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.
Last edited by Itse; 05-13-2023 at 07:28 AM.
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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.
Last edited by Itse; 05-13-2023 at 07:55 AM.
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Of course there are others in the competition. There are some who predict Ukraine will once again get an overwhelming sympathy vote, but it seems unlikely at this point. They're however third in the betting odds, and the song has it's fans.
Fourth in odds is Israel with Noa Kirel. She's a huge artist locally, with possibly the highest overall budget ever for her Eurovision run. It's also a good example of the "girly pop" category entries.
(The stage shows have btw fairly strict limitations; the props can only take 50 seconds to put in place, and a maximum of six people are allowed on stage.)
Fifth in odds is Norway, who's song Queen of Kings became an instant TikTok hit upon release in January. It's an earworm, you have been warned
A dark horse to win the whole competition is France, who is represented by the Canadian singer La Zarra and her disco-chansson. English subtitles available.
Last edited by Itse; 05-13-2023 at 07:13 AM.
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Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Eurovision has probably heard that it's a real mishmash of genres, and much of the appeal is seeing the entries that are just really extra.
This year you're not going to get more extra than Croatia. Their representative Let 3 is something like a combination of performance artists and a prog rock band, just outright legends locally. I highly, highly recommend checking out the Overanalyzing Eurovision video on their entry, because it is really, really something. "Technically we weren't completely naked, because we had corks up our butts" is an actual defensive statement they've made in a courtroom.
This video is their performance at the Croatian national finals. Mildly NSFW.
The song is about "Mother kissing a little psychopath". Mother is pretty obviously Mother Russia, and it doesn't take a lot to guess who's the little psychopath. (All together now: "Eurovision is not political" )
The famously European country of Australia is also participating again (I'm not going to explain that one), with the prog-rock band Voyager. Those guys are a guaranteed fun time.
Another song this year that has to be mentioned is Austria's dance pop entry with a typical dance pop topic: a songwriter being possessed by the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, yet still failing to make money because of how little music streaming pay to artists. They're a lot of fun.
Germany this year is sending the goth metal band Lord of the Lost, who have captured what you get when you combine metal with Eurovision: Blood and Glitter.
A major attraction with Eurovision for many are the ethnobangers; more or less EDM-flavored entries with varying ethnic elements. This year, two stand out in this category.
Spain's Blanca Paloma is a damned impressive singer, coming in with a modern take on a flamenco-lullaby. That might not sound like much when described, but it's really something when you actually see and hear it. She's considered a dark horse candidate to win the jury vote, but isn't expected to have the necessary mainstream appeal to do well in the televote.
And last we have Moldova. One of the smallest and poorest countries taking part in Eurovision, they have however built a reputation for always being a good time, and they're not failing us this year either. (This has English subtitles available.)
What you already missed
There always some good songs that get cut from the final in the semifinal stage.
For me, the standout in this category was Latvia. I truly loved their melancholic indie rock song about trying to protect the positivite attitude of a loved one despite feeling increasingly desperate about the state of the world.
It was always a bold entry, switching between 5/4 and 6/4 beats and being the kind of dark, introspective song that tend to do poorly in what is otherwise a pretty bombastic show. Despite that, its' a really great song that's now on several of my personal playlists and is probably one of my all-time favorite entries in the competion.
Last edited by Itse; 05-13-2023 at 07:22 AM.
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This has been the crappiest Eurovision I can remember.
Overall I think this was a really high quality year, very entertaining, the show ran extremely smoothly, lots of variety and energy.
Which is why the jury voting being so ridiculously lopsided gives the whole thing a bad taste. There's just no excuse for it to be that massively lopsided, Loreen is good, but not "twice as good as anyone else" good.
I can very easily see this being the end of juries. They've already been somewhere between controversial and unpopular, and them just basically totally deciding the game before any public votes were given, especially in a year with many other quality songs is going to go down very poorly. It also doesn't help that there was such an obvious bias towards neighbouring countries. Juries theoretically exist to specifically counterbalance the things they did here; voting for neighbors, voting for the artist that was previously popular, voting for the paint-by-numbers composition.
The Eurovision fan forums I'm on are absolutely fuming over this.
Personally I totally expected Loreen to win, I just didn't expect the juries to go this massively overboard in picking a winner, and I though the public vote would have been closer.