I assess the ESC as absolutely irrelevant as a contest for good popular music. It definitely does not reflect anything of the really good songs made in Europe. The rankings of the songs are always ridiculous to me. The eastern European countries mostly give the most votes to their direct neighbor countries. Western European countries have mostly been trailing behind no matter how good or bad the song was. I'm not impressed by the "winner" songs of the past years at all (including the German winning song 'Satellite'). I've rarely seen any of the really good German bands attempting to perform at the ESC at all.