love? The fact that her vocals are more in the flamenco tradition - raw and dramatic - goes against the typical perfect and clean Eurovision standard. This proved to be too scary to juries to handle but always left an impression on me.

Choreography (including Arm-ography and Hair-ography) - 10/12
This one gets a special mention for a new category: finger-ography. The afore-mentioned finger pointing and additional finger-wagging is a very Mediterranean thing, and it looks so threating on TV! But it added something very unique to this song which I have rarely seen since.

Key Change Effectiveness - 0/12
This song didn't deem a key change necessary, unfortunately. 

Camp Factor - 12/12
This song deserves 14 points out of 12 just for that outfit. What is that? Is it a sheet knotted and sewn in the right places, or as the commentator Terry Wogan says in this video's commentary, her father's bathrobe?  Add to this a pair of bare feet, amazingly manicured nails and a few anguished rants, this song is much deserving of 12 points in this category.
 

TOTAL: 44/60.  A huge hit with the audience in the concert hall where this was held, it did nothing for the voting juries. Why do you think that is? Feel free to leave your comments below - we always welcome opinion.

++ Greek videos online ++  Yet another 12points party coming up ++ Finally Christer Björkman managed to get Paparizou to MF! ++ ..

One of the traditions in Melodifestivalen is, that a new version of the previous year's winning song will be performed by another artist. Expressen, a Swedish newspaper revealed today, that Popular will be sung by no one less than ESC 2005 winner Helena Paparizou.

++ Perez Hilton likes Loreen ++ Sweden likes Cyprus  ++ We would all like to go to London ++ ..

After last weekend's preview event in Amsterdam it now is London's turn. This weekend the fifthe annual preview event will take place in London's Shadow Lounge. The party will be presented by Paddy O'Connell and Nicki French and will stage eight of this year's Eurovision particpants as well as Omar Naber (Slovenia 2005). 12Points.tv will be in London to report about this marvelous event.