Intro Post

< 2016 Semifinals | 2016 Final | 2017 Semifinals >

I’ve planned out a schedule for when to watch the 2017 semifinals. If all goes well, I should be able to release the post no later than the morning of July 6, before I leave for a weekend trip to Pittsburgh.

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Introduction

Välkommen till Globen i Stockholm, the arena where 26 countries would fight for the prize of the 61st Eurovision Song Contest, hosted by the iconic duo of Petra Mede (audience explodes into cheering and chants her name)

… and Måns Zelmerlöw. (audience cheers, but not quite as loudly)

To start off the final, we got a flag parade set to a medley of EDM songs by Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, and a few other artists, easy to bop your head to and build hype in the audience. The contestants don’t hold physical flags, but instead the colors of each flag are projected onto white outfits worn by background performers. A bit too avant-garde if you ask me, but otherwise a lovely opening.

The postcards this year are simple and ungimmicky. As with 2013, they’re just the contestants doing activities in their home countries. As much as I wish the recent SVT contests showcased Sweden in their postcards, and as disconcerting as the zoom-ins to standing contestants are, it’s good that they stuck to the roots of Eurovision postcards and didn’t do tourism ads or Bible animations. And in any case, I can pretend Hungary’s train station is the Malmö Centralstation if I squint hard enough. But my favorite type of postcards will always be flag-themed.

Russia sent a song blatantly designed to win and it won the televote but only got third place overall. Australia sent a song I would have never expected to do well that won the jury vote, but got only second place over all. The runner-up of both the jury and televote is an absolute masterpiece of a song called “1944”, composed and performed by Jamala from Ukraine, who gave her country its second victory.

The voting was totally revamped from Eurovision 2015. For the first time in Eurovision history, the votes were determined not by a mix of jury and televote, but by the sum of the two. The jury spokespersons announced each country’s 12 points only, and then the hosts revealed the points each country got from the televote one by one. For the first three years of this combined system, the televote points were announced in order from lowest to highest, in a “last man standing” type of system.

I watched the grand final together with Liv with Swedish commentary (not Edward af Sillén this time, but a female radio host who later got fired for sexual harassment), then by myself with British commentary (the usual Graham Norton).

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Belgium: What’s the Pressure

Artist: Laura Tesoro

Language: English

Key: F♯ major with hints of minor

One of many things SVT did right when hosting this year is choose a good opener. I cannot think of a better song to begin this final. It’s a pumpy engaging disco song that puts the audience in a good mood. I’m certainly included: I can’t help but bop my head to it and I’d happily listen to it if my mood needs to be lifted. I also love the disco effects on stage and their resemblance to the Belgian flag colors.

Normally I’d be annoyed that Laura shouts to the audience near the end of the song, but somehow she manages to do it in a not annoying way. The song is just so feel-good, I can’t stay mad at her.

Czechia: I Stand

Artist: Gabriela Gunčiková

Language: English

Key: G minor

It might seem cruel that Czechia was put in the death slot when this was their first time qualifying, but if you look past the negative connotations of performing second, you’ll find that this is a fitting song to put second. It’s darker and more dramatic, and its position after the opener tells viewers that that the contest won’t all be upbeat and fluffy.

That said, as a song this is just too dreary and ballady and makes me feel nothing. But I’m glad the Czechs qualified for once, something their eastern neighbors never managed to accomplish.

Netherlands: Slow Down

Artist: Douwe Bob

Language: English

Key: A major (verses), G major (chorus)

The logo for the Netherlands, with a small THE next to a large NETHERLANDS, looks almost like that of an animated movie like The Incredibles. It’s very charming.

As Liv pointed out, it’s smart of SVT to have put three songs of very different genres in the first three slots. This gets viewers of various musical tastes tuned in to the show and tells them that this will be a diverse fest of music, not just a storm of radio pop or ballads or Eurodance. It won’t be a linguistically diverse fest, but that’s a different story.

This is clearly an attempt to reproduce the success of “Calm After the Storm”, given that this is another American-sounding country song. It’s nowhere near as good as “Calm After the Storm”, but then again neither are almost all Eurovision songs, so it’s not fair to dismiss it for that reason. This is a charming country rock song with a nice guitar solo and some seamless alternation between keys. I don’t really like the pause section near the end, but I do love that it slows down at the end to match its title.

Azerbaijan: Miracle

Artist: Samra Rahimli

Language: English

Key: F minor

Now we have yet more of the professionally choreographed swedo-pop that Azerbaijan sends every year. The performance is attractive to watch, but the song is so overly professional and flashy-sounding, not something designed to tell a personal story. The repeated “mira” in the chorus grates on me a little bit. Credit where it’s due, the verses are pretty interesting compositionally due to those little F major chords.

Hungary: Pioneer

Artist: Freddie (Gábor Alfréd Fehérvári)

Language: English, though the next (and last) three Hungarian entries are native-language

Key: C minor

When I watched the semifinal and final with Liv, both times I thought the train station at the start of the postcard was the Malmö Centralstation, until I noticed some un-Swedish-looking words like “szaküzlet”. Maybe it’s because I am American and don’t have train stations anywhere near my hometown, or maybe because I have strong memories of unwinding in the Malmö Centralstation during my Eurovision trip. It’s a really nice place to chill out alone before you have to go home, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, this is an ordinary dancey ballad that reminds me of “Not Alone” from 2014 (same key!) but not as good. At least the whistling parts are nice. I like Hungary better when they show all the cool things they can do with their language, so I’m joyed that their next three entries are all in Hungarian.

Italy: Nessun grado di separazione (listed onscreen as No Degree of Separation)

Artist: Francesca Michielin

Language: Italian, plus an out-of-place English section

Key: C major

Italy, why the hell would you throw an English section into a song in the language that everyone and their cousin puts on a pedestal? It’s not a real rule that Eurovision songs must have some lyrics in English, but all the Big Five seemed to think it was. I hate that this song has an English section in Eurovision, especially because the lyrical rhythm in that part is extremely blatantly Italian. This is exactly the wrong way to mix languages. As I’ve said before, the right way to mix languages is “Saudade, saudade” from 2022.

Aside from the awful English section, this is a nice enough ballad with a reflective, hopeful tone and a touching ending. It’s also got a very eye-catching stage. The floor of the stage could pass as real water, and the whole staging almost looks like a real-life music video.

Israel: Made of Stars

Artist: Hovi Star

Language: English

Key: G minor

This is a soppy four-chordy ballad with lyrics that try to be poetic but just seem inane to me. At least he sings decently well and the stage looks nice. The most interesting part is the end where he says “dare to dream”, clearly foreshadowing the slogan when Israel hosted in 2019.

Bulgaria: If Love Was a Crime

Artist: Poli Genova, returning from 2011

Language: English, plus a repeated phrase in Bulgarian

Key: A minor

After participating in Eurovision 2005 to 2013 and only qualifying once, this song represented an enormous change of fortune for Bulgaria. They had skipped the past two years, but this year they internally selected their 2011 contestant and got a much better result. This song scored fourth place, surpassing “Water” from 2007 (fifth place) as Bulgaria’s best result in Eurovision history. I can only imagine how surreal this must have felt for Bulgarian fans. I would say I wish I was a Bulgarian fan this year, but it’d be silly to pick which country I wished I was from just based on their results in a silly song contest. That said… I wouldn’t mind being from a country that isn’t hell-bent on pretending their language doesn’t exist.

If loving this song was a crime, then I’d be a criminal. This probably doesn’t seem like the kind of song I would like—it’s a pretty standard pop song with one chord progression the whole way through. Normally I don’t like when songs have one chord progression the whole way through, but it can work when the song varies the rhythm and beat, which this does perfectly! And Poli Genova sells this song incredibly well—she has clear experience being on stage.

The song starts out standard enough, but the pre-chorus where she drops the title really sells me on this song. The drums disappear except for repeating claps, and “if love was a crime, then we would be criminals” is accompanied by some lovely juicy synths. And then it just keeps exploring ideas with this one simple chord progression. I normally don’t like when songs have just one phrase in the country’s native language, but it works really well in this chorus. The whole song sounds heroic and triumphant, clearly Bulgaria’s time to shine after years of misfortunes. And they’d get an even better result next year, a surprising second place.

Sweden: If I Were Sorry

Artist: Frans Jeppsson Wall, best known for a football chant song when he was 8

Language: English

Key: F major

This was the first Eurovision contest since the death of Terry Wogan, so before this song, Graham Norton took a moment to pay tribute to him. He said that when he got the job of the British Eurovision commentator, Terry gave him one word of advice: don’t ever drink until song 9. I had a little bit to drink as I was reviewing song 8, so I hope Sir Terry forgives me.

Say hi to Frans, a very young-looking Swedish singer just a year older than me who’s best known a for football chant song from when he was a kid. He sings “I love you, Ich lieben dich” in the original Swedish version of “Who’s Da Man” which cracks me up so hard. Also, if I were to write a parody of “Europapa” about Eurovision 2016, the first verse would start with: Bezoek mijn friend genaamd Frans en neem de benen naar Zweden.

I don’t have many thoughts about this entry: it’s a mellow radio pop song with a radio-sounding voice. I like the moody bridge section, but the parts where he sings “if I were sorry” twice in a row are rather annoying and overall this isn’t the kind of song that excites me.

Germany: Ghost

Artist: Jamie-Lee Kriewitz

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor

First off, I’d like to issue a heartfelt apology on behalf of my country (or at least the one I call mine in the context of Eurovision) for almost sending the alt-right conspiracy theorist Xavier Naidoo to Eurovision. Don’t ask me what the fuck NDR was thinking. It should be noted that in 2022, he posted a video to Instagram saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine made him reconsider his infamous views, then he disappeared off the face of the earth.

German-language music doesn’t exist (see Spain for more), but German last-place entries sung by solo women in the key of B♭ minor with dark pianos do exist. OK, this isn’t a clone of “Black Smoke” or anything, but the songs do overlap in my head. The main difference is that this song is a lot weaker and flatter than I remember, and certainly worse than the last German entry.

“Now forgive me, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe I’m just old and grumpy, but there isn’t a single thing about this woman that doesn’t annoy me.” I’m sorry Jamie-Lee, but I have to agree with Graham here. Her outfit looks like it belongs in an anime convention and doesn’t fit the song at all. I kind of the lyrics about ghosts of ex-love interests, but otherwise it’s rather dull. I felt a long “ugh, of COURSE we’re last again” when Germany stayed at the bottom of the scoreboard. Unlike “Black Smoke”, I’m not all that salty she scored last place.

France: J’ai cherché

Artist: Amir Haddad

Language: French and English

Key: B♭ minor

Now this man, on the other hand… boy did he make his country proud! He sent one of the most famous 21st century French entries, supposedly one of the most frequently brought up when French fans discuss Eurovision. It scored a respectable sixth place, became a huge hit in France, and unusually for a French Eurovision song, gave the singer a successful career. (Also, I love the France logo transitioning from sans serif to serif, and back.)

This song is a proper representation of modern French pop music! It shows the world that the French language has a place in modern pop just as much as English. The lyrics in the verse and pre-chorus have a nice syncopated rhythm well-suited to the French language, a little bit like “Moustache” but much more accessible and professional. Amir sells the song super well and the lyrics are quite flowery. I can tell this is the kind of Francophone song designed for French speakers, not for people who don’t know shit about the language and think “ooh lah lah baguette amour”. It’s got a really nice driving beat and pumping instrumental and sounds radio-friendly in a good way.

What I don’t love nearly as much is the chorus in English. I wish France had the confidence to sing fully in French, but the chorus is just three repeated lines anyway. The Swedish commentator snarked that even though this song doesn’t have Swedish composers, this song does have a trace of Robin Stjernberg—she was talking about the “you-ou-ou-ou” in the chorus, which has some nice pentatonic scale notes. She seems to have a very corny sense of humor.

I could have sworn this song had a fully French version, but apparently it doesn’t. It does have a fully English version (Looking for You), and a Spanish version (Yo busqué). The English version sounds like a cover of a modern French-language pop song, because it is. This is a perfect example of the French language being suited to fast rhythmic songs, not just slow freeform chansons! The Spanish version has the same chorus in English and has a sweet story behind it: it was written by Barei, the Spanish representative this year who became close friends with Amir Haddad. The two performed in concerts together after Eurovision 2016. Amir has something of a French accent when singing in Spanish, but he gets most of the phonemes right and I know the Spanish always get flattered when foreigners speak their language.

Overall, this is a surprisingly lovely song that just works for me. It almost makes me want to cry a bit, because it’s the quality stuff France should’ve been sending all this time. This is the best French entry since… wow, when was the last French entry I liked this much? Let’s say “Sentiments songes” from 1997. If I was watching in 2016 and the rest of the world voted, I would’ve probably spared a few votes for this.

Poland: Color of Your Life

Artist: Michał Szpak

Language: English

Key: A minor, B♭ minor, C minor

I’m completely and utterly baffled that this but third place in the televote which is eighth place overall, when it got only seven points in the jury, less than any other entry except Germany. This is just a regular pop ballad with a heavily accented voice and a silly fire/desire rhyme that I don’t think is attractive or repulsive to voters one way or another. The huge discrepancy would make sense if it was a campy shitpost song for televoters, or a super-normal radio song with a good voice for juries.

Australia: Sound of Silence

Artist: Dami Im

Language: English

Key: E minor

Before this song, Måns Zelmerlöw stopped by the Tele2 Arena which was also broadcasting the Eurovision final. It feels weird to look at the flags in this arena because they have so many more non-participant countries, like Turkey and Peru.

Now here’s the biggest surprise of Eurovision 2016: how on earth did this win the jury vote and get second place overall??? To me, this is just a completely average X Factor ballad with annoyingly stompy percussion and pianos and I guess a good voice. Scoring well with the juries makes sense, but beating Russia and Ukraine in the jury vote? No way. And I don’t get why she’s sitting through most of the song. Liv doesn’t see why people love this song either: she said there was a Swedish word she didn’t know how to translate that meant “nothing-saying”, and I suggested “nothingburger”.

I do like the lyrics about a long-distance relationship, but it’s weird that she technically avoided name-dropping FaceTime by pretending the lyrics were “face time”, which has the opposite meaning.

Cyprus: Alter Ego

Artist: Minus One

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor, for the third time this year

Remember in 2002 when Cyprus was represented by a boyband named One? I think One and Minus One should combine and form a super-band called Zero. Also, this is one of those songs where many people don’t remember which is the song title and which is the band. Kind of like “Toto – Africa”.

Liv and I both think the song sounds way too similar to “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers. They’re both in the same key and you can easily sing one to the other. Not that this is a bad thing, because “Somebody Told Me” is a great melancholic synth rock song and this is about the same level of quality.

It’s weird that when people accuse a song of plagiarism, they usually hyperfocus on the melody and ignore anything else about the songs that may be different. This song and “Somebody Told Me” are way more similar than most pairs of songs I’ve seen accused of plagiarism, but I guess their melodies don’t sound that similar, so no one was gonna accuse this of being a knock-off.

Serbia: Goodbye (Shelter)

Artist: Sanja Vučić

Language: English

Key: E♭ minor, E minor

This is supposed to be a song about domestic abuse (very much like “Running” from 2014), but it sounds too triumphant and heroic to work for this theme. Also, it’s a ballad with a ballady drum beat so not my thing. We have one more Serbian entry fully in English coming up, then they’ll go back to embracing their language.

Lithuania: I’ve Been Waiting for This Night

Artist: Donny Montell

Language: English

Key: A major

Dear god, this is so much worse and more generic than Donny’s last entry “Love Is Blind”. It’s a feel-good corporate radio boyband song that feels like I’ve heard it a hundred times already. It starts with a generic four-chord progression and the chorus has another generic progression. In the last chorus, he sings “through a thousand years and a million (pause)”, as though a cuss word was censored. A million farts, perhaps? It does rhyme with “apart”.

Croatia: Lighthouse

Artist: Nina Kraljić

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor number 4 (then C minor)

I can never remember how this song sounds, it’s just some sort of average pop ballad thing with a nasal voice. I only remember her overcomplicated outfit that feels like it was designed to specifically win the Barbara Dex Award, which it did. Liv wants to like the song because she loves songs with unusual types of singing, but she just can’t. Shame that the first Croatian entry after two years skipping isn’t remarkable, but their time to shine would come in 2024.

Russia: You Are the Only One

Artist: Sergey Lazarev

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor (for the fifth time), C minor

And now we’ve reached the icon itself, the song that was blatantly designed to win and won the televote, but got only fifth place in the juries and third place overall. I have to admit, I can’t quite tell which Russian city is in this postcard. Where was that onion-shaped cathedral located again? Is it in Chelyabinsk, perhaps? Or could it be all the way in Irkutsk? To quote Graham Norton, “it could be anywhere, really.” Also, the font of the country’s logo looks perfectly Soviet.

For the past two years, Russia had a difficult situation in Eurovision: they sent acts designed to score well as always, but due to their annexation of Crimea and anti-LGBT laws, both their contestants were badly booed. So how did Russia solve this problem in 2016? They internally selected a popular singer who’s tried to enter Eurovision many times, who is a supporter of LGBT culture in Russia and widely believed to be gay. Sergey Lazarev has had a positive image among Eurovision fans ever since, but not as much after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, due to his involvement in propaganda music despite initially posting his opposition to the war. Some fans believe he’s a full-out Putin supporter, but others believe that since he lives in Russia and raises kids as a single father, he’s forced to express support and would face nasty consequences if he shared his true views. Unlike Polina who represented Russia last year, who is a total Putin fangirl, I’m inclined to give Sergey the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t know him personally of course, nor do I know firsthand what life is like in Russia post-2022, and no fan outside of Russia should act as though they do.

Internally selecting a singer whose views align with Eurovision fans is only one part of the formula: it also helps that Russia chose a song that would get fans insanely excited, regardless of their opinion on Russia. It’s a stompy boppy synth pop song composed by the mainstay duo, Philipp Kirkorov (who’s a shitbag but also a good composer) and Dimitris Kontopoulous. And it does a lot of really cool things musically.

To start, the synths of the intro and first verse seem to be in a rather slow 6/8 beat at first. But then kick drums come in rhythm of fours, which cements the time signature as a more interesting 12/8—the time signature that mixes the elements of 3/4 and 4/4. And then comes the chorus with that simultaneously cheesy and awesome line, “thunder and lightning, it’s getting exciting”. The whole song has a wonderfully done buildup that hypes up the audience perfectly. And it has that awesome trope where the second verse has extra tension that we didn’t hear in the first verse. Then comes the bridge where it may seem like the song is about to end, but then it slams you in the face with a surprise key change—the second best way to do key changes behind smooth transitions. Liv says the song could have used a chord or two to transition into C minor, and she has a good point. But for the sake of hyping up the Eurovision audience, a surprise key change works well enough.

And the staging of the song… holy fuck, it’s like “Heroes” but ten times wilder and more ambitious. The crazy screen effects, the synchronized gestures, the part where he climbs up a staircase especially. Out of all the countries in Europe, Russia is the only one (pun intended) that would do something this over-the-top and mind-bending just for a song competition. I absolutely love this song and would’ve definitely thrown some votes at it, because when you love a song this much, there’s a part of you that worries it somehow won’t do all that well.

Russian fans and the Russian delegation were extremely salty that this didn’t win, but Sergey Lazarev himself wasn’t; in fact, he took a moment to congratulate Jamala for her victory. Would I have been salty this didn’t win if I had watched in 2016? If I was watching at age 13, I would’ve been extremely salty, but I was 17 years old then so my musical tastes looked closer to my current ones. Not to say this song is no longer in my musical tastes: I will always love dancey music that hypes me up. But my tastes have gradually diversified to include other songs I might not have appreciated at age 17.

I should also mention this song has a Russian version called “Пусть весь мир подождёт” (let the whole world wait). As is common with native-language versions of Russian entries, the lyrics are way more flowery and openly romantic than in English, but I don’t strongly prefer the Russian version because he sings in English quite well, and because “thunder and lightning, it’s getting exciting” is so iconic. But I think it would’ve scored just as well if it was sung in Russian.

Spain: Say Yay!

Artist: Barie (Bárbara Reyzábal González-Aller)

Language: English

Key: F minor

The title of this song makes me think of a famous scene in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic where Fluttershy says a faint “yay”. Be warned, this won’t be the last time ponies come up in this post.

Dear fucking god, it feels so weird that Spain is singing entirely in English for the first and only time in Eurovision history. But I won’t lie, it doesn’t feel any weirder than Germany singing in English every year since 2008. Germany ignoring their language so many years in a row makes me feel like my country isn’t represented in Eurovision, or dare I say, like they’re not actually participating at all. I have no patriotism in my heart for all those random-ass English pop songs from Germany, except if they truly, thoroughly wow me, and even then a part of me feels begrudged. Similarly, it feels like Spain didn’t actually participate in Eurovision this year.

This is an extremely un-Spanish-sounding dance pop song and rather repetitive musically, but at least it’s honest about being un-Spanish. I’m rather annoyed by the lyrics “say yay yay yay”, because to me it sounds more like “sayayayay”, an elongated “say” akin to the stretched “why” from the Netherlands last year. I do like the mirror effects on screen; they remind me of various entries in 1996, particularly “Beşinci Mevsim” from Turkey.

Latvia: Heartbeat

Artist: Justs Sirmais

Language: English

Key: E♭ minor

This is Latvia’s second year in a row making it to the grand final, and their last time qualifying until 2024. Their singer normally goes by Justs, which makes me confuse him with Joost Klein.

“It’s a really catchy song once it gets going, but the verse does seem a bit endless”, as Graham Norton said. I think I agree now that he says with it. I kind of like the deep house sound and creative synth design, but I don’t have many thoughts on it otherwise.

Ukraine: 1944 (the winner)

Artist: Jamala (Susana Alimivna Jamaladinova)

Language: English and Crimean Tatar

Key: G minor

Although I love both Russia and Ukraine’s entries this year, this one is so much more of a natural winner, and absolutely the right song to take home the prize. The benefit of Ukraine skipping Eurovision for a year is that it gave them time to revamp their national final. Say hello to Vidbir, the Ukrainian national final every year since 2016. It now has multiple semifinals instead of being one night and has a higher standard of song quality. Starting from 2023, the national final has allowed fans to vote for jury members, which I think is super cool. You know Vidbir has become a successful event when the first song to win the competition went on to win Eurovision.

Another thing I love about this song’s victory is that Jamala composed and wrote it entirely by herself. It’s the only self-composed winner in Eurovision history written by a woman. If you’re curious what all Eurovision winners were self-composed, they are: Merci, Chérie (1966)*, Hold Me Now (1987), Insieme: 1992 (1990), Fly on the Wings of Love (2000; composed by Jørgen Olsen), Hard Rock Hallelujah (2006; composed by Mr. Lordi), Fairytale (2009), 1944 (2016), and Zitti e buoni (2021; composed by all of Måneskin). Interestingly, self-composed winners (and entries in general) seem to be more common in modern Eurovision. I like when musicians sing songs that they composed by themselves and find it weird that most popular music is not composed by the same person who sang it. I’d feel weird attaching my name to a song just because I sang words that someone else wrote over a song that someone else composed.

Let’s deep dive into the composition of the song: what makes it work so well musically? It starts with a haunting Turkic flute that plays a melody we’ll hear in the chorus, then it delves right into the powerful, impactful lyrics with an awesome chilling drum beat. “When strangers are coming, they come to your house / They kill you all and say, we’re not guilty” is an absolute genius line that hits me straight in the gut. The song is honest about what it’s about: Joseph Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars, and how it connects to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea. Then comes the chorus, where she sings lyrics from a Crimean Tatar folk song about the Tatars having lost their homeland to the Soviet authorities. This is the first and only Eurovision winner sung partly in an endangered language, and the only one with lyrics in a Turkic language. Until 2024, it was the only Eurovision entry with lyrics in a Turkic language since Turkey left.

This song has beautiful buildup from the first verse to the second verse, and to the second chorus, but not in an in-your-face way like “You Are the Only One”. It keeps the listener captivated, so much that I sometimes don’t even notice how much the song builds up because I’m busy enjoying the song. Every chorus adds something new that the previous chorus didn’t have: the second chorus adds flutes and harmonies as she sings the lines in Crimean Tatar, as well as some wordless melodies between her lines.

And then comes the bridge which does something that should be impossible: a wail that actually adds to the song and fits into it perfectly! Normally I don’t like waily singing at all, but her howl actually fits with the song musically and is a perfect leadup to the final chorus. The last chorus intersperses all of the Tatar lines with some beautiful string melodies that she sings along to.  I never fail to be impressed by her high-pitched notes after the last “yaşlığıma toyalmadım”. She hits them perfectly every time, and her vocal cords move so fast between these notes! The highest note she hits is a F6, over two octaves above middle C. Her lowest note is a G3, so that’s a vocal range of almost three octaves.

From her performance, you can tell Jamala means every word of her lyrics and is emotionally affected by the recent events in Crimea, which is why she’s using music to share her grief with the world. There really is no better way to tell the world how tragic events make someone feel than to sing a song about it. This entire song never fails to blow me away and I am incredibly glad it won. I find it miraculous that it took the prize despite not winning the jury or televote. The juries were biased towards X Factor singing, the televoters flocked towards Sergey Lazarev, but both could agree that 1944 is a damn good song too. This is the first of two Eurovision winners to win neither the jury nor televote: the other is “Arcade” from 2019.

* Udo Jürgens collaborated with another guy for the lyrics, but I’d say this is close enough.

Malta: Walk on Water

Artist: Ira Losco, returning from 2002

Language: English

Key: E♭ minor

I would’ve never guessed that this was by a returning artist, because this sounds nothing like her previous entry “Seventh Wonder”. It’s just an average pop ballad for the most part, but it gains a bit more life in the funky bridge. I’m weirded out by her animated face on the floor; to me, that only works for lighthearted songs like “Europapa”. It really is a letdown after Ukraine.

Georgia: Midnight Gold

Artist: Nika Kocharov and the Young Georgian Lolitaz

Language: English

Key: A minor

Usually when Georgia hires Thomas G:son to help with their entry, it means this is a year where they forgot to be weird and zany. But this year, Georgia went out of the box and hired Thomas G:son! Both entries he was involved in are rock songs (the other is Cyprus), which suggests he’s a more versatile composer than he lets on.

It actually makes sense in a way that Thomas reached out to these guys. Georgia had internally selected this band, then opened a submission window for songs matching a very specific prompt: “melodic song structure of alternative and indie rock with electronic beats, synths and/or samples, and club orientation of post-disco dance music”. I think Thomas G:son saw this as an opportunity to go out of his comfort zone, so he collaborated with a Georgian songwriter not part of this band named Kote Kalandadze, and this is the end result.

The lyrics (written by Kote Kalandadze) are rather sexual and tell the story of a man who woke up a morning after he got drunk and can’t remember a thing, an unusual subject for a Eurovision song and fitting for this progressive rock. I love that this is one of few entries that has an indie sound instead of a mainstream pop production style, and as with Spain it has mirror effects on camera that remind me of 1996. It’s a mishmash of several different styles of rock that works really well and doesn’t sound incoherent, but the best part by far is the trippy electronic bridge. It’s a clear shift into a different musical style, but also a very seamless shift.

This is not quite my favorite of the contest, but I’m glad Georgia was rewarded for sending something unusual and I would’ve possibly given them a vote or two in the final. I absolutely love him saying “happy birthday to my mother” at the end.

Austria: Loin d’ici

Artist: Zoë Straub

Language: French. I typed “E” before I realized, for once, that we have a song with no English.

Key: E minor

Et maintenant, nous avons la seule chanson dans ce concours avec rien de paroles en anglais! This is the kind of song where I just want to gush about how great it is in French, because I’m so joyed that this made it to the final and got respect from the televote. But this blog is in English, so it’d be annoying to throw in sentences in other languages. It’d be easier if this were a video, then I could say something in another language and subtitle it in English. I’m less happy that the juries didn’t give this song love, but what can you do?

Eurovision has a handful of songs where a country sings in a language you wouldn’t expect them to, but most of them have no appeal to me beyond “haha, Latvia sang in Italian” or “did Norway really sing in Swahili this year?” This, on the other hand, is a proper banger that tells the world that in the 21st century, the appeal of the French language beyond France lives on. You can tell from this song that Zoë has a special adoration for the French language and loves expressing herself en français. Her family is partly of French descent and she attended a French immersion school (like me!), so it only makes sense she loves the language this much. And I find it funny that Austria had the confidence to sing fully in French when France didn’t.

I must say that Zoë sings in French incredibly well! Certainly better than Ireen Sheer or Géraldine, the English-speaking singers who sang crappy songs for Luxembourg. She beams with enthusiasm, her voice sounds crisp and clean, and I can understand every word she sings. She seems so sweet, going by her energy in the green room and enthusiastic thanks when the song ends. The lyrics are about her dreams of spending time with a love interest “dans un pays loin d’ici” (in a country far from here).

As a composition, this is energetic and boppy but also sweet and restrained, not over-the-top dancey, and I really like that. It beautifully mixes orchestral instruments with a dance beat and features some lovely violins throughout, especially in the second verse when they play scales in parallel sixths. I also love that the chorus plays with alternating between E minor and G major, the first and second times she sings “dans un pays loin d’ici”. I would’ve voted the fuck out of this in the semifinals and split my votes between this, Russia, and Ukraine in the final, maybe reserving a few votes for a some extra songs.

United Kingdom: You’re Not Alone

Artist: Joe and Jake (Joe Woolford and Jake Shakeshaft)

Language: English

Key: B major

Though it’s yet another British entry that didn’t score that well, Liv told me that she thinks it isn’t as bad as people say. I responded that you can say this about a lot of 2010’s UK entries, but they just don’t spark excitement in viewers the way “You Are the Only One” does. It’s a pleasant enough British pop rock song and has good harmonies, but it gets repetitive as it progresses. It got a reasonable 62 points form the jury, but it’s blatantly the type of song that no one’s going to vote for. It only got eight points from televoters, from Ireland, Malta, and Australia.

Armenia: LoveWave

Artist: Iveta Mukuchyan

Language: English

Key: F minor

Even though this earned a commendable seventh place, for me this song ends the grand final on a dull note. The long buildup note after the intro sounds more like an airplane taking off than music. I kind of like the ethnic violins sprinkled into this song, but otherwise it’s average dance pop and she misses a few notes, which she didn’t in the semifinal.

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Who’s my favorite?

For almost a year before writing this post, I was unsure whether I would choose Russia or Ukraine as my winner and thought it would be a nightmarishly hard choice. I went back and forth in my head tons of times before writing this post, but after having watched the whole show, my choice is clear. Ukraine, 1944 is just as good as Russia’s song musically and far better artistically, so it’s my definite winner of the year.

• Belgium, 2 (1976, 2003)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1 (2006)
• Denmark, 3 (1963, 2000, 2001)
• Estonia, 1 (2009)
• Finland, 3 (1968, 1983, 1989)
• France, 4 (1977, 1990, 1991, 1997)
• Germany, 4 (1956, 1979, 1982, 1999)
• Greece, 1 (2013)
• Hungary, 1 (2005)
• Iceland, 1 (1992)
• Ireland, 4 (1970, 1980, 1993, 1994)
• Israel, 1 (1987)
• Italy, 1 (1958)
• Latvia, 1 (2002)
• Luxembourg, 4 (1961, 1965, 1972, 1988)
• Montenegro, 1 (2015)
• Netherlands, 8 (1957, 1959, 1964, 1967, 1969, 1975, 1998, 2014)
• Norway, 5 (1960, 1966, 1973, 1985, 1995)
• Portugal, 3 (1971, 1984, 2008)
• Serbia, 3 (2004, 2011, 2012)
• Sweden, 2 (1974, 1996)
• Switzerland, 1 (1986)
• Turkey, 2 (1978, 2010)
• Ukraine, 2 (2007, 2016)
• United Kingdom, 2 (1962, 1981)
• (21 winners)

Note that this is my first time agreeing with the winner of a Eurovision year since 2002. I don’t think it will be my last!

General thoughts:

Buckle up guys: this section is going to be huge. I’m going to split it into three parts: songs, interval acts, and voting.

The songs: The lineup of this final has a lot of samey pop soup, but it has enough songs that do something different or otherwise click with me that I found this year well worth watching! I’d say it’s the best Eurovision year since 2010, since it has five or so songs that I’d love to revisit again and again. Russia and Ukraine are a duo of songs I both love, Austria and France have delightful Francophone songs, and Bulgaria sounds mainstream but still manages to click with me.

Interval acts: The grand final has a hodgepodge of interval acts and skits. The skits are once again genuinely funny and I wish more contests had this sense of humor, but on the other hand this makes the SVT contests stand out. Petra and Måns have tons of great humor throughout the show; my favorite gag was when he corrected Petra’s statement that Eurovision has had 60 winners, because of the quadruple winners of 1969, and Petra said “please don’t interrupt”. The best interval skit is our good friend Lynda Woodruff responding to emails.

As for the interval acts on stage, first we have a very cheesy interview with Justin Timberlake, then he premieres his songs “Rock Your Body” and “Can’t Stop the Feeling”. When I watched this, at first I thought it was horribly weird that Eurovision was promoting an American singer, but if you can see past the “don’t make America part of Eurovision for fuck’s sake” that every fan thinks, this works well as an interval act because it has live instruments and the songs are longer than three minutes, so it feels distinct from all the competing Eurovision songs. As an American, I do not feel patriotic when Eurovision panders to my home country. I think that’s how the Australian friend I’ve mentioned before feels about his country being in Eurovision, come to think of it. But I always do get happy to meet other American Eurofans, like I did a lot in Malmö; there’s surprisingly many of us!

And next up we have the second most iconic interval act in Eurovision history behind Riverdance, a satirical song called “Love Love Peace Peace”. To discuss it, I need to go into a My Little Pony tangent. I’ll try my best to make the tangent understandable to non-bronies, so bear with me.

I had heard of Love Love Peace Peace (LLPP) pretty much since becoming a Eurovision fan but never watched it until writing this blog post. I expected it to be to Eurovision as the episode Slice of Life is to MLP, because that episode is a storm of fanservice to celebrate the 100th episode.* But I don’t think this is quite an accurate comparison. The fanservice in Slice of Life consists of three types: (1) callbacks to prior parts of the show, (2) self-referential humor about the show’s tropes, and (3) references to fandom memes. LLPP contains plenty of the first two points, but not really much of the third. And the self-referential humor is mostly in the spoken intro, where the hosts discuss all the tropes that you’ll find in winning Eurovision songs and make up a Swedish instrument whose name means “women’s pubic hair”.

The spoken part of LLPP is somewhat like a Eurovision counterpart to Slice of Life, for sure. But the part where all those famous 21st century contestants come back and reference their prior acts… that’s more like a Eurovision counterpart to callback-heavy episodes of MLP that reference iconic scenes without poking at the show’s tropes. The first such callback-heavy episode to come to mind is “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”, which is just four episodes after Slice of Life. So you could say LLPP partly a Eurovision counterpart to Slice of Life, partly a counterpart to Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep. I feel like the callbacks to Eurovision entries are a bit too obvious, but it was loads of fun to finally get to experience this act anyway and I appreciate the subtle details like Petra cosplaying as Charlotte Perrelli. I’m also obligated to mention the instrumental of the song is based on “Zauvijek moja”, Serbia and Montenegro’s entry from 2005, but in a 4/4 time signature instead of 7/8.

After LLPP comes some of the skits I mentioned earlier, then comes Måns Zelmerlöw singing his songs “Fire in the Rain” and “Heroes”. I love Måns and all, but this felt like the “now’s the time to grab a snack or use the restroom” type of interval act.

* If you’re a fan of MLP, you should consider reading my review of Slice of Life. I’m really proud of it.

The voting: I’m obligated to mention that the voting sequence this year started the pattern of beginning with last year’s host country and ending with this year’s host. I should also mention in the jury voting that the progress bar is in reverse and shows how many countries are left, which I don’t really like. I love that Petra took some time to properly converse with each spokesperson. It must have gotten a little tiring for her to do it with 42 different people, but she clearly loves presenting Eurovision results anyway. Here are a few spokesperson moments of note:

• I feel bad for the Irish spokespersons because sometimes they say something in Irish but the audience never cheers, and this year is no exception.
• The Armenian spokesperson gave some sort of peace speech that got cut short due to connection problems, but Petra proceeded through it like nothing happened. Props to her for not wasting time!
• Also props to Måns for elegantly filling the time during the Israeli spokesperson’s technical difficulties with green room interviews. That’s so much more elegant than pushing these countries’ results to the end, as was done last year.

And once more, a few of the spokespersons took some time to showcase their Swedish. Here are the more elaborate things they said in Swedish, with translations and footnotes written by Liv. Text in brackets is spoken by Petra.

• Czechia: Here comes greetings from Prague.
• Cyprus: Petra, good evening. Stockholm, we really came* together tonight, thanks to you.
• Israel: Good evening, Stockholm. Thank you for the show, you’re fantastic as usual. You have once again shown who’s boss,** Sweden just keeps on winning. [Wow, would you look at that?]
• Montenegro: Good evening, Sweden. Are you alright? [Fine. We’re doing fine.] You were fantastic tonight, you were The Real Thing as we say in Montenegro. We wish you all the best of luck. [Thanks a ton. But now, about those 12 points?]
• Bonus fact (also written by Liv): Gina Dirawi, the Swedish spokesperson, said a little oopsie which [Liv is] not sure if it was scripted or not. Assuming it wasn’t, she was trying to say the Swedish proverb “finns det hjärterum finns det stjärterum”, meaning essentially “good friends don’t mind crowding together to make room for everyone”. She translated it quite literally, as “if there’s room in the heart, there’s room for the butt”, but accidentally said “if there’s room in the heart, there’s room in the butt” which obviously has a different meaning.

* Hilariously mistranslated. The English phrase “to come together” has a double meaning, meaning both “to unite” and something dirty. The former would be translated into Swedish as “att enas”, and the literal translation “att komma tillsammans” only has a dirty meaning in Swedish. You could probably guess which one the Cypriot spokesperson said, based on Petra’s flustered expression.

** Literally “shown us where the cupboard stands”, a Swedish idiom.

The spokespersons from Cyprus and Montenegro were very clumsy with their Swedish, and the Czech spokesperson sounded more like she was speaking Danish, but the Israeli guy did a spectacular job. Liv was very impressed that he used an obscure idiom. Ofer Nachshon (the Israeli spokesperson) showed the other spokespersons who’s boss.

The televoting sequence was full of early installment weirdness. First Petra announced the bottom 16 televote points rapidfire, which is weird to me because the televoting points are supposed to be the highlight of the grand final. Her style of announcing points at the time feels almost like a game of Jeopardy: “The country that received 222 points. What is Poland?” I definitely prefer the new system of announcing televote points from bottom to top of the scoreboard.

It feels so weird that we didn’t know Poland’s huge televote score until near the end, but it was relieving when they turned out to be the country that got 222 televote points. That meant we knew for sure the winner could only be Russia or Ukraine, not Australia who I felt wasn’t worthy of the prize. Once Ukraine won, it was the most satisfying victory for me since 2010. I sang along with the winner’s reprise, just like I did at the end of 2009 and 2010. Overall, even if it’s not linguistically diverse, I’d say this was a very good year with enormous influence on Eurovision history.

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Whew, it feels amazing to be done with this post! It’s my longest Eurovision post yet at 8324 words, beating the 2009 final at 8204 words. Let’s hope my next few Eurovision posts won’t take quite as long.

See you next time for the only all-male host group in Eurovision history.

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