The Storyline
From fairly early on, this years competition has been seen primarily as a contest between two artists, Käärijä from Finland and Loreen from Sweden.
The stories write themselves here. The clear betting odds favorite is Loreen. Sweden is an absolute Eurovision powerhouse, and Loreen is their biggest hitter. She's already won the competition once in 2012 with
Euphoria, which was also a huge club hit at it's time and still considered the biggest hit to come out of Eurovision. (Of course ABBA's Waterloo kind of trumps that, but ABBA really didn't break out because of Eurovision same way as Loreen.)
Her new song Tattoo is an exemplary product of the Swedish pop production industry in good and bad. The whole thing is extremely well made, but without an ounce of originality, with vaguely emotional sounding cliché lyrics about heartache . Loreen however can elevate the hell out of stuff like this. Her vocal abilities are expected to bring an easy jury vote victory, and she's popular enough that a nice haul of televotes is also expected. She's Eurovision at it's most mainstream, most radio friendly form, beloved and respected.
Finland has a reputation for being one of the weirdoes of Eurovision. Historically they've had basically no success outside of Lordi's surprise win in 2006, although some of their recent rock entries have done okay, most notably Blind Channel, who have turned their 2021 6th place into moderate international success. Where Loreen is The Queen, Käärijä is the Challenger; a short, odd, funny man with a silly haircut and a quirky genre-bending rap-metal-EDM-pop song about drinking to overcome stress anxiety and finding the courage to go on the dancefloor. He has somehow managed to capture the hearts and imaginations of the Eurovision audience to a point where his win in the televote is considered an absolute given. Where Loreen is predictable, Käärijä is surprising. Where Loreen is obviously commercial, Käärijä is weird, chaotic and camp. Loreen is heartbreak, Käärijä's slogan is "It's Crazy, It's Party". Loreen is a great singer, Käärijä is a rapper who can sing a bit. Both can put on a show.
As a Finn it's been bizarre to follow the international reaction to Käärijä. You've got an American making videos about
learning to sing the lyrics in Finnish. You've got a Philippino
crying when Käärijä made the grand final. You've got
people in Eurovision pre-parties going crazy. There's already countless covers of the song in several languages. The German Lord of the Lost even made
a metal-cover singing in Finnish. It's not just that it's a fun song, although it's obviously also that. It's also become increasingly obvious that his fun, warm and quirky personality is really resonating with audiences despite the language barrier. In all my years of following Eurovision, I've never seen so many people declaring how badly they want a song to win that's not from their country. People really love this guy, not just his song.
The betting odds say that most likely Loreen takes the crown because of the juries. They are largely expected to bury him because of his limited singing ability, and because Eurovision juries have a bit of a reputation for having boring tastes and burying a lot of quirky fan favorites. However, singing is not the only written jury criteria. Originality of the song is another jury criteria, as is the stage show, which Käärijä has covered. He's got a chance, but in any case, this is already a Eurovision classic that's going to be remembered as a guaranteed party banger for years to come among Eurovision fans.