Hello again,
So on to 2023, the most recent renewal in which I've had the time and clarity of vision to do both a song-by-song review of the semi-finals (in each case referring to the performance on the night, which may vary from that of the respective clip shared below) and a postmortem of the final. I think I've been able to do the former but not the latter in the two subsequent years.
Very, very much to ponder over the course of this particular week's events, evidently. At over 6,400 words, it's the most I've written on a single Eurovision to date, and perhaps ever will.
J xx
Semi-Final #1
First things first; having thought nobody will ever do this hosting lark better than the peerless Petra Mede, it needs saying that Hannah Waddingham is also very, very good indeed – sharp, funny and professional. I’d also forgotten that she had played the Lady of the Lake when I went to see the original West End run of Spamalot. Petra and Hannah together one year, perhaps, then? I'm not sure how that could be contrived, but still.
Meanwhile, anyone who was not welling up at the sight of the late Paul O’Grady in the opening credits has a heart hewn from purest MDF.
And so to the songs...
NORWAY
ALESSANDRA - Queen of Kings
Potentially a big, winning, stompy chorus, but Alessandra won’t be the last performer this week whose voice didn’t command the auditorium as much as the song demanded (especially on the big money high note). Good to see Penny Mordaunt’s Coronation outfit get another airing already, mind.
MALTA
THE BUSKER - Dance (Our Own Party)
Unfailingly jolly, but too hesitant in places to rate as genuinely good pop. Attempts the Gameboy visuals of Daði Freyr and the funkiness of The Roop, less successfully than either. Rhyming “better” with “sweater” was also done so much better by Sultans of Ping FC. The best Maltese entry rhyming couplet will forever be “His name is Jeremy / working in I.T.” – I felt so seen...
SERBIA
LUKE BLACK - Samo Mi Se Spava
This stuff was as common as rats in the darkwave/EBM clubs I’d frequent when living in Germany in the mid-late 1990s, albeit not often with a delivery as mumbling as Mr Black’s. Likeable Alien-tinged staging, though.
LATVIA
SUDDEN LIGHTS - Aijā
The first intrusion of the week from paid-up members of the Campaign for Real Rock. Almost certainly the first Eurovision track to flit between five-four and waltz time, but ultimately an act a bit too pleased with its Real Musicians Can Do This craftsmanship.
PORTUGAL
MIMICAT - Ai Coração
Tappity tappity tappity, cha cha cha, stomp stomp stomp. Not the most captivating example of its kind, but it just made me happy, which counts for a lot. Ageing scholars of Europop like me might have been trying to sing Nah Neh Nah by Vaya Con Dios over bits of it.
IRELAND
WILD YOUTH - We Are One
This won’t be the last act in this or subsequent years to come a cropper trying to ape Sam Ryder musically and/or stylistically. The same attempt at an ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE CHORUS a la Spaceman, but delivered too reedily by the SlimFast Elvis frontman, who to my mind looked absolutely terrified. To think Ireland could have sent John Lydon over instead – this one was less Sex Pistol, alas, and more Water Pistol.
CROATIA
LET 3 - Mama ŠČ!
A coruscating (if of course impossible to argue with) message delivered with a malevolent smile and winning stagecraft, missiles and underpants and all. Also, however, the sort of thing that often loses in the jury vote what it gains in the public one; and if the song becomes less of the dog’s breakfast it appeared at first following repeated listens, it’s still rather less memorable than the performance.
SWITZERLAND
REMO FORRER - Watergun
Big suit, larger snores. A shame, really, given the resonance of the powerless-observers-of-conflict lyrics.
ISRAEL
NOA KIREL - Unicorn
Representing a delegation who’ll seemingly pass over no opportunity to tell you how big and important Noa Kirel is (three bodyguards, for heaven’s sake). Musically and lyrically unsubtle, and demanding of attention in a most aggressive manner. “YOU WANNA SEE ME DANCE?” No thanks, you’re alright. I wanted actual real-life unicorns on stage, too.
MOLDOVA
PASHA PARFENI - Soarele şi Luna
This one reminds me… when is Glastonbury on this year? Something of an occult, or Pagan, feel to this; echoes of the spooky Breton techno France dabbled with last year, but probably a bit more of a tune.
SWEDEN
LOREEN - Tattoo
A long odds-on for the whole contest in the caveat emptor markets even before the first semi, but whilst the quality of the returning Loreen is unarguable I’m not convinced this is as good a song, or the opposition is as pallid, as the markets would suggest. Euphoria this is not, but then what is? Hope she remembers not to pick her nose with those fingernails…
AZERBAIJAN
TURALTURANX - Tell Me More
In this week’s episode of Coals to Newcastle, twins from Zaqatala attempt to offer something Beatles-ish to Liverpudlians. Actually a fairly sweet little song, but nothing this guileless (in the nicest sense) has made the final since Leonora scraped in for Denmark in 2019. There was an unfortunate equipment malfunction mid-song for Tural – or was it Turan?
CZECHIA
VESNA - My Sister's Crown
Multilingual to a degree without parallel in the whole of this year’s contest, but a strangely unaffecting performance despite the undoubted righteous anger of the song and meticulous stagecraft.
NETHERLANDS
MIA NICOLAI & DION COOPER - Burning Daylight
Cynical, calculated attempt at a boy-girl variant of Duncan Laurence’s sensitive angst, as hand-picked by Mr Arcade himself. That wonky piano intro/backing was pulled off way better in Maro’s top-ten finisher for Portugal last year.
FINLAND
KÄÄRIJÄ - Cha Cha Cha
Stompier than Norway, full of its own piss and vinegar in a more appealing way than Israel (better use of a box, too!), and with more of a song to it than Croatia. Yep, I like this. Compare and contrast his sinister cha-cha-chas with those at the start of Sin by Nine Inch Nails, by the way.
Have we seen the winner yet?
==============
Semi-Final #2
As seems to have been the case (inexplicably) more often than not in recent years, semifinal #2 once more felt like the weakest. Of those in action, only Austria featured among the top 10 in the overall betting - at 10 - and the sense persists that a fair bit of cannon fodder made the cut. I shall not say whom, for those who haven't watched yet.
So many acts appear to be lying down in their performances this year. Is the stage heated? I was waiting for one act to remain on the floor, curl up in a ball and not wake up until it was time for a pouch of Whiskas.
Other than Jeffrey Kenny of TVORCHI (Ukraine) and the backing singers for Lithuania, I'd struggle to recall that many performers of colour this time, and the previous two renewals have given us Mahmood (Italy), Jeangu Macrooy (the Netherlands) and not a right lot else. For a show with such an actual or intended global reach, and acknowledging that matters are largely determined by who wins the national competitions, is the Contest as representative as it can be?
And so to the songs.
DENMARK
REILEY - Breaking My Heart
Pink outfit has been set upon by some very skilled moths. Pleasant, chugging post-Timberlake pop absolutely torpedoed by the vocal delivery, which is a pity.
ARMENIA
BRUNETTE - Future Lover
Sings about a smoothie, whilst appearing to be lying down in one. A musical triptych whose parts seem more cohesively stitched together on repeated listens, but not all one-off listeners are going to find it immediate enough.
ROMANIA
THEODOR ANDREI - D.G.T. (Off and On)
Not the only ill-advised shorts on the evening; the League Against Tedium-era Simon Munnery costume from the promos was a better look. A lot of ideas crammed into the permitted time, executed with varying degrees of success; the frustration and simmering lust just comes over a little bit impotent on occasion.
ESTONIA
Alika - Bridges
Anyone traumatised by Sparky's Magic Piano in their youth will have been twitching during this. A ballad of personal redemption, and whilst not as disarmingly low-key as, say, Maro of Portugal last year or zalagasper of Slovenia in 2019 (two of my absolute favourites of recent times), it's largely shorn of bombast and all the better for it.
BELGIUM
GUSTAPH - Because of You
Garnering lots of comparisons online to Boy George, though in the semi Gustaph looked to me at least as much like a dollymixture-shaded upgrade of Bombalurina era Timmy Mallett, plus beard but minus glasses. The song, though; not quite so pinpoint accurate a homage to early 90s house as people who may or may not have been alive then are telling you, but it's defiant and joyous and musically incongruous in the most positive sense. A huge return to form for Belgium, after the reputation burnished by their mostly strong 2010s output had taken a few more recent knocks.
CYPRUS
ANDREW LAMBROU - Break a Broken Heart
Bare arms. Muscles. Constipated clenching. Rain effect on stage. Fire on stage. This one fills a line on the Eurovision bingo card single-handedly. Boilerplate present-day Eurovision balladry, but not so devoid of quality as to make twelve points from Greece (were the opportunity to arise) appear jarring.
ICELAND
DILJÁ - Power
Better big suit than Switzerland, but an unaffecting song and performance - energetic, but only in the same way as watching someone's workout through the gym window might be. Following a previous decade in which Iceland gave us the likes of the John Grant-mentored Pollapönk, alt.country sibling trio Systur, and of course Daði Freyr, this is a crashing disappointment.
GREECE
VICTOR VERNICOS - What They Say
More lying down. More shorts. Poor diction, a candidate for the weakest voice of the whole contest, and the muscle memory of a boxer's spar and twitch evidently overriding any impulse to dance. The youngest performer in the contest, and with the best will in the world not ready for this yet.
POLAND
BLANKA - Solo
No lying down! Jolly, lilting, knowing charm, and not actually any the worse for its 2000s/early-2010s Eurovision feel. Camerawork lessened the impact of the Bucks Fizz moment mid-song.
SLOVENIA
JOKER OUT - Carpe Diem
Kostanjeva pet. That's broadly what Maroon 5 translates as in Slovenian. One line translates as "We are running away from the draft" - fetch me my net. Serviceable and proficient Beige FM-approved pop-rock that's simply never going to excite voters more than everything else.
GEORGIA
IRU - Echo
Wastes zero time throwing in the high notes and pounding percussion, leaving few cards to play in a pair of verses which go through the motions majorly. Admittedly Iru was always on a hiding to nothing for me, given how much I (and possibly only I) adored the 6Music-friendly alt.pop-prog of last year's Georgian entry Circus Mircus. Even shorn of that context, though, it's still not one I can bring myself to enjoy overly.
SAN MARINO
PIQUED JACKS - Like an Animal
Crème Brûlée's illegitimate mainland European offspring. Uneasily seedy, greasy, leery glam. The singer completely bollocksed up the big money notes at the end, too. Can we have lovely old Serhat back?
AUSTRIA
TEYA & SALENA - Who The Hell is Edgar?
"Poe Poe, Poe-Poe Poe Poe, Poe-Poe Poe Poe, Poe-Poe there's no limits"... (Relatively) high concept, witheringly sarcastic (re: Spotify royalties) and frustrated (re: recognition of female songwriters), yet at the same time sufficiently singalonga not to alienate its audience. A dramatic return to form for one of the Contest's more mercurial competing nations of the past decade. That the visuals and words of the chorus remind me of Adam Buxton's memorable "Count the Mobys" tie-breaker on Never Mind the Buzzcocks is no bad thing, either.
ALBANIA
ALBINA & FAMILJA KELMENDI - Duje
Family act. Tree silhouettes. Two more bingo boxes ticked. Dramatic, earnest Balkan pop with a higher purpose and tangible pain, possibly easier to admire than fall in love with.
LITHUANIA
MONIKA LINKYTĖ - Stay
More power balladry, but with the potentially elevating contribution of the underutilised gospel singers diminished further by the musical arrangement. Frustrating.
AUSTRALIA
VOYAGER - Promise
Look like compatriots Van She fronted by Windsor Davies (or is it Terry-Thomas?), with added female lead guitarist. Sound like Van She covering Testarossa Overdrive by Kavinsky, until the temptation to go metal late on proves too much to resist. About ninety percent of the way towards being an absolute banger (no pun intended, despite the staging), and more memorable than many on the evening, for mostly the right reasons.
So that just leaves the six automatic qualifiers...
FRANCE
LA ZARRA - Évidemment
It's interesting how often France quickly retreats back to the chanteuse/diva performer whenever an attempt at something more outré comes unstuck. Hence N'oubliez pas in 2015, the year after Twin Twin's abominable Moustache (not that it fared much better); hence also this year's offering Évidemment, more familiar fare than last year's intriguing but perhaps more divisive Breton pagan techno. A pleasant enough disco-inflected chanson largely without histrionics, though even without a wide range of octaves to run up and down La Zarra hasn't convinced as an entirely technically bombproof performer (cf the wobbles in the clip shown during semifinal #2).
GERMANY
LORD OF THE LOST - Blood & Glitter
And still Germany searches for some sort of winning formula during its ever-lengthening, post-Stefan Raab and post-Lena Meyer-Landrut slough of Eurovision despond. What they've alighted upon this time is very much not I Don't Feel Hate; and whilst Lordi without the rubber monster suits and a tune would be too facile a description of Blood & Glitter, Chris Harms (does he?) and co. may actually have been better served with something closer to the Trash era Alice Cooper-apeing genius of Hard Rock Hallelujah than Zillo magazine (RIP) approved routine industrial goth metal. Less exciting than it probably hopes it is.
ITALY
MARCO MENGONI - Due Vite
Easy to dismiss this as just another example of the stock Italian ballad, were it not for the fact that Marco Mengoni himself had performed a somewhat more engaging variant in the Contest ten years ago. L'essenziale was the track back then; inessenziale could describe this successor.
UKRAINE
TVORCHI - Heart of Steel
Not quite the Azovstal siege set to music, so thus perhaps not the most directly political Ukrainian entry ever (hello, 1944 by Jamala), but certainly the defiance of the civilians in the locality of the steelworks informs the tone of this minimal, stabby, electro. The idea of juxtaposing soulful vocals against clanking synths is not new, and I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed it as much as on Luke Slater's early-2000s team-ups with The Aloof's Ricky Barrow either before or since, but I don't mind this attempt.
UNITED KINGDOM
MAE MULLER - I Wrote a Song
SPAIN
BLANCA PALOMA - Eaea
Right. These two are dealt with together with reason.
If not quite the stuff of legend, the story of the Eurovision producers for the UK and Spain jointly hatching a recovery plan for their respective countries' fortunes in a Rotterdam bar two years ago has nevertheless gained some traction, thanks to those nations locking out the podium behind Ukraine just a year later. "We're back!", Graham Norton for one would exclaim on the night.
Here's the thing, though; both countries' finishing positions ultimately gave a false impression of the extent of their rehabilitation as Eurovision major players. Spaceman was a supremely calculated piece of songwriting by Amy Wadge given to a performer in Sam Ryder with uncommon charisma and an inexhaustible willingness to press the flesh all over the continent for weeks if not months beforehand; whilst SloMo was an okay piece of Latin pop with a performer in Chanel who, serendipitously, had the vote for hairy palmed lovers of the scantily dressed entirely to herself in 2022.
The presence of Eurovision juggernaut Loreen this time around has prevented either nations' song from being overbet in the run-up to the Contest, and little about the performance of either in the footage shown in semifinal #2 gives reason to expect a raceday gamble.
In a year with its share of weak vocalists Mae Muller is by no means the worst offender, but the smart, sassy kiss-off of I Wrote A Song has thus far got a more underwhelming rendering than it deserves (she also appears genuinely afeared of the steep flight of steps she has to take at one stage).
Eaea, meanwhile, offers up the intriguing proposition of the genre known as New Flamenco, but the frenetic handclaps and quicksilver synths are obliged to compete with Blanca Paloma's off-tune delivery.
A lifetime-best performance by either singer on the big night would be no less than their interesting tracks merit, but a descent back down the leaderboard seems a likelier outcome for both nations either way.
====================
...And then the inevitable Eurovision post-race analysis, as you'd expect no less from me.
1) Daði Freyr covering Atomic Kitten in front of a trans flag-coloured heart being built out of (Russian) Tetris pieces. It felt at the time like the Contest's own painting flowers on tanks moment; as news emerged of Russia's attack on Ternopil seconds before TVORCHI took the stage, all the more so.
2) You hear of people being a writer's writer, a comedian's comedian, a chef's chef, or whatever. Having finished in the top two of the jury vote in four of the seven Eurovisions since the jury/public votes were split (and third in another), Sweden are similarly the professional's professionals.
3) Yes, Finland basically averaged ten points per public vote (376 points from 37 national and one rest of the world vote), but last night won't be the last time that a contest reduces down to whether a jury vote for one song aces the public vote for another (or vice versa).
4) The flipside of 3) is the public ranking five of the juries' top ten choices in their bottom ten, with Estonia, Australia (the latter IMO rightly called by Graham Norton as the sleeper hit of the evening) and Austria particularly suffering to the tune of 14 placings each. Croatia, Poland and Moldova had their evenings salvaged by the masses, meanwhile.
5) The "bounce" factor (to borrow a racing parlance) duly came to pass with the UK and Spain, as I predicted it would, and Mae Muller's result puts Sam Ryder's monster effort into even sharper focus. Sound/mixing desk shortcomings have been cited by more than one participating nation, but won't the kit have basically been the same for all? Mae and Blanca's sufficiently confident but ultimately underwhelming deliveries simply rendered the highly likely outcomes inevitable.
6) For only the second time under the new scoring format, and the first since 2018, there wasn't a single nul points in either the jury or public votes. Prizes for everyone, then - just not many for Germany.
Listen, ARD and NDR and whoever else decides these things. I'm 48, saggy, a recovering anxiety battler with eyes and knees shot to shit, and I'm not very photogenic. However, I'm also from a family full of Germans, I sort of understand pop music, I'm eminently affordable, my bank of annual leave renews in October, and I can't do much worse than anything you've sent to Eurovision for nigh on a decade. Call me!!!
