The House of Eurovision has announced this year’s winner of the Barbara Dex award… and it goes to Rona Nishliu of Albania. Ireland’s Jedward came second, as they did last year, and Bulgaria’s Sofi Marinova was in third place. The award is given for the worst dressed artist in the contest, and named after Barbara Dex, who represented Belgium in 1993. A record number of votes were cast online this year according to the House of Eurovision, with a total of 2,851 being awarded to those acts the viewers thought dressed badly.
Here are the results of the Barbara Dex Award 2012:
1. Albania – Rona Nishliu (829)
2. Ireland – Jedward (551)
3. Bulgaria – Sofi Marinova (232)
4. The Netherlands – Joan Franka (163)
5. Ukraine – Gaitana (145)
6. Denmark – Soluna Samay (82)
7. Turkey – Can Bonomo (76)
8. Sweden – Loreen (66)
9. Bosnia & Herzegovina – Maya Sar (62)
-. San Marino – Valentina Monetta (62)
Photo: Eurovision.tv – Thomas Hanses (EBU)
I knew it! As soon as you go for sth artistic, you get the Barbara Dex award but if you are slutty, silly or dated, you never get it. I guess that those voting in the Barbara Dex awards would vote for almost every good opera production too. Thus this is a big compliment because being misunderstood by a certain segment of hardcore ESC fans (those who vote in polls like this) is a certain indication of quality and substance.
Agreed with you. Slovenia should have won, period. Her 5th place in Albanian, third, alone on stage, proves wrong all the esc fans who only cared for “La la love”…
What does her dress add to the song, how are they connected and why is her dress artistic and f.ex Jedward’s suits aren’t?
I really liked Jedward last year and do think that this year they were off, but not in style per se, but as “Waterline” being a bad song and nothing would add to it I think… I keep thinking that Slovenia FAILED at what they tried to do and looked clichéd, old fashion and totally off. The fact everyone thought it would qualify and finished 17th just proves it was a huge failure. Someone here, I won’t say who, kept saying that Iceland wouldn’t qualify and that “Suus” would be dead last. The fact it finished 5th proves that the dress did NOT stop MANY to vote for it. That enough should make people think twice before voting for Albania in BD, no?
So you are saying that the majority of people voting in the Barbara Dex Award were wrong and the majority of people voting last Saturday were right.
No I’m saying that the numbers are significantly different. Only hardcore esc fans vote in BD look at the numbers, in comparison the last vote in Swedish televote probably got more points than ALL BD votes together… I don’t agree with the results on Saturday you know. IMO Albania should NOT have come 5th. But it IS what the average European vote looked like an the base on which we have to built an objective analysis, more than the few thousand hardcore esc fans around the net.
I explain on my profile page. Scroll down to the bottom for Albania.
Btw, have you ever seen a production of one of Richard Strauss’ operas in Munich? If yes, you will know the answer without checking my profile page.
Just so you know: I agree with you ^^
In the last time I have just have some problems with the quality and artistic argument, which I often use to explain why I like something. It is hard to logically say why something is objectively a quality product, because what I call quality or art is influenced by my opinion about something. and that is not objective.
Of course every judgement we pass on a work of art is partly subjective, shaped by our biography and God only knows what else, but the importanat thing is that it is only partly subjective, at least if you have some knowledge about artistic forms and traditions. In the case of music f. e., live vocals can be judged objectively, coherence and orchestration too, and lyrics.
Btw, I have never understood why people equate their personal taste with quality. What I personally like sometimes has only slightest connection to quality. I utterly dislike Wagner’s operas f. e.(except for the Flying Dutchman) but at the same time I know that they are of high quality. I can even explain why they are fantastic works of art but even that does not help me enjoy them more. On the other hand, I love trash sometimes, like this year’s Moldovan entry. There is a difference between ‘bad’ and ‘I don’t like’ (and ‘quality’ and ‘like’), and I wish that people would pay more attention to it.
I forgot to vote for the Barbara Dex award!I would prefer it if Rona had worn that dress from her official video.Other deserving winner of the award would be Ireland,Belarus and Slovenia.I also didn’t like the outfits of Ukraine,Bulgaria and Portugal.
I really hope that this nonsense called “award” will be history very soon. Those guys are really hopeless.
Btw, I never understood why this “award” was named after Barbara Dex. What the hell was wrong with her dress anyway?
I have never understood either. I really like ‘Iemand als jij’ and never thought that Barbara was an example of bad taste. Celine Dion’s fashion sense in 1988 was much worse f. e..
agreed and signed
I have Belgium last in 93. I hate everything about it, but it was not the worst dress ever in esc history! It’s like they havent seen ANYTHING from the 80s where it’s like ALL worst than Barbara Dex!
I think that the majority of those who vote for this kind of “awards” actually started following the ESC after the 90′s and don’t have a clue about the years from 50′s to 80′s
Btw, my top for 1993: Norway and my bottom: Austria.
93 is a great year and my all time #3 is in it
Norway 93 is my all time #7
I have BiH first, closely followed by Norway … and Austria last too. Germany was hideous too.
yes Fazla’s “Sva bol svijeta” is my all time #3 with some of the best lyrics ever in esc
Overall: 90′s rule in ESC (only one bad year: 99, and so many great ones: 93 and especially 91, 94, and 97), along with the 70′s my fav decades in ESC, followed by the 60′s
My ranking:
01. 70′s
01. 90′s
03. 60′s
04. 00′s
05. 80′s
06. 50′s
1. 60s
…)
2. 90s
3. 10s (only 3 years so far but things are looking good …
4. 70s
5. 50s
6. 00s
7. 80s
to me it’s all about the 60s and 90s as well, and I do love the 2010′s too, many horrible craps in the worst of all history, but also some of the best songs ever as well!
1994-1997 was the Golden Age of Eurovision, with 1996 as my favourite year ever. 1982 and 1987 are probably the two worsts, if you ask me.
1. 90′s
2. 60′s
3. 50′s
4. 00′s
5. 80′s
6. 70′s
1996 is my favourite contest ever too (well perhaps together with 1965 …). It was the only year Germany did not participate too.
Haha, yes that’s true. I think Germany started to lose it after they didn’t send Cindy Berger in 1988 (one of the best German Ein Lied für… songs ever).
1965? I think that year was pretty uninteresting. My favourite from that year is actually the nul points “Aurinko laskee länteen” from Finland, performed by the Abraham Lincoln-lookalike Viktor Klimenko. A wonderfully somber and melancholic song. Typical Finnish.
I have Finland in 2nd place in 1965 and only like Luxemburg’s winning entry better. But YU, PT and IT were fantastic too.
If Germany had participated in 1996 (Leon, Blauer Planet *shudders*), it probably would not be my favourite contest. In fact, Germany was the worst country in the 90s imo, one cr*p following another …
In 1996, the P countries rule on my list.
The 70′s , the worst decade in eurovision?!!! Sorry, but,…no way!
Where do i start with the gems?: 1970: Italy, Germany, 1971: Portugal, Yugoslavia, 1973: Spain, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Israel, Yugoslavia, 1975: Germany, Monaco, Turkey, 1976: Portugal, Belgium, Greece, 1977: France, 1978: Israel, 1979: Denmark, France, Finland or even Germany; and last but not least, my #1 of all time: Yugoslavia 76!
I didn’t mean it to be worst, just “the least good”.
Honestly, I think it’s a tie between the 70′s and 80′s. The 80′s were much more divided; some great songs and some horrible. You don’t need to convince me about the quality of many of the songs you counted there. Many of them belongs to my favourites too. I’m especially glad to see that someone loves “Panayia mou, panayia mou”, I thought I was alone there.
Some adds to your list though: Germany 1971, Monaco 1971, Netherlands 1971, Germany 1972, Sweden 1972, Monaco 1974, Ireland 1976, Finland 1977, Belgium 1978, Portugal 1979.
Portugal 1971 is good, but the Portuguese entry of that year should have been “Cavalo à solta”. End of story!
P.S. Maybe the 70′s were a bit better than the 80′s after all, when I think about it.
My vote was not wasted ! Probably the only award this entry deserved. Tacky and intimidating Banshee style perfectly described that…And another hopeless effort for this entry to convince us that it is something more than superficial nonsense..Nothing artistic to the dress either..wanted to pass by as such of course but..I have started losing hope that very one fell for that to the point they would consider this mess of an appearance as artistic but thankfully certain people have some judgement ! Well deserved
Ok I have to admit that the hysteric Suus lovers reactions are even better than the award itself
P.S. Barbara Dex was not that badly dressed of course to have an awarde named after her..But what she wore was unfortunate for the esc stage I think..On 1993 : 1. Switzerland 2. Ireland and last place : Turkey by far..
i think who ever styled jedward and rona don’t have a clue about fashion, jedward just looked like power rangers and rona well.. words can’t express how awfull she looked and the hair what going on with her hair? i love the dress that anngun from france was wearing and i thought pastora soler from spain looked beautiful as well
I don’t spend much time thinking about fashion. I almost always dress in the same style and wear the same colours (shades of green, blue and brown). Choosing Rona is the easy way out, chosen by the many who did not get her or her song, but consider themselves to be fashion experts of some kind. I try to avoid easy way outs. Thanks, Rona, once again.
P.S.: I voted for B&H, because Maya’s dress was very ugly and did not do justice to her beauty, imo. It did not fit the mood of the song either, imo again.
i love rona and her song but i just thought she looked horrible lol
I’m one of these rare kinds of people who don’t care much about the dress unless it’s something distracting from performance. With a good song you can dress yourself in rags for all I care.
I’m a huge fan of Rona’s dress, but even I have to admit that I hated that hair necklace. She was also pretty far from my worst dressed, at that (my Barbara Dex award this year goes to the tropical fish dress from Azerbaijan). Belarus were also dressed pretty repulsively, especially the lead singer.
I really didn’t like Rona’s dress but who cares when we are talking about an ACT based solely on the quality of the song and the performance.
I would have preferred an approach a la official clip.Even singing inside that black box would be great !
PS : I did like the hair styling though
I don’t think that Gaitana was poorly dressed. And Loreen? Pff some people are jealous of the winner. BTW where is Greece? Eleftheria’s dress was cheap. Could’ve been better. Can’t believe that she didn’t make it in the Top 10 here.
A well deserved winner imo, and I mostly agree with their top 10 (except for Denmark and Bosnia)