PREVIEW: Can Lena do it again at this year's Eurovision Song Contest?

By Helen Maguire May 13, 2011, 14:06 GMT

Dusseldorf, Germany - Lena, the bubbly 19-year-old German who won last year's Eurovision Song Contest with her mixture of teenage awkwardness and innocent charm, faces tough competition to defend her title at this year's final in Dusseldorf.

A total of 24 other finalists will seek to outsing, outdance and outglitter Germany to win this year's trophy, as well as the right to stage the contest in their own country next year.

Since winning last year, Lena Meyer-Landrut has become such a familiar figure in Germany that she has dispensed with her surname - along with some of the wide-eyed naivety with which she burst onto the European pop scene.

Her competition entry, Taken By A Stranger, is darker and more suggestive than last year's catchy hit, Satellite. It was selected by national public vote after she performed a series of songs on German television - prompting some complaints of 'Lena fatigue'.

Others criticized the decision for Lena to compete a second time, as her popularity flopped following the release of her album, My Cassette Player, on which critics said that awkward English lyrics and dull tunes failed to capture the verve of her first hit.

Despite this, many entrants appear to have emulated Lena's example, such as Austrian 20-year-old R&B singer Nadine Beiler, or Emmy, the Armenian entrant tipped to win according to Google's unofficial chart based on search engine inquiries.

Lena faces stiff competition, not just from the eastern European states that have dominated Eurovision for several years, but also from western Europe where it is enjoying a resurgence, not least due to its popularity among the gay scene, who relish the camper aspects of the competition.

Each year, Eurovision parties are popular as fans of the show dress up and gather round their television sets to mimic the sing-song multilingual voices announcing competitors' scores, cheering to their country of choice.

Audience participation is a key aspect of the show, as points are allocated 50-50 by a professional jury and public telephone vote from participating countries.

The finals also offer a chance to dust off the atlas, as the definition of 'Europe' is stretched to include entrants from Iceland to Azerbaijan and include countries such as Russia, Georgia and Switzerland, several Nordic states and competitors from the Baltics and the Balkans.

One of this year's catchiest acts are Irish twin brothers Jedward, who bounce about the stage with spiky hair-dos to their dancefloor track Lipstick.

Moldovan entry Zdob si Zdub is also all about the stage act, which featurs a fairy on a monocycle and tall pointy hats 'acting as cosmic antennae,' according to the Eurovision website.

France meanwhile has staged Amaury Vassili, described as the world's youngest professional tenor, whose operatic lyrics in Corsican, not French, show the extent to which linguistic minorities are part of the European melee.

At the other end of the spectrum, Britain has entered successful boy-band Blue - a sign that the country is once again taking Eurovision seriously after a history of deriding Eurovision as a trashy display of manufactured euro-pop.

Places in the final are guaranteed each year to the five largest contributors to the European Broadcasting Union, the so-called Big Five - Germany, France, Britain, Spain and Italy, which came on board this year.

The remaining 38 countries were whittled down in two semi-finals earlier in the week, which knocked out entries such as Israeli transvestite Dana International who won in 1998, and Portuguese group Homens de Luta, whose protest song arguably helped topple prime minister Jose Socrates.

One can quibble over artistic merits, but Eurovision is undeniably a huge media event costing a total of 25 million euros to stage. German broadcaster ARD expects the show to draw more than 120 million viewers - making it one of the most watched non-sporting events worldwide.

And even if Lena is unsuccessful at retaining her title, the western German city of Dusseldorf is already a winner of the contest which has brought glamour, excitement and thousands of Eurovision fans to a city not used to standing in the media spotlight.

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