Ok – I admit it – I went to the Eurovision……
You went where?
A Whatsapp message pinged up on my phone as I had just unravelled the reissued Riverside Thelonious Monk with Tenors Box Set, from Analogue Productions, as was enjoying Ernie Henry’s honking blasts. I didn’t reply.
5 minutes later
We you the only heterosexual male there?
Steady on now.
Another 5 minutes
I thought you were going to Springsteen, seriously I thought you had taste in music.
Why was I receiving such abuse (and there was more of it, some of which cannot be repeated publicly) from my brothers? I had confessed to having gone to the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo.
For the uninitiated, the Eurovision is the largest “musical” event in the world. It has been run by the European Broadcasting Union for more than 60 years. The event is televised and the winners of the contest get the expensive honour of hosting in the following year. This year the contest was in Malmo, as Sweden won last year in Liverpool, who hosted it, for obvious reasons, because the 2022 winners were Ukraine. Up until the late 1990s the contest involved most of the Western European nations plus Israel, but it expanded massively when Eastern European countries arrived and massively improved the quality of the contest. Nowadays the European contest stretches from Iceland to Azerbaijan to Australia (don’t ask but they are worthy – entries are always excellent). This year there were 37 entrants, which had to be whittled down to 26 (subsequently 25 when the Netherlands were kicked out) for the grand final. There are two “semi finals” that eliminate 5 nations from each, and that is decided by “public vote” (i.e. televoting that appears to be easily manipulated).
The final has two voting procedures – a “expert jury” vote (50%) and “public vote” (50%). Although the voting has traditionally been the most popular part of the Eurovision (lots of wink wink nod nod to neighbouring countries), the prolonged jury phase has been curtailed to just the 12 points (the top mark) – usually by some narcissist in the voting country who goes on just a little bit too long, to the frustration of the event’s host. The jurys were actually abandoned about 25 years ago but were brought back in 2009: “After the public debate about neighbour and diaspora voting, we decided to give the national juries a say.” Very notable this year were the remarkable numbers of televotes for Ukraine and Israel (Croatia would have won on televote alone). Some years a runaway “winner” in the jury vote gets pegged back in the public vote – which is a little humiliating because so much attention is lavished on that performer for every douze (12) points, that they must be really traumatized to be overwhelmed by an Italian metal band (2021 – it was France and they are always good but haven’t won outright since 1962) in the televoting.
Where I come from, Ireland, the Eurovision is a curious event. It is beyond deeply uncool – mostly because my generation remember the god-awful cabaret acts of the 1970s and 1980s. High quality professional acts would not lower themselves to participate in front of 150 million tv viewers – and many more on youtube and streaming because – God forbid some of their colleagues would consider them gauche. Such Hubris. This explains why the United Kingdom, the home of modern popular music, has not sent a truly high end act (except for Sam Ryder – who everyone loves) to the Eurovision since Katrina and the Waves in 1997. Consequently, year after year, they get trounced by second rate euro disco trash that wouldn’t trouble the UK charts. Ireland, winners 7 times, has performed abysmally for the past 25 years – coming last a couple of times – and actually got relegated in 2002 (i.e. not involved in 2003). Too many countries for the big event. That problem was resolved by introducing the lucrative semi finals in 2004. At least the UK always get into the final: they are part of the “Big 5” that fund the EBU (UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy). The host nation, obviously, get into the final as well. One of those countries inevitably comes last in the final (this year, at least, the artists got to perform in the semi-finals so that we were familiar with their songs).
The Eurovision stopped being a song contest in 1999. For the previous 35 years, when your country was about to take the stage, your own conductor would appear – nod and conduct the local orchestra. But – if the act was a “band” they would play their instruments with the orchestra. The instruments were never miked up and they were represented as a taped backing track (Benny and Bjorn were not actually playing live in 1974). From ’99 it was full-on karaoke. No real instruments (even if they were on stage), only backing tracks – the only rule is that the singer had to sing live and the song couldn’t exceed 3 minutes. Like Top of the Pops with live vocals (I don’t think any of the interval acts sing live – I think they are all miming). Although for music purists, like me, this was an absolute abomination at the time, my brother (Dara) calmly explained to me that bands like Depeche Mode had basically being doing the same since the beginning, and pretty much no modern pop concert is really “Live.” Fair enough. So if it is not a song contest what is it?
The modern Eurovision is a stage extravaganza that uses top of the range modern technology to showcase the artists with unbelievable staging, graphics, pyrotechnics, dry ice, lazers, lights etc. The floor is a large screen. There is a gigantic screen at the back of the stage. More screens can be installed on the sides. The effect is almost like live performers (singer and a couple of dancers – no more than 5 mind!) in a Marvel like CGI setting. Why wouldn’t I want to see it in person.
So, having promised our 12 year old Taylor Swift and Eurovision (EV) obsessed daughter that we would take her as an end of primary school treat, off we went to Malmo, the child helping me overcome my anglo sense of uncoolness. The latter evaporated once we arrived in Sweden.
Sweden is the home of modern pop music. Starting with “Hooked on a Feeling” in 1974 (performed at this years EV), and then massively advanced by ABBA (the 1974 winners), Sweden takes pop music uber seriously. They have ruled the pop music world for the past 25 years. Don’t agree? Then google Denniz Pop and Max Martin and others. The 2023 winner was Loreen (previous winner with the brilliant “Euphoria” this was with “Tattoo” as song that starts off suspiciously like “The Winner Takes it All”) – and she is a serious artist.
Anyway, we arrived in Malmo on Saturday morning for the 3rd preview show of the Grand Final (impossible to source final tickets and anyway it ends too late). We stood at the side of the stage and watched. The show was – spectacular. It is hard to describe how well organized the event is – every word is scripted (particularly the jokes), every movement planned, the stage is cleaned and reset with props in about 60 seconds between acts. Subliminal stage management.
I have to confess to some trepidation going to the event, given the discomfort many have about the war in Gaza and Israel’s participation. Although this is officially an artsy show, and the Israeli performers and arts people are remarkably liberal, one would worry that political elements on both sides would interfere with the contest and there were also security concerns. There was little doubt that tensions were simmering behind the scenes.
The first time that we suspected trouble was when our own entry, Bambi Thug, failed to make an appearance at the flag waving ceremony. Neither did the Swiss or Greek entries. What was going on? And where was the Netherlands (a fun entry that we were looking forward to)? They had actually been disqualified but NOBODY bothered to tell the crowd. The show started and we eagerly anticipated Bambi’s performance. This was the first time in decades that I was confident of 1. Qualifying for the final and 2. A top ten place. The song, “Doomsday Blue,” combined a nice central lullaby chorus with death metal verses. Weird as you can imagine. An immediate hit with the audience. As usual, for an irish entry, they made a balls of the staging – overemphasizing the “witch” thing and minimizing the cutsie and catchy chorus. It was great at semi final 1. So when our turn came……we watch the performance on the screen. Our entry had decided to not turn up. There were a lot of disappointed Irish people in the audience. Apparently the Israeli commentators had made a few mean comments about the artists’ non binary status, the kitsch witch persona and her lack of love for Zionism and Bambi had taken umbrage – wanting the Israeli tv company kicked out or such like (mmm they have been participating for 60 years and the major sponsor is Moroccan Oil and Israeli company) – so, sanctimoniously sulking, she deprived us of her presence on stage. Thanks Bambi from my daughter (no longer a fan).
Having gotten over our disappointment, and our utter revulsion with the OTT lewd performance by the UK (good singer, good song, great staging – but – well watch it yourself), the remainder of the performances were great. One of the things that struck me about the Eurovision final was that, with the exception of the French and Portuguese performers, everyone else was either stunningly beautiful or really weird. We sent an ordinary pop group, Wild Youth, to the Eurovision in 2023 and they looked so uncomfortable in the ridiculous outfits that they were expected to wear. If a group of spotty dudes wearing t-shirts and ripped jeans appeared with guitars – I would totally vote for them, song unheard.
Amongst the weird non binary performers was a male wearing a skirt going by the name of Nemo, representing Switzerland. His stage prop was a large circular disc that acted like a see-saw. His performance was stratospheric. I am still beguiled. It looked good on TV but, in person, it was just amazing. The winner for me; and it turned out for everyone else. See for yourself above.
The young Israeli entrant took to the stage to loud boos (I understand why, but found it unfair to the performer and uncomfortable for my family) – that were presumably filtered out on the television broadcast. The song and the performance was really good, as were those of Ukraine, Cyprus, Armenia and Austria. Croatia, who probably would have won the competition but for the strange televoting patterns, came on to the biggest cheers and most of the audience sang along – to the whole song. Of course – you don’t need to be multilingual to sing “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” – a modern update of my first experienced Eurovision Final (“Ding Ding Dong”). The ding dong thing really does persist in Eurovision land – the Austrian ear worm song “We Will Rave” was another. And who can forget that legendary non-Eurosong from Iceland “Jada Ding Dong.”
In the modern Eurovision, hearing a country’s performer singing in its native language is quite rare. The show is presented in English. Most acts sing in English – something that we resent as, I believe, our English based songs gave Ireland a natural advantage in the EV. No longer. In fact, I have often wondered that if one scrubbed off all evidence of parochialism, removed all the flags and national symbols and presented the EV to a North American audience (who seem to bizarrely no nothing about the event – guys we watch the SuperBowl for heaven’s sake!) – would they actually notice. Well, they would if they saw the ludicrous Finnish “Windows95man” performance (thankfully not in English), in which one of the singers runs around the stage wearing no pants mimicking a scene from “A Shot in the Dark”). It was funny the first time. It got old. But such things make the EV endlessly entertaining.
Of course, everyone wondered whether ABBA would make an appearance 50 years after “Waterloo.” Being 2024, their Avatars from the London show appeared, with the performance being finished by 3 previous EV winners, faces plumped by fillers and botox. The Grand Final half time show (after the performances – but while everyone was frantically tapping on their phones to give their 20 votes to a country competing against their own – you cannot vote for your own country – think about it – it makes no sense – the voting favours the “diaspora” – except ours is in Australia, Canada and the USA and they were trumped by the Israeli diaspora) – that was a long parenthesis – anyway the half time show was CRAP. This was no Riverdance. Loreen came on and seemed by be superglued to a barstool singing the most boring song in history. By comparison, the performance during the interval in the second semi final (a skit on Sweden in the EV) was one of the best ever.
After it was over, we took the train back to Copenhagen for dinner. Great city. Lovely people. Good food. We watched EXACTLY the same show on TV (the presenters had changed their outfits). Except Bambi turned up this time. Their performance was EXACTLY the same as what we watched on the big screen.
The voting was dramatic. Switzerland won. Thousands of Air B’N’Bs were cancelled in Zagreb. The Croatian national broadcaster let out a loud sigh of relief. Near miss! The UK got ZERO from the public vote. Bambi came 6th (our best result in the 21st century).
The Twittersphere erupted with conspiracy theories about the televote. We learned that the Netherlands were disqualified due to their artist having a negative interaction with a camera person – they sulked and didn’t appear for the voting – the Dutch right wing blaming the wokarazzi.
Eurovision nuts are booking accommodation in every city in Switzerland (hoping that they cancel without losing a deposit) and nobody knows where it will be staged in 2025. The last time Switzerland hosted was in 1989, in Lausanne, after the 1988 event was won by a singer known as Celine Dion. She was never heard from again.
If someone had told me 30 years ago that you – of all people – would go to the Eurovision, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I would go again. But get a seat next time. Getting too old to spend 4 hours standing up against the barrier.
[Just notice that I have posted nothing in 2024 before this – which is alarming because there is so much good music around….]
audioexchange 
Great piece. Should be in the Guardian.