Georgia: Eurovision Controversy

Following its recent war with Russia, Georgia had initially planned to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest to be staged in Moscow, but later changed its mind. However, if reversing that decision might have initially seemed an attempt to repair damaged relations, yesterday’s national song contest proved just the opposite.

In two posts, This is Tbilisi Calling explains the possible controversy surrounding the lyrics of the country’s likely entry.

Georgians may use the Eurovision Song Contest to poke fun at neighbouring Russia after losing last year’s war between the two countries if one potentially provocative song is chosen by the Georgian public as their entry for 2009. Eurovision, of course, will be held this year in Moscow, where the song Put-In Disco would probably not get much of an enthusiastic welcome. […]

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[…] its chorus goes like this: “We Don’t Wanna Put In/The negative move/It’s killin’ the groove.” What you actually hear ,of course, is “we don’t wanna Putin” […]

Today, the same blog announced that We Don’t Wanna Put In by Stefane and 3G had been chosen as the country’s entry.

The slyly anti-Russian song We Don’t Wanna Put In has been chosen as Georgia’s entry to the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow - if the event’s organisers allow one of the entries to denigrate the host country’s prime minister, of course. […]

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