Checking In on Nikki Yanofsky

February 1st, 2010, 2 Comments »

About two years, I wrote about the very young chanteuse Nikki Yanofsky. Commenters rightfully pointed out at the time that she was an impressive if non-amazing singer.

I was reminded of Ms. Yanofsky recently, so I thought I’d see what progress she’d made in the last two years. Here’s an MSNBC profile that suggests her fame is increasing (hilariously, you can hear her ask her mother “why does Daddy have Twitter?”):

And here she is singing at Carnegie Hall.

I’m lousy at predictions, but I could definitely see her fitting into the Norah Jones (here’s Ms. Yanofsky covering Jones’s “Don’t Know Why”) and Diana Krall easy-listening vein. Maybe she doesn’t achieve the same level of fame, but it’s worth noting that both of those singers are easy on the eyes, and Ms. Yanofsky is also pretty (he says, trying to sound as non-creepy as possible). There are no doubt hundreds of as good or better teenage singers in Canada, but few probably have the same savvy parental support and good looks.

I see that Nikki Yanofsky is also the singer of CTV’s ultra-cheesy Vancouver 2010 song, “I Believe”. I suppose that’s good press, in a David Foster kind of way.

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My Picks for Eurovision

May 12th, 2007, 6 Comments »

We just watched the 24 finalists perform in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest at the local public house. We’re currently in the 15-minute voting period, after which (I gather) each country’s voting pattern will be announced, and eventually a winner will be crowned.

In the meantime, allow me to pick whole I think will win. I wonder, are any of these videos up on YouTube yet? Hmm…not yet, YouTube appears to have blocked all Eurovision-related submissions for today.

Anyhow, I’m going with:

  1. Russia
  2. Hungary
  3. Finland

Hungary deserves to win, I think, but it’s hard to beat three hot Russian girls all tarted up and singing dirty lyrics.

I must find a video for the Ukrainian entry. If defies description, and expresses everything that I find so deeply surreal about this whole event.

UPDATE: I have located the Ukrainian entry. This isn’t from the contest tonight–I assume it’s from an earlier performance. You can get a sense of the weirdness nonetheless:

UPDATE #2: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Serbia’s answer to kd lang wins? And the mad, mad Ukraine comes in second? I call block (or is that bloc?) judging.

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