Intro Post

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I’d like to ask my readers to be patient with my next few Eurovision reviews. My real life has been a bit turbulent lately, especially due to my new work schedule. Don’t worry, I am completely intent on finishing this project!

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Introduction

Now that Stockholm had hosted Eurovision twice and Malmö twice, surely it was Gothenburg’s time to get their second turn? Nope, Sweden decided to host in the exact same building as 2000: the Globe Arena (or Globen as the Swedes call it) in Stockholm. It never takes long for Sweden to narrow down the options, because sports get in the way of most of the promising choices. The Tele2 Arena* looks like SUCH a perfect option, but noooo, those stupid goddamn football teams decide their games are more important than Eurovision. (You can tell I’ve been spending too much time around Swedes.)

An impressive 42 countries participated this year: four returned after skipping 2015, Portugal skipped the contest to consider how to revitalize Festival da Canção, and Romania was almost going to participate but financial drama happened—just one of many controversies this year. The returning countries were Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, and for the last time as of this writing, the financially troubled Bosnia and Herzegovina. This contest had 16 non-qualifiers, but I will cover 17 songs in this post because Romania had an entry ready.

To host the contest, SVT picked one of the most iconic duos in Eurovision history: Petra Mede who was the solo host of 2013, and Måns Zelmerlöw who was the winner of 2015. They’re just as charismatic and humorous as Petra is alone! And you can tell from their dynamic on stage that they really are good friends. Plus, Måns gets my stamp of approval for speaking German. I kind of wish I was obsessed with Eurovision back in 2016 so I could have as many interesting stories to tell as the friend I am watching this contest with, none other than Liv. We watched the semifinals with Norwegian commentary since not much else was available. She told me that as a Swede, she understands this commentary perfectly.

* Pronounced teletvå, like “tele-tvaw” in British English.

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Romania: Moment of Silence (withdrawn)

Artist: Ovidiu Anton

Language: English

Key: C♯ minor

Romania was going to be in the second semifinal, so I could have put this review at the start of the semifinal 2 section, but I prefer getting the rejected entry out of the way before diving into all the competing entries.

Been a while since the last rejected entry, huh? The last one was “We Don’t Wanna Put In” from 2009. This entry was rejected on April 22, 2016—less than three weeks before the contest started—because Romania’s broadcaster TVR didn’t pay their debts to the EBU on time, causing anger from fans and Ovidiu himself. A moment of international friendship came when Moldova offered to change their entry “Falling Stars” into a duet with him, but he declined the offer. I think this tale of broadcaster drama gives a good picture of the controversial nature of this year.

Normally the rejected entries aren’t much worth listening to, so this one really caught me by surprise! It would have been by far my favorite Romanian entry so far, had it been allowed to compete. I’d argue it could have even become Romania’s most iconic entry. It’s a dramatic rock ballad in 6/8 time with a powerful voice and cinematic sound—bells, strings, heavy rhythm guitars, harmonizing choir, it has the full package. It builds up very nicely, it has awesome harmonies, it gains flourishes in the second verse, it has a guitar solo near the end, and all around the whole song clicks with me. Don’t you dare take a “moment of silence” for this song, that would be an unspeakable crime. Instead, take a moment to blast this song as loudly as possible.

I wish I could analyze how the stage brought this song to life, but the best we have is the national final performance, which usually looks like the first draft unless we’re talking about Melodifestivalen.

Finland: Sing It Away

Artist: Sandhja Kuivalainen

Language: English

Key: G minor

The running order of this semifinal annoys me because the producers decided to put all the generic pop in the first half, and all the interesting songs in the second half. That wasn’t fully the producers’ decision of course, because a draw decides which half the songs go into, but the producers really didn’t have to shove all the dull pop into the first few slots. This tricked me into thinking this would be a pop soup year; the ball started rolling when I reached San Marino, number 8 out of 18.

The verses of this song have an annoyingly generic chord progression, C minor, E♭ major, B♭ major, F minor. When a song consists entirely of a chord progression like this, I can never quite decide which key signature it’s in, which as someone who loves to document key signatures annoys the shit out of me. Thankfully, the chorus is very clearly in G minor, so I’m listing that as the key signature of the whole song. The chorus is much better than the verses, but in general, this is one of those songs that seems pretty good when you hear a snippet but falls flat when you hear it in full. And worse, she drifts off key in the bridge.

Greece: Utopian Land

Artist: Argo

Language: Greek, Pontic Greek, and English

Key: C minor

I adore the stylized names of each country at the start of each song. Each nation’s name gets a different customized logo, often evocative of the country. The E’s in Greece look like the Greek letter xi (Ξ), which looks cool and stylish instead of the more obvious idea of replacing E with sigma (Σ), which annoys the hell out of Greeks.

Anyway, welcome to the most controversial Greek entry, and the first of three not to qualify to the finals. It might be the only Greek entry that’s just as controversial to Greek fans as it is to everyone else. When ERT internally selected this song, the Greeks gave it enormous backlash, the kind that thankfully none of the internally selected entries got in 2024. Pretty much all the countries that did internal selections for 2024 made smart or at least respectable choices, so it’s fitting that this year’s winner came from an internal selection.

I like the ethnic violin parts and somewhat 7/8 time signature in the second half, but everything else is an absolute mess. The rap parts are annoying, the singing parts with “with the rise of the rising sun” are even more annoying. The lyrics are supposed to be about the European refugee crisis, so I don’t get why the English lyrics don’t include anything meaningful. And then those chaotic violin solos in the second half are way too much for my ears.

Since I am not Greek, I am nothing more than baffled that Greece selected this weird fucking song. But I’ll try to imagine how I would’ve reacted if I was Greek. I bet I would’ve been scared that this song would make the rest of Europe think Greeks are a bunch of backwards hillbillies who can never do anything right. If not that, I would have dreaded repetitive jokes that Greece purposely sent something bad due to the economic crisis, even though they sent my beloved “Alcohol Is Free” about and during the same crisis. Or maybe I would’ve squinted really hard to see some good in this song. It’s also possible that I would’ve pretended Cyprus’s entry was ours, like the Cypriots so often do about Greek entries.

Luckily, I do know someone who can explain the story behind this song from a Greek’s perspective. I’ve been waiting months for Ellie Z. to give her comment about that song, and with the release of this post, the time has come!

Moldova: Falling Stars

Artist: Lidia Isac

Language: English

Key: C minor

The most interesting thing about this song is something the Norwegian commentator mentioned: Lidia was born in Russia and when she moved to Moldova, she tried many times to represent Moldova in Eurovision. Her fifth attempt was in 2016, and you can see it paid off!

This is an inoffensive dance song that is produced decently well but has very generic chord progressions. I can see why Ovidiu Anton didn’t want to join in on this song: this is nowhere near as good as his rejected entry. The astronaut on stage doesn’t make this song memorable, I’m afraid to say. At least Moldova knows how to make staging fun to watch.

San Marino: I Didn’t Know

Artist: Serhat (Ahmet Serhat Hocapaşalioğlu)

Language: English

Key: F♯ minor

I did already know that the singer of this song was Turkish. He made that extra clear in his thank you message at the end, which made me smile. But what I didn’t know (har har) was that this song had the same composer as the Turkish entries of 1982 and 1987, both Turkish funk songs that I have a soft spot for. That was not a genre I expected to return in the 21st century, especially because Turkey has been absent for years, but you just never know what San Marino will throw at you!

I’m choosing to view this as the de facto Turkish entry this year, and given by the Turkish flags in the audience, I’m clearly not alone. It’s a charming disco song that combines Serhat’s gruff singing with the more ordinary singing of the backing singers, and somehow it works. His style of singing is may be off-putting to some, but I actually find it charming. He sings in a deep voice that probably sounds very close to his speaking voice, and I think it suits this song well.

With all that said, as a disco entry, Belgium (who qualified from the end of semifinal 2) blows this out of the water.

Estonia: Play

Artist: Jüri Pootsmann

Language: English

Key: A minor

Ouch, I feel bad for Estonian fans this year. I would have been sure this James Bond ballad (likely inspired by Rise Like a Phoenix) would have qualified, but instead they scored last place in the semifinal, below the hated song from Greece. But if you think about it, it kind of makes sense that this song didn’t qualify: Erica said that Jüri was too youthful (he was 21 years old, not 16) to be able to carry this song as well as Conchita did, despite his professional-sounding voice.

Montenegro: The Real Thing

Artist: Highway

Language: English

Key: F♯ minor

I can see why this rock song didn’t qualify—it’s not the most accessible and the singers don’t connect with the audience much. Their voices sound a little blurry and muffled, in a deliberate rock way. I’m not sure whether I think it deserved to qualify, but I do actually like the dubstep interlude. Since dubstep was no longer trending, it’s strangely a breath of fresh air to hear it again.

Iceland: Hear Them Calling

Artist: Greta Salóme

Language: English

Key: D minor

I love the stylized text for Iceland as well as the plus sign animation. It looks almost like a logo for… I don’t know actually. A store that sells tridents, because of the -E? An amusement park called Iceland located in North Dakota, because the N and D are connected? A TV show called Iceland produced in Los Angeles, because of the connected LA? It looks like a logo, is the point.

Unfortunately we’re still in Iceland’s dud era, where they didn’t qualify from 2015 to 2018. This is basically just a failed attempt at copying “Heroes”, the winner of last year. Liv described it as having Avicii-esque production and a dramatic backdrop, and said Greta missed the mark when performing on stage. I can see what this song was going for and it has a cinematic Nordic sound, but it ultimately falls flat for me too, and the fakeout ending adds nothing to the song.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Ljubav je

Artist: Dalal and Deen featuring Ana Rucner and Jala

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian)

Key: C minor

We had previously seen Deen in 2004, but he looks unrecognizable 12 years later. Previously he looked like a greasy disco dude, now he looks like a bald lumberjack.

This year is the last ever former Yugoslav family reunion. Bosnia usually misses the reunions because they never have the funds, but this year they miraculously made it… only for the juries to snub their qualification.

This is a pretty good classic Balkan drama entry, sort of a hybrid between Balkan ballad and rock. It has typical Balkan ballad lyrics about the pain of love. It almost feels like Bosnia never left the contest and just kept sending what they always said. I think this flopped because it crams too many ideas into one song, but I think the mix of styles works pretty well. The rap interlude fits really well, since it’s the most lyrically dense and has the climax of the lyrics. But this doesn’t speak to me enough that I’ll miss it in the final.

Semifinal 1 thoughts:

Just like Eurovision 2013, this contest’s production is full of SVT magic. Their secret weapon (not at all secret) is Petra Mede, who makes a fantastic duo with Måns. You can tell from their dynamic when hosting that they’re good friends in real life. And as with 2013, the host segments and interlude skits are genuinely funny. Especially the one about Sweden using ABBA to stop themselves from being Europe’s punching bag. It’s exactly the sense of humor that’s carried from Melodifestivalen and adapted for an international audience.

For an interval act, the semifinal did something teetering on political: an instrumental dark synth song called “The Grey People” about the European refugee crisis. It’s intriguing and moving, so much better suited as an interval act than “here is last year’s winner singing a bunch of new songs”.

This year reworked the Big Five and host previews: now three songs are previewed in one semifinal, the other three in the semifinal, and the previews are much more generous in length. I love how Måns and Petra introduced France, Spain, and Sweden’s contestants each in their own languages. I can tell Petra loves showing off her Spanish in particular. Måns imitated a thick southern Swedish accent when introducing Frans (who hails from Ystad), which I noticed on my own without needing Liv’s help. Måns Zelmerlöw is from Lund, also in the south, but he speaks Swedish with a neutral Stockholm accent—that’s something I learned from Liv.

Even though this year yet again has too much English-language pop, two entries made me confident I’ll enjoy it much more than 2015: Russia and Austria. They’re the “zero surprise, still I’m happy” type of qualifier and the “LET’S FUCKING GO THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER” qualifier respectively. In the Eurovision semifinals, my voting strategy is to vote for the songs that I think need my support, so the bulk of my votes would’ve gone to Austria. And in the final, my strategy is to mainly vote for who I think should win, and reserve some votes for my favorites that deserve a good televote score.

What other qualifiers excited me, let me check my notes… Cyprus was a pleasing qualifier too. I was a bit sad Malta was the final qualifier instead of San Marino. But thinking about it more, Bosnia would’ve been a more deserving qualifier than Malta or San Marino.

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Switzerland: The Last of Our Kind

Artist: Rykka (Christina Maria Rieder)

Language: English

Key: E major, F♯ major

Unfortunately, just like the first semifinal, all the bland pop entries are in the first half. This is just a dull unimaginative pop ballad thing with a shaky singing voice. I can see why it didn’t qualify, but it’s hard to believe this is the same country that would win eight years later. And when Rykka sings “not afraid of our own ghosts”, I keep thinking she sings “not afraid of our uncles”.

Belarus: Help You Fly

Artist: Ivan (Alexander Ivanov)

Language: English

Key: D minor

Liv describes this song as generic but it makes her feel good, and I think I agree. It’s a decent minor key synth pop song with some memorable staging, renowned for the broadcaster’s joking desire to bring a real wolf to stage. The staging is a real spectacle of visual effects, featuring wolves, babies, and effects of the floor collapsing, so I’m not surprised it would’ve qualified with the televote and only the juries tanked it. I’m surprised this didn’t qualify, but I’m only moderately sad about it.

Ireland: Sunlight

Artist: Nicky Byrne

Language: English

Key: G minor

This is the first time Ireland ever internally selected for Eurovision. I can tell they thought, “we’ll send a member of our beloved boyband Westlife, what could possibly go wrong?” Fans seemed to think this would do well for a while, but to me this is just a boring radio pop boyband song, a painfully typical Irish entry pre-Bambie Thug. That said, I can see where Irish fans were coming from: if I was an Irish fan back then, I would’ve hoped this would change our fortunes and tried to convince myself this was an amazing song.

North Macedonia: Dona (Дона)

Artist: Kaliopi Bukle, returning from 2012

Language: Macedonian

Key: G major

We’re eight songs into semifinal 2 and this is the first entry not in English. In fact, the only other entries with non-English lyrics are Ukraine (two phrases in Crimean Tatar) and Bulgaria (one phrase in Bulgarian). Both are awesome songs, which makes up for my annoyance at songs being in English with just one foreign language phrase.

This is the non-qualifier I feel sorriest about, mainly because Kaliopi is such an icon and because it would’ve given the final more languages. It’s quite interesting to hear a Balkan rock ballad in major key. It sounds sweet and dramatic at the same time and Kaliopi has a strong voice. I hate shrieking amidst songs, but it’s not as bad when she does it at the end.

Slovenia: Blue and Red

Artist: Manuella Brečko

Language: English

Key: G major, A♭ major

From this song onwards, the second semifinal alternates between great songs that qualified and terrible songs that didn’t qualify. The good songs that qualified in order are Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, and Belgium.

I’m pretty sure this song was just a protest for Liechtenstein to get into Eurovision, given their flag colors. Or was it a protest to remove the white stripe from Slovenia’s flag? Lots of possibilities here.

This song is average radio pop with some country guitars, very anonymous. It sounds like it could have come from any country, which is unusual for Slovenia. Her repeated “alay-ay-ay” annoys me and so does the key change.

Denmark: Soldiers of Love (not to be confused with Belgium 1987)

Artist: Lighthouse X

Language: English

Key: A♭ major

“They think they’re hot shit, they think they’re the sexiest men on earth.” Those are Liv’s words, not mine. She also snarked that these guys look like if Pilou and Nikolaj (the male hosts of 2014) had kids, which let’s be real, they probably did. This is just bland boyband drivel that may be a tad off-key and I’m glad it didn’t qualify.

Norway: Icebreaker

Artist: Agnete Johnsen

Language: English

Key: F♯ minor

Out of Norway’s three non-qualifiers, this is by far the most deserved. It’s bad enough for a song to sound like two separate songs parted together, but it’s even worse when the separate songs don’t even have the same tempo. It annoys the absolute balls out of me that the verse and chorus abruptly alternate in tempo. The verses are a ripoff of the verses of “Euphoria” and the chorus is annoying and ballady.

Albania: Fairytale (not to be confused with Norway 2009)

Artist: Eneda Tarifa

Language: English

Key: G minor

And to close off the non-qualifiers, we have an Albanian female ballad that lost its soul and personality when revamped into English. The song wasn’t just translated, the instrumental became flatter and worse. I get that Albania sometimes wants to rework the winners of their national final, since Festivali i Këngës still has an orchestra and language rule, but it never pays off when they do it.

Semifinal 2 thoughts:

To start things off, Petra and Måns’ opening song called “That’s Eurovision” is pure fanservicey delight. It reminds me of the theatrical opening numbers from Lill Lindfors (1985) and Åse Kleveland (1986). The interval act is similar to that of the first semifinal, a wordless electronic stage show called “Man vs. Machine”. It’s fun to watch and interval act-y in a good way. And once again, the interval skits are genuinely funny, both the continuation of the Nerd Nation history show, and the one going through numerical statistics.

I exploded in laughter when Måns Zelmerlöw introduced Joe and Jake with a thick British accent. His German pronunciation is very good, though I noticed in the intro of semifinal 1 that he replaced the notorious German “ich” sound with the Swedish tj-sound, the sj-sound’s less infamous brother. More respectable than replacing the sound with “sh” or (dear god) “k”, that’s for sure! And Petra loves to showcase her Italian almost as much as her Spanish.

Going by the semifinals, I’m confident this year is a massive improvement over 2013 to 2015: there are way more songs I properly love amidst the pop soup. Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Belgium’s qualifier reveals all made me happy—I could imagine myself splitting my votes between all four—but Lithuania not so much because their song is crap. The saddest non-qualifier is North Macedonia for me. This means the only Slavic language representation we’ll get in the final is a repeated line in Bulgarian.

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See you next time as a song with natural winner energy beats a song designed to win, and Australia somehow surpasses the song designed to win too.

>> 2016 (Final): A Controversial but Rightful Winner