Six hours from now, Eurovision will begin.
I'm perfectly aware this isn't something most on this board really care about, but I'm feeling the Eurovision heat this year and I've got time to kill, so what ever. Hope someone is entertained
I think at this point even most Americans are kind of vaguely aware that Eurovision is a (mostly) European television song contest. It's the biggest musical show in the world (TV audience was 160M last year), with a lot of entertainment value and music of typically varying quality
This year is a pretty good year in terms of song quality and variety, so if you want to check what the whole thing is about, it's fine day to start.
The whole Eurovision season is a months long process, but the very short version is that each country submits an original song along selected any way they want, most of them have to go through a semifinal round and then 26 are presented in the Grand Final, where the winner is determined by a combination of jury votes and public voting (aka televotes) from each country, and the winning country gets to (or has to) host Eurovision next year. For various complicated reasons most participating artists are fairly unknown before the competition. For logistical reasons, only the vocals are actually performed live. Autotune is banned, for obvious reasons.
YOU TOO CAN VOTE
There is now a new televoting category: Rest of the world. All votes given outside of the participating countries are added up and count the same as one additional country in the scoring. You can vote through the Eurovision app or at the website
https://www.esc.vote. It costs about 1$ to vote. (This is in large part to prevent vote rigging, and it's roughly the same as what people pay to vote in participating countries.) You can watch the show online at youtube.
Backstory
Last year the winner was Ukraine with a landslide, commonly considered to be primarily about moral support, although the song wasn't half bad. The music video made to the song after the contest is in any case a bit of a classic. Onion warning.
Since obviously Ukraine couldn't actually host Eurovision in the middle of a war, the competition runner-ups UK are now hosting the competition in Liverpool as a joint effort with Ukraine. UK's recent history in the Eurovision has been pretty bleak, so Sam Ryder coming second with Space Man was a bit of a moment in itself.
Traditionally Eurovision hasn't really been a path to mainstream success, but Måneskin using their
2021 win to become international mainstream stars has started to change the perception of Eurovision as a potential career-launching platform. Last year that success dropped on Armenia's Rosa Linn, who's song
Snap was only 20th in the actual competition, but after the competition the song became a major international hit, and she's now touring with Ed Sheeran. This is putting even more eyes on Eurovision, which means that even acts that aren't likely winners are putting more effort into their stage shows, creating an even more entertaining overall show.