Intro Post

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And now we have all 37 songs confirmed for Eurovision 2024! I’m not sure when I’ll make my fourth “unorganized predictions and hopes” post, because I want these songs to solidify in my brain first, and also because I don’t want to listen to each song too much like I did in 2023. April is a relatively quiet month for Eurovision fans, particularly compared to February and March, so I’ll probably do it then.

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Introduction

I’m now at a point where my Eurovision reviews feel less like I’m diving into old European history, and more like I’m catching up on all the episodes of a TV show I like. As fun as it was to go through the early years of Eurovision, there’s no denying it: the recent years are by far the most exciting.

The history behind Eurovision 2010 reflects the economic problems that had plagued Europe. After the grandiose show Russia had put on, Norway decided to scale things back for their third time hosting Eurovision. For one thing, Norway was efficient when choosing where to host. On May 27, 2009, just two weeks after Alexander Rybak’s victory, NRK went with the safe choice of hosting in Oslo (just like 1996). On July 2, they had already decided which building to host it in: the newly built Telenor Arena. While Russia last year had a complex stage full of moving LED screens, Norway went for a simple stage with minimal light effects. This was mainly a cost-saving measure, but it also helped draw more attention to the performers and set this year’s personality apart from last year.

The global financial crisis was also why four countries from last year didn’t rejoin: Andorra, Czechia, Hungary, and Montenegro. Andorra still hasn’t returned to the contest, despite Susanne Georgi’s best efforts. The other three would come back in 2015, 2011, and 2012 (with an infamous joke entry) respectively. Georgia came back this year, after their previous entry was rejected. The total head count was 39 countries.

Two changes in the voting: The qualifiers from the semifinals were now determined by a mix of juries and televoting, as would be the case each year up to 2022. The voting was now open while all the songs were performed, which was also done in 2011 and will be done again in 2024.

I’m excited to review this year mainly for one reason: Germany was the winner! But first I have to get through these two semifinals, guided by Peter Urban’s German commentary.

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Estonia: Siren

Artist: Malcolm Lincoln, which is a band just to be clear

Language: English

Key: D minor

If you’re wondering why on earth an Estonian band would call themselves Malcolm Lincoln, the band started off as a solo project where Robin Juhkental uploaded music to Myspace—a word that will get anyone who used it back in the day to scream “OH MY GOD MYSPACE WAS THE BEST I MISS IT SO MUCH”—under the pseudonym Malcolm Lincoln. Why that name, you may ask? It came from a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? getting Abraham Lincoln’s name wrong. I can’t blame these guys for sticking to an Internet username as a pseudonym, because once you stick to an online handle for long enough, it basically becomes a part of who you are. Trust me, I know.

This is the kind of song that some random Bandcamp musician would publish on his third ever album, before he became any good at music. It has “random guy on the Internet in 2010” written all over it, especially in the weird repetitive lyrics that I think are about depression. It has a nice piano, but otherwise it just sounds weird and unfinished.

Slovakia: Horehronie

Artist: Kristína Peláková

Language: Slovak, for the last ever time

Key: B♭ minor

Now we’ve reached the fan favorite of Slovakia’s meager amount of Eurovision entries. It’s to Slovakia what “Salvem el món” is to Andorra, since both didn’t qualify and both have a cult following. And both are an honest effort from a country that usually didn’t try that hard.

This song starts with an atmospheric intro, where the instrumental consists of synth pads and flutes. Kristína doesn’t sing freeform in the intro, but has a clear distinct rhythm, which foreshadows that the song will soon gain an ethnic drum beat. It’s a satisfying payoff when the drum beat appears, because it’s always satisfying when foreshadowing is fulfilled. The whole song has a really nice lyrical cadence that suits Slavic languages well, since it’s just the right balance between freeform and rhythmic. I like the outfits on stage too—they’d be right at home in a fantasy movie.

I’m surprised this song didn’t qualify, because televoters in 2009 loved these kinds of ethno-bops and the juries were kind enough to those. Maybe it was just too understated compared to the songs that followed. This is a nice song but far from my favorite ethnic entry; I think the main reason fans like it so much is that it’s the number one song they can remember Slovakia (and its language) by. Their song in 1998 was a decent effort too, but pretty much all others are forgettable.

I’m still bad at telling apart Slavic languages, but I’ve heard enough Slavic songs from Eurovision that I can tell this sounds closer to Polish (a fellow West Slavic language) than to Russian (an East Slavic language). Maybe because it doesn’t have as many palatalized consonants (also called soft consonants) as a song in an East Slavic language would. Those are consonants with a hint of a “y” sound, a defining feature of Russian and Ukrainian.

Finland: Työlki ellää

Artist: Kuunkuiskaajat (which means Moonwhisperers)

Language: Finnish

Key: A minor

Kuunkuiskaajat is a duo consisting of Susan Aho and Johanna Virtanen, both of whom were at one point members of the Finnish folk band Värttinä. Fun fact: In the leadup to Eurovision 2023, they made a boomer version of “Cha Cha Cha”, the fan favorite entry from Finland. You should listen to it if you haven’t!

Anyway, say it with me. Finland was robbed!

Louder, I didn’t hear you. FINLAND WAS ROBBED!

Sorry, what was that? Please say it one more time and scream it as if someone stabbed you. FINLAND. WAS. ROBBED!!!!!

There, that should do it.

Fuck you juries for preventing this masterpiece of Finnish folk music from qualifying. Unlike you bastards, the televoters had taste and ranked this song 6th place. But because you guys hate fun, the song landed in 11th place and missed out on qualifying. This is the first ever Eurovision non-qualifier that I’m truly pissed off about. Well, the second if you count “Planet of Blue” from 1996. Germany’s Eurovision history would’ve been so much better if it hadn’t been stupidly eliminated! I’m lucky that my country won this year, because otherwise Eurovision 2010 would have made me miserable. If I was Finnish I’d be even more pissed about this, but at least Finland these days has finally become a Eurovision power player, whereas Germany is stuck in a slump of boring-ass radio pop.

This is by far my favorite Finnish entry since “La dolce vita” from 1989, which was also robbed. I love everything about it so much. It’s like a pizza with all my favorite ingredients in exactly the right concentration. The instrumental is dominated by accordions (one of my favorite instruments) but also has a clear beat and some violins to spice it up. It’s filled to the brim with catchy melodies that are thoroughly designed for the Finnish language, which makes sense because this is folk music. The melodies are fun to sing or hum, or even to play on the piano. The singers have lovely harmonies and voices and they’re bursting with energetic happiness. And you should already know I have a soft spot for Finnish-language music. When I’m done with my Eurovision blog, I’ll have to go on spirals to discover as much Finnish music as I can.

I love the tempo changes in this song too. At a few parts it slows down and speeds up, but not too much that it destroys the pace of the song. The tempo changes bring me back to late 1960’s and 1970’s Eurovision; I particularly remember a few Finnish entries doing that. The indulgent use of the Finnish language makes me nostalgic too. I love these types of songs that throwback to the old days of Eurovision, not because those days were better (of course they weren’t) but because they put a modern spin on the older styles. I’ll have two more songs in Finnish after this: one that’s not very popular, and one that’s a massive fan favorite.

Latvia: What For?

Artist: Aisha (Aija Andrejeva)

Language: English

Key: G minor

It took me only five minutes after hearing this song for me to forget how it sounded, and for Finland’s amazing ethnic song to crawl back into my brain. The only things I can remember about this are that she gets a little off key at times and that it has an accordion, which is a small plus. I wasn’t the only one to notice her off-key singing: Peter Urban joked (in his usual “not sounding like he’s joking” way) that she was searching for the right tones.

I just listened to this again and yeah, this isn’t very good at all. Musically it sounds like a first draft; there’s just not enough to this song. The repeated high synths sound more like an alarm clock than a musical instrument.

Poland: Legenda

Artist: Marcin Mroziński

Language: English, plus little bits of Polish in the start, middle, and end

Key: E minor, then briefly F♯ minor and G♯ minor, then all three key signatures again for some reason

This is weird and ugly and an obvious non-qualifier. It’s some kind of storytelling tune that I’m told is about sexual abuse in a 6/8 beat with the most repulsive chord progression and melody I’ve ever heard. I’d rather listen to a song with the same boring standard four chord progression all the way through (a huge pet peeve of mine) than this. Why is the Polish language only used in slow sections and at the end? Why do all the girls eat an apple at the start? And most importantly, what happened to Poland’s strong momentum in the 1990’s? I miss the fierce competitiveness of “To nie ja” (1994) and the enchanting melodies of “Ale jestem” (1997).

Malta: My Dream

Artist: Thea Garrett

Language: English

Key: F♯ major

Peter Urban called Malta the land of strong melodies and powerful singers, which is really just a nice way to say “the land of the same power ballad every year”. In my notes I praised Belgium (which came right before) for avoiding sounding too ballady and keeping the focus on the guitar. Malta, on the other hand, sent the balladiest ballad in the history of ballady ballads. From the very first second of this song, I knew it would be a tiring predictable ballad. I kept pausing amidst this song and getting distracted.

Fun fact: if this year used the backup jury system from the last two years, then this song would have been the backup qualifier. Also, Finland would have rightly qualified and Moldova and Bosnia wouldn’t have.

North Macedonia: Jas ja imam silata (Јас ја имам силата)

Artist: Gjoko Taneski featuring Billy Zver

Language: Macedonian

Key: E minor

This is one of those entries that has a lot of effort put into its composition but falls flat for me. It’s basically just an average rock ballad that doesn’t do anything special, and the rap section is out of place. It’s pleasant enough that I can put it into the background, but not interesting enough that I want to pay attention to it.

Semifinal 1 thoughts:

I can already sense what kind of personality this year has: simple but effective. This is shown in both the songs (particularly Belgium) and the presentation. The hosts say all the important things they need to and elegantly tie them in with quirky gags, sometimes related to which country is next. The postcards aren’t so much traditional postcards but instead video footage of what the audience sees: first the shape of each country made of lights, then a short video of fans in each country cheering for their representative, then the contestant preparing live on stage, and finally a flag. Not the most exciting format, but it fits this year’s minimalist personality.

The interval act is a beatboxing choir number, with the first half pre-recorded set to scenery of Norway, and the second half live on stage. It’s fun to watch but musically unfocused and would’ve been better if it was all on stage. Then the hosts talk about the volcano eruption in Iceland and how that’s affected transport to the contest, set to an exaggerated video of people swimming and trudging through snow. I do remember that eruption; it caused a flight to Germany to be delayed on a family trip in May 2010 (not during Eurovision week). I think I passed the time by assembling the Lego sets we brought.

My thoughts on this semifinal are dominated by: FINLAND WAS ROBBED! Otherwise, I feel bad for Slovakia and don’t care about the other non-qualifiers. I was happy when Greece and Albania qualified, as well as the Internet meme from Moldova. I already knew it would happen, but I said “aghhhhh!” out loud when Iceland, not Finland, was the final qualifier. Sorry Hera Björk, it’s not your fault, but those damn juries for having no taste. One thing I like about this year’s qualifier reveals is that most of the screen time is spent on the contestants, which is exactly how it should be.

Peter Urban said he was very happy when Belgium qualified because it sounds different from the rest, but he still sounds as deadpan as Maud Pie (that’s a My Little Pony character, just so you know). I prefer it when commentators scream their asses off when their favorite song makes it through. Finland not qualifying means that for me, the first semifinal ends on a downer.

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Lithuania: Eastern European Funk

Artist: InCulto

Language: English

Key: B minor

Unlike the first semifinal, the second one begins with a non-qualifier. Peter Urban said at the start that this was stronger than semifinal 1, so if that’s true, then I’m even more pissed that the juries eliminated Finland.

The Baltic states (especially the two starting with L) are among the most unpredictable countries in Eurovision. You just never know what kind of song they’ll send next! One year a Baltic country will send a serious sappy ballad, then a joke entry the next year, then a native-language banger out of nowhere. I consider this song a joke entry, although it has a serious side to its lyrics. The verses protest against the discrimination that eastern Europeans face and say that even after joining the European Union, they’re still looked down upon. The chorus is much sillier and repeats the phrase “get up and dance to our eastern European kind of funk”.

My biggest problem with this song is that in the first verse, the beatboxing and kazoos in the instrumental distract from the lyrics. That’s really annoying because half of the protesting lyrics are drowned out. But once the kazoos are over, the song becomes quite nice. It’s got a really catchy chorus melody and a fun dance routine. It even becomes a little more electronic in the final chorus. Maybe the electronic beat symbolizes that eastern Europe is now modern and metropolitan and not just “commie land”?

I would have adjusted the song as follows: keep the beatboxing kazoo intro, but change the instrumentation to funky dance at the start of the first verse, instead of the first chorus. That way, the lyrics wouldn’t conflict with the silly kazoo instrumental. The staging is a lot of fun; I love the energy the guys have on stage and the fake instruments before the second verse. The glittery underwear is an awesome gimmick as well. One of the hosts even wore glittery underwear when the Lithuanian guys were back in the green room, a legendary moment that even made the deadpan Peter Urban laugh. Who’s to say only women can strip off their clothes on stage?

Switzerland: Il pleut de l’or

Artist: Michael von der Heide

Language: French, despite the singer’s German-sounding name

Key: F minor, G minor

In this song, I am distracted by two things: Michael singing way too close to his microphone at the start, and him aspirating the P’s, T’s, and K’s. You do this in most Germanic languages, but you don’t do this in French. Not in any other Romance language, as far as I know. Oh yeah, the key change is both abrupt and unnecessary, so make that three distractions. Otherwise this is just a minor key pop song that does nothing to me.

Note that all the Swiss entries from here on out will be in English, except 2020 and 2021. When are the German-speaking countries going to stop pretending their language doesn’t exist?! It has to happen eventually, since I’m told that music in German, Dutch, and Swedish has been really booming lately.

Sweden: This Is My Life

Artist: Anna Bergendahl

Language: English

Key: C minor, probably, I think? This is one of those annoying songs that never starts or finishes any of its chord progressions on the root chord, unless you think the song is in F minor or B♭ major instead. Well OK, the verse chord progression starts with C minor, but I mean the chorus and bridge, which take up most of the song.

At the end of my last post, I said this year has two Nordic non-qualifiers: one that breaks my heart, one that is totally rightful. If you know anything about my tastes, it’s easy to guess which is which. I’m just as happy this didn’t qualify as I am pissed that Finland didn’t qualify. I’m baffled that it was the juries, not the televoters, who prevented this song from qualifying. Just as I’m baffled that the televoters are why this song won Melodifestivalen 2010, instead of a gorgeous haunting song called “Keep on Walking”. Normally it’s the juries who have incomprehensible taste, not the televoters!

You’ll probably expect me to say this song is dull and unremarkable, but it’s more than that. I think this song is totally hideous and I’m glad it didn’t qualify. I’d go so far as to say it’s so bad, it’s good. Why is that exactly?

Peter Urban mentioned that much like the German representative this year, Anna Bergendahl was just 18 years old and in the middle of college. But unlike our queen Lena, she doesn’t have the charisma to sell this song live. Anna looks shaky and nervous throughout and has an irritating breathy voice. She just stands by the microphone with a guitar in the first verse, then ditches it to prove it was just for show. Then she does this weird thing with her arms.

Dear god, the chord progressions in this song are so copy-pasted! It uses Generic Four Chord Progression #1 in the verses, Generic Four Chord Progression #2 in the chorus, and Generic Four Chord Progression #3 in the bridge. That’s hardly any better than using one generic four chord progression throughout. And all these four-chord progressions are used for an anonymous soppy ballad with stilted, vaguely motivational lyrics. “This is my… life… my friend… And this is my… time… to stand…” How is it even possible to write a chorus that sounds this awkward? The chorus melody isn’t that bad, but the stress of words is the problem. Something more natural could be “You’re my sweet… heart… it’s true… I’m always think… ing… of you…” Yeah who am I kidding, even that doesn’t sound great.

It’s hard to overstate how angry Swedish fans were when this song didn’t qualify. Ask any Eurovision fan from Sweden about this song, and they’ll go on a tirade about it. I don’t think there was any other non-qualifier in Eurovision history that got fans more upset. I actually think it’s good that Swedish fans were this pissed, because it means their country got the kick in the balls needed to step up their game. Sweden rethought their approach the next year and qualified every year since then.

Netherlands: Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie)

Artist: Sieneke Baum-Peeters

Language: Dutch, for the first time since 1998

Key: E major, F major

Since 2005, the Netherlands was in one of the worst Eurovision slumps any country had ever seen. They didn’t reach the finals from 2005 to 2009, and it wasn’t going to get better this year. At the time, many Dutch viewers thought there was no point in them participating. I have a rant in store for when this dark spell was broken in 2013, just you wait.

Before 2013, the Netherlands usually chose their song through a national final, but this time it was a bit different: the song was preselected and the national final consisted of five artists performing it. It had one of the dumbest scoring systems I’ve ever seen: the televoters awarded only one point to the singer with the most votes, and a four-member jury got to award one point each to their favorite. Normally scoring systems are supposed to make ties unlikely and have a tiebreaker rule in case there is one, but somehow this didn’t. Sieneke and another singer named Loekz each got two points from the juries, so Pierre Kartner (the composer of the song) was pressured into choosing a winner and he begrudgingly picked Sieneke.

If you had any doubt that the Dutch are direct and to the point, just read about how they reacted to this song’s choice for Eurovision 2010. They found the national final disastrous and viewed this song as a low blow, the absolute bottom of the barrel—even some former Dutch contestants like Edsilia Rombley and Lenny Kuhr found it embarrassing. Erica is surprised the Netherlands sang in Dutch this year, because the Dutch “deny all knowledge of [their] own language”. I’ve heard that Dutch-language music is booming in the 2020’s, as reflected in their Eurovision songs for 2022 and 2024, so this may well not be true anymore. But in 2010, it was most certainly true.

Normally I’d be delighted to hear a song in Dutch again, but this is way too cheesy and tacky and has too many place names… actually, scratch that. In the spirit of Dutch bluntness, this is complete shit. I think the Netherlands was aiming to send a song that sounds recognizably Dutch, and it kind of does with the street organ and accordion, but this song tells us that the only Dutch-language music that exists is twee schlagers. And to think that this was the last Dutch-language Eurovision song for twelve years… I’m glad they sent an actually good Dutch song in 2022.

Slovenia: Narodnozabavni rock

Artist: Ansambel Roka Žlindre and Kalamari (ansambel means ensemble)

Language: Slovenian

Key: E major and/or A major

Peter Urban must have had a pronunciation guide handy, because he correctly pronounced the V in “narodnozabavni” as a U. Why didn’t Terry Wogan ever have a pronunciation guide?

The second semifinal wasn’t good for native-language songs. Out of the six songs not in English, the only one that qualified was Israel. This is one of those songs that tries to mash up two genres (folksy accordion music and Slovenian rock), but it doesn’t work for me. Come on, give us three minutes of undiluted Slovenian folksy oompah! Or three minutes of Slovenian rock, like we got in 2023. It’s especially annoying because the lyrics seem to be about how great it is to combine these two styles. Combining musical genres is like combining food ingredients: sometimes they blend together beautifully, other times they don’t match at all.

Bulgaria: Angel si ti (Ангел си ти)

Artist: Miro (Miroslav Kostadinov)

Language: Bulgarian and English

Key: D minor

Peter Urban said that this was the first Eurodance song Eurovision has sent in quite a while and thus sounds retro, so I was worried since I’m not a Eurodance fan. This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be—it has a calm intro and aside from the stereotypical Eurodance beat that begins in the chorus, it has some nice orchestral parts. But too much of the song consists of “oh oh oh” instead of actual lyrics. And why, oh why, does it end so abruptly??? It’s like the composers didn’t finish the song in time and just submitted an incomplete project file. It’s even more obnoxious than abrupt endings usually are.

I don’t want you to think the Netherlands is the only song this year that I think is complete shit. This is complete shit too, so are Estonia, Poland, Malta, and Sweden. It’s just that I prefer explaining why I dislike a song over just saying it’s terrible. We have only one non-qualifier left, let’s hope it’s good!

Croatia: Lako je sve

Artist: Feminnem, who represented Bosnia in 2005

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Croatian), as listed on Wikipedia

Key: A minor at the start, then briefly C minor, then E♭ minor for the rest of the song

If a group of singers from Croatia and Bosnia sing together in their native languages, is the song in Croatian or Bosnian or both? Does it depend on where the songwriter is from, or where the singers are from? Would it be listed as Bosnian if they had represented Bosnia? Questions like this are why the Serbo-Croatian language debate confuses me so much. Note that when Feminnem sang for Bosnia and Herzegovina, their song was in English.

Although these girls last sent an upbeat stereotypically Swedish-sounding song, this time they gave us a dreary ballad for some reason. It has the annoying gimmick where each girl takes turns to sing. It bores the hell out of me, but at least it has a proper ending.

I just relistened to their song “Call Me” and it has a grammar error that I didn’t notice last time: they sing “but now, miracle is not so hard to find”. When I hear that line, my brain thinks they’re talking about someone named Miracle, because I actually knew a guy named Miracle as a kid. It should be “but now, a miracle is not so hard to find”. Right before is another grammar error, “that million hearts could never beat as one”. Again, this has a missing “a”.

Semifinal 2 thoughts:

Overall, the two semifinals almost did a good job eliminating the crap entries, EXCEPT FOR FINLAND HOW DARE YOU. The only one from semifinal 2 that I’m sorry about is Lithuania. Imagine if a school had to hire 20 music teachers out of 34 candidates, and one of the applicants thoroughly understands how music works, smiles a lot, and knows how to keep her students engaged. But the school rejects this applicant because she has only four years of piano teaching experience on her resumé, whereas most others have at least five. That’s how it feels for Finland not to qualify.

OK, let’s shut up about Finland now. I love how the hosts spoke so proudly of Norway’s ten last places. Norway owning up to their last places is nothing new—you might remember Jahn Teigen from 1978 boasting about earning zero points. The compilation of various last place entries reminds us that most of them deserved to be there, but a few are totally baffling. Was “Yamma Yamma” from 1992 really worse than all those dreary ballads?

The interval act is once again focused on music made of mouth noises, but it takes more of a choral approach. As with the first semifinal, it starts with a short film but then becomes live on stage. Norway’s approach with postcards and interval acts this year is not showcasing Norway (they did that in 1986 and 1996), but experimenting with new formats. They also got rid of opening acts in the semifinals, which I’m perfectly fine with. Some fans might dislike the changes in format this year, but I like that the presentation style of Eurovision isn’t the same each year.

The only qualifier reveals that made me happy were Turkey (HELL YES) and somewhat Ireland. The rest made me go “sure, whatever” or “uhh, what?” I share Peter Urban’s confusion that Ukraine and Cyprus made it through. I normally don’t like to laugh at other’s misfortunes, but I broke into laughter when I remembered Sweden didn’t qualify. It’s so out of character for the juries to tank a soppy Swedish entry! Normally they kiss Sweden’s ass every year.

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