Intro Post

< 2022 Semifinals | 2022 Final | 2023 Semifinals >

I woke up early to finish this post because it’s nice to get this out of the way before my work day starts. After this post, I only have four left till I finish this project! Thanks to all my commenters for sticking around all this time. And don’t worry, I have a few bonus posts in mind once I finish 2024.

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Introduction

Because the winner last time was a Big Five country, the grand final of Eurovision 2022 featured 25 countries instead of the usual 26. These countries all competed for the prize in Turin, Italy, and due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many fans saw it as a foregone conclusion that Ukraine would win, and that’s indeed what happened. They overwhelmingly won the televote with the second native-language winner in a row. The jury winner was the United Kingdom who got, after so many years of terrible results, a jaw-dropping second place. Their best ever result since 1998! Spain achieved a just as amazing third place, their best ever result since 1995, meaning that two Big Five countries had their redemption arcs this year. In fact, I was originally going to call this post “The British Redemption Arc” before I chose a title reflective of the other songs this year.

After a bunch of opening acts I don’t care much about, we finally have a flag parade as it should be: all the contestants walk on the stage waving their flags! I love seeing each of them carry their flags in a different way with a different style: some go big, some go modest, some mix in rainbow or transgender flags. I also love seeing the United Kingdom, for once, getting some of the biggest cheers in the crowd. I’m still not a big fan of these hosts, but I do love Laura Pausini’s sparkly blue suit. Maybe I just have a thing for sparkly clothes, and I never unlocked this taste till I watched Eurovision?

The postcards feature a drone robot named Leo (introduced in the opening film of semifinal 1) showing the viewers a tour of Italy, with images of the contestants projected onto the buildings. I’m not a big fan of these postcards because they show too much of Italy (lovely country though; it’s a tourist destination for good reason) and not enough of the contestants. One of many ways the production doesn’t live up to 2021.

I watched the grand final with British commentary, done by Eurovision veteran Graham Norton. I find that the more years someone has commentated Eurovision, the more entertaining their commentary gets.

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Czechia: Lights Off

Artist: We Are Domi

Language: English, because the producers refuse to put a native language song at the start

Key: A minor

This is the first of two years in a row where the song that ended semifinal 2 is put at the start of the final. It kinda makes sense, sometimes a song that puts the audience in a good mood can fit at the start or end. I’m OK with having this as an opener: it’s an uncomplicated house song that’s fun to listen to and bop to. I love the inclusion of music technology with all the wires. Even though it’s just for show, it conveys that these guys are experts in house music. I don’t mind the single four-chord progression because it really is fun to listen to. And the obvious gimmick of turning off the lights was done perfectly. It’s nowhere close to my favorite, but it really is uncomplicated fun.

Romania: Llámame

Artist: Wrs (Andrei Ursu)

Language: English, plus two repeated lines in Spanish

Key: G minor

Hey, for once we don’t have a ballad in the death slot, that’s nice! This is another uncomplicated fun dancey song with good staging and a fairly Spanish-sounding beat especially in the bridge. I particularly like the guitar melody after each chorus. Again, it’s not my favorite but always fun to listen to. This is the only time Romania qualified to the grand final starting from 2018, and the only one of those years where it felt like they took the competition seriously. Just too bad Romania got caught up in the cheating scandal this year, which I’m 99% sure Azerbaijan is responsible for.

Portugal: Saudade, saudade

Artist: Maro (Mariana Brito da Cruz Forjaz Secca)

Language: English and Portuguese

Key: B♭ minor

My beloved, my beloved, my beloved!!! Remember when I proudly claimed “Amar pelos dois” to be my second favorite Eurovision song of all time? I don’t think this is the case anymore, because there are quite a few entries that more consistently impact me, whereas I need to be in the right mood for “Amar pelos dois” (even though that song is dear to me). This song makes me want to cry every single time I listen to it, just like “Calm After the Storm” or “Tout l’univers”. I’ve been wanting to analyze this song in detail for a long time, and now I get to do that!

This song begins with a simple but heartfelt guitar riff in a lovely 6/8 time signature. Then Maro starts singing and does something miraculous: she uses breathy singing and cry-singing at the same time, two tropes I ordinarily hate, in a way that I actually love! She sounds hollow and sentimental and I can tell the lyrics of the song are personal to her. It’s a tribute to her dead grandfather, which isn’t outright stated in the lyrics, but conveyed very well through phrases like “somehow I can’t move on, oh you’re gone”. It tells viewers one of the harsh truths of life: it’s impossible to fully move on from the death of a loved one, even if they’ve been elderly for your whole life.

Maro starts off singing this song solo, but then comes a surprising moment where all six singers on stage sing “and I know it’s no one’s fault”. That is such a clever and gorgeous way to emphasize this line, both thematically and musically. The emphasis of this line tells listeners it’s about someone who died of old age. And the harmonies in this line sound so cool musically! Portugal said no to pre-recorded backing vocals and instead took maximum advantage of the six-person rule. The singers must have been hand-picked to be able to harmonize as beautifully as possible. Their harmonization sounds almost like an orchestra, and is the closest thing modern Eurovision can give us to a live orchestra. Aside from occasional interval acts, that is.

Then comes the chorus where they sing “Saudade, saudade / Nothing more than I can say says it in a better way”. I love this line and I love that it tells international viewers the meaning of “saudade”, a Portuguese word that’s famously difficult to translate into other languages. It’s a word that has shown up plenty in Portuguese entries, but only now are we learning what it means. And oh my god, their harmonies sound so beautiful!

Next up comes the second verse which is in Portuguese. I dare say this is the best example of language mixing in Eurovision history. The first half of verse 2 uses the same backing as verse 1, but the lyrics are in a completely different rhythm. It uses the stress-timed rhythm of Portuguese to glorious effect, just as the first verse uses a more even rhythm befitting English. Then in the second half of verse 2, we have the best part of the song. The drums cut out of the song, the instrumental plays a guitar whose chord progression goes in crazy directions, and my heart flutters at the gorgeous harmonies in “peço por sinais”. In the Portuguese section, she speaks a bit more intimately about how it feels to lose her grandpa: she lost her best friend who always served as a safe haven, and now nothing makes sense anymore.

The chorus plays one last time, or rather one and a quarter more times—the last “nothing more that I can say says it in a better way” is repeated. The second “saudade, saudade” has another pause in the drums, which really highlights the harmonies. And then the outro of the song bookends the intro (“I’ve tried to write”, “Takes time, alright”) with “I’ve tried, alright”, then she admits she thought her grandpa would always be by her side. Indeed, no matter how much you know death is inevitable, it’s so easy to block out the possibility that it would ever happen to someone you love. It’s such a perfect way to conclude this beautiful song.

This song is the perfect realization of Portugal’s approach to Eurovision. It’s melancholy, it has lovely guitars, it tells a personal story, it has tons of great vocal flourishes, and overall it’s super authentic and down to earth. It’s also a super accessible song—I know this because among the various Eurovision songs I’ve shown to my mother, who’s not obsessed with the contest like I am, this is one of the ones she loved the most. It got an amazing fifth place from the jury, a less amazing 15th from the televote (why couldn’t the reverse recap have been brought back before 2024?), and overall a respectable ninth place. By post-COVID standards, a top ten finish is something any country should be proud of!

This is one of my three gigantic favorites of 2022—I’ll let you know at the end which I’ll choose as my winner. It won’t be an easy choice!

Finland: Jezebel

Artist: The Rasmus

Language: English

Key: F minor, G♯ minor, B minor, G♯ minor, B minor, C♯ minor

You do you Finland, but unlike their last hard rock entry, this doesn’t grip me by the throat at all and is just an alright rock song whose chorus is way catchier than the verses. The transition between keys that are a tritone apart (F minor to B minor, G minor to C♯ minor) are creative, but they also make the song feel a bit disjointed. On a positive note, I do like their rock musician look and they have a good stage presence.

Switzerland: Boys Do Cry

Artist: Marius Bear

Language: English

Key: F major

Out of Switzerland’s entries in their “let’s try to win by sending a male voice and professional staging” era, this is definitely the biggest miss. It got a decent enough 78 points from the juries, but an infamous zero points from the televote.

I am in two minds about this song, because it has a good message and presents it really well, especially through the lyrics and visuals. The message stands up against both misogyny (the idea that only women cry and feel pain) and misandry (the idea that men should not be sensitive and bottle up all insecurities), but is aimed at men first and foremost, which is pretty nice because not enough media tells boys that it’s OK to cry. In general, I feel like not enough media has earnest messages aimed specifically at men, telling them that it’s OK to be sensitive and express emotions.

On the other hand, as a piece of music I really don’t like this. It’s essentially a male counterpart to “Growing Up Is Getting Old”, which means it has a weird croony voice (seldom seen in male entries) and moody piano chords instead of a clear beat. It’s not fun to listen to and unfortunately I spend the whole song waiting for it to end.

Graham Norton said at the end, “I don’t want to jinx it for Marius, but James Newman did wear a very similar leather jacket last year.” I almost want to joke that he’s a psychic, but I think he has just developed a good understanding for which songs do and don’t do well.

France: Fulenn

Artist: Alvan (Alexis Morvian Rosius) and Ahez (a female vocal trio)

Language: Breton, for the second time (first was 1996)

Key: B♭ minor

I’m so sorry, but I’m going to break the hearts of so many fans with this review. But first, obligatory mention that this is the first ever Eurovision contest with absolutely zero lyrics in French. This isn’t the first with zero songs in French—2011 had only “c’est ma vie, je dis oui” from Lithuania, which isn’t enough to make a song in French.

I never liked this song all that much—the ultra-fast swing beat is way too hectic and makes my ears feel dizzy, not in a good way. Maybe it’s just my fault for not liking fast swing beats, or maybe for once I find the song too chaotic. It’s such a shame because I like that this song represents an unusual minority language and showcases the oft-forgotten Celtic portion of France. Many fans are pissed off that this got second last place; personally, I blame the Big Five rule, which in this era could only be evaded by sending an absolute show-stopper (or being Italy).

OK, to be fair, the studio version has better vocals than the live vocals on stage. It’s not that they can’t sing live, more that the vocal mixing on stage is very poorly done. Believe me, I want to like this song, but sadly it fails to click with me.

Norway: Give That Wolf a Banana

Artist: Subwoolfer (Ben Adams and Gaute Ormåsen, though their identities were secret back then)

Language: English

Key: G minor

Norway’s style in Eurovision is sending the types of songs that Sweden doesn’t have the balls to send. I know this because so many entries of theirs sound like they’d fit well in modern Melodifestivalen but would be guaranteed not to reach the grand final because the juries (and probably televoters) prefer the same swedo-pop every year.

I agree with Erica’s review of this song (besides her hating Latvia). It’s impossible to ignore that this song is about wolves who want to eat your grandma unless you feed them a banana… wait, unless you give them a banana. The song lyrics make no reference to what the wolf wants to do with the banana. Maybe Keith/Jim doesn’t like the taste of bananas, but instead wants to cut the banana in half and wear it as extra ears. Or maybe the wolf is an avid collector of banana peels. Or does the wolf want to see your grandma suffer and would happily watch her slip on a banana peel as a substitute for eating her? There are millions of possibilities.

Anyway, Erica said that this is a genuinely good song beneath the gimmicks, and I 100% agree. It starts with a guitar intro and an absolutely genius rhyme that gets me every time, “teeth” and “Keith”. The bulk of the song is a fun boppy dance tune with a dance that’s not hard to replicate, then it ends with resuming the guitar intro. What’s not to love about this, honestly? It’s the perfect balance between whimsical and unironically good. It’s shameless televote bait, which is good because it helps balance the jury bait, and it landed in a respectable tenth place.

“You’ve just heard the word ‘yum’ ninety times”, Graham Norton said at the end of the song. This is why I love his sense of humor, but he’s wrong: the line “I want your grandma, yum, yum” is sung twice, meaning that the song has a total of ninety-four yums.

Armenia: Snap

Artist: Rosa Linn

Language: English

Key: C major

“If you wondered who’d bought all that toilet paper at the beginning of the first lockdown, turns out it was Rosa Linn.” –one of Graham Norton’s most famous quotes

Some people have told me that it’s interesting to read my reviews because unlike fans who live in Europe, I don’t have any bias towards songs I grew up with or heard all the time in the wild. This song I’m afraid is the only exception. It is my personal “wait, that was Eurovision?” song—I remember seeing a compilation of all entries from Eurovision 2022 for the first time ever, and I was so shocked to see that this one song I heard on the radio a lot was an entry in the contest. Especially from Armenia, of all countries.

Indeed, this is one of extremely few Eurovision songs to become popular in the United States, just like “Volare”, “Waterloo”, “Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit”, and “Arcade”. I can’t hear this song without being biased because listening to it makes me miss the CD 92.9 radio station from my hometown, which I had talked about in this post. It was an alternative rock station and it also played a handful of Måneskin songs, among plenty of other things. Ever since the radio station shut down, I just keep the radio turned off on my car, but sometimes it will turn on this garbage bottom of the barrel station that runs at the same frequency as the one I miss so dearly.

Because of my exposure to this song back when my favorite radio station was around, I can’t really give an objective opinion on it—which is probably how European fans feel when they encounter all the songs they loved from a memorable contest in their childhood. They associate those songs with happy childhood memories, or at least, that’s the impression that I get. I can say that once I found out this song was from Eurovision, I would turn this song up whenever it came up on the radio, which must mean I do like it quite a bit. It’s got a bit too much whoaohohing, but it’s also honest and comfy and overall it’s more of what “Growing Up Is Getting Old” should have been. Both are sadgirl depression songs in pajamas, except this is pleasant to listen to and not over the top dreary.

The staging is quite ambitious, featuring a room covered in sheets of paper that Rosa Linn sometimes tears off to reveal words. Although the song landed only 20th place, I find the storytelling staging to be very nicely done. The one gripe I have is that she shoves aside her guitar after the first verse, even though the instrument keeps playing. Malta’s entry did the same thing with the piano, and this bothers me just as much. If you’re gonna put instruments on stage, then please for the love of god allow for suspension of disbelief.

Italy: Brividi

Artist: Alessandro Mahmoud (returning from 2019) and Blanco (Riccardo Fabbriconi)

Language: Italian

Key: G major

We now begin a streak of four native-language songs, woo-hoo! I’m less pleased that the first of these is an Italian ballad, since those are essentially the new Irish ballads.

I like Mahmoud’s black suit, it fits this type of emotional ballad perfectly, but I don’t like Blanco’s silver sparkly outfit thing. It looks like weird pajamas and would be so much more suited for a disco dance party. The audience is singing along to all the Italian words so they clearly love it, but try as I might, I just don’t get what’s so great about this Italian ballad. The studio version is better than the shaky performance and draws more attention to the moving piano instrumental, but I don’t think the harsh fast-paced style of singing fits on it well, and plus it has a super standard ballad beat. The studio version is heavy in autotune, so it’s no wonder it didn’t translate well to the stage. Yet the juries and televoters loved this anyway, so it landed sixth place.

Spain: SloMo

Artist: Chanel Terrero

Language: Spanish and English

Key: C♯ minor

A girlbop that makes me want to cry? It’s more likely than you think. I’m not kidding, this is way more of an emotional song for me than “Brividi”. I want to cry tears of joy every time I watch Chanel’s performance, because this is what the Big Five should have been doing this entire time.

The Big Five interviews in semifinal 2 feature Spain, the UK, and Germany in order, and the first two both sent incredibly wowing songs. I’m familiar with both songs of course, but when I saw snippets of them in the show, I thought to myself, “this is what Big Five entries should always be like!” An utterly Spanish top-notch party bop, and a thoroughly British song that echoes Queen and David Bowie. As I’ve asked many times, why can’t the Big Five send songs as competitive as this every year? Besides Italy, that is.

I feel like when the EBU added two semifinals to the contest, they thought that would motivate the Big Four (later Big Five) to consistently deliver quality. Why shouldn’t they? All five countries have big renowned musical industries and tons of recognizable genres that fans would love. But what really happened was, almost every year starting 2008, we’ve had at least one Big Five country in the bottom two. So in 2024, the EBU eventually accepted the Big Five don’t deliver quality every year and had them perform in the semifinals. I frankly like this system far better, but I wish all the Big Five could’ve been motivated to send songs up to this high of a standard every year. Instead it’s only Italy that does so, because they have Sanremo.

The truth is, no country is inherently better at music than any other. But the big-name countries carry with them an expectation that they’ll deliver one of the highlights of the show, and the fact that they so often don’t makes them laughing stocks so often, especially (sigh) the UK and Germany. 2021 had France deliver their amazing lightning-in-a-bottle entry, 2022 had UK and Spain do the same, yet we should not expect these countries to be able to send a song this good to Eurovision every year. Italy has the lucky advantage of the Sanremo Festival, but you just can’t say the same about the other four.

“SloMo” feels like a peek into an alternate timeline where Spain was able to send their cream of the crop every single year. That’s why it makes me want to cry. It’s exactly what Spain should have been sending all this time, not these boring-ass power ballads. This is an utterly gripping party bop with absolutely perfect choreography that takes insane amounts of talent to pull off. It has a great Spanish lyrical rhythm, a dance beat, those glorious Spanish trumpets that you won’t find a trace of in all their boring ballads, and seamless alternation between Spanish and English words that doesn’t feel out of place.

I won’t do a full-length musical analysis of this, because I’m too gripped by the whole thing to think about all the musical details. Just know that the dance break is the best part! Seriously, that section is so good that it’s no wonder so many other countries in the next two years would shoehorn a dance break in. Dance breaks are the new cool and it’s all thanks to Chanel. The bit where the percussion drops out and she waves the fan is awesome too, because it’s always great when this type of section follows the bridge. And the final chorus is where my eyes start getting teary. Her thank you message at the end is so sweet: “Muchas gracias! Thank you very much! I will remember this for the rest of my life!”

This is Spain’s great moment to shine at long last, by far their most iconic entry of the 21st century, and probably their most iconic since “Eres tú” from 1973. This gives me hope that maybe someday, Germany could send a native-language entry that fans constantly talk about, which would make me so proud of my country. Such a song does not exist yet (at least in the 21st century; we’ve got amazing classics like “Dschinghis Khan”), but maybe it will someday… just maybe.

I don’t want to end this review by making it about my country, so I’ll just say that this is by far the best entry Spain has ever sent to Eurovision. It’s one of the absolute best in Eurovision history, and yet this isn’t even one of my three biggest favorites of the year! Neither is the next song, which I also dearly love.

Netherlands: De diepte

Artist: S10 (Stien den Hollander)

Language: Dutch

Key: D minor

I am so fucking jealous of the Netherlands for sending such a good native-language song this year! Why can’t Germany do the same? WHY THE FUCK CAN’T GERMANY DO THE SAME?

OK, I should calm down, the native-language renaissance is still pretty young. But you know me, I’m overly passionate about wanting Germany to bring back their language. A native-language banger in Dutch is the next best thing anyway. And sometimes in life, you just gotta settle for the next best thing.

As someone who understands spoken German perfectly, I really struggle to understand spoken Dutch. I know this because I’ve tried looking through the Dutch commentary of recent Eurovision contests, and I can hardly understand any of it because it’s just too different from German. The Dutch tend to understand German better than the Germans understand Dutch, but I think that’s only because the Dutch are so exposed to media in German. I don’t think it’s a case where one language matches the spelling more closely than the other does, as is the case with Spanish and Portuguese, or Swedish and Danish. In both cases, speakers of the latter language can understand the former quite well, whereas speakers of the former are likely to be stumped by the latter. I’d say a more comparable example can be found further east—most Ukrainians can understand Russian because they’re still exposed to the language, but Russians don’t tend to understand Ukrainian.

I’m a little better with parsing written Dutch (especially thanks to the letter G), but it takes a lot of mental effort to decipher a word to its German or English equivalent, and often I encounter a word that I have no clue what it means. But there is one context where I can make myself understand Dutch: when it’s sung. I don’t usually hear a song in Dutch and instantly understand every lyric. But if I like a song in Dutch well enough, I may look at the lyrics and read translations into English, then all the familiar words from German snap into place. That way, the lyrics of a song in Dutch can speak to me just as lyrics in a language I do speak would… which is exactly what happens with this song.

When I watch S10 (pronounced Stien, not ess-ten) perform her song, I really feel the story she tells with these lyrics. She narrates the story of an abusive relationship that goes something like “I feel hopeless and pained because of you, but I also love you so much and never want to let you go”. The opening lyrics are pure heartbreaking genius and translate to “Do you know the feeling that your dream will never come true? Are you afraid that it’ll always be this way?” She tells the story of feeling like this while with her ex-boyfriend, who did not make her happy except through illusion.

Stien sounds like she’s about to cry when singing this song, and as with Portugal I mean this in a good way. That’s right, 2022 has two entries with cry-singing that I like—how unreal is that? Normally I hate cry-singing, but she doesn’t overblow it and sounds genuinely emotional. I can tell from her performance that the harsh experiences she describes in the song still haunt her to this day. She comes across as though despite everything, a part of her deep inside still loves her ex. She’s honest with the audience about how her disastrous past relationships made her feel. She addresses him as “mijn lief” (my love) in the chorus, showing she really did love the guy. I also love the passage “Ik wacht al heel de avond / Oh, ik lijk wel een kind” (I’ve been waiting the whole evening / Oh, it’s as if I were a child*), which suggests that she feels shame and guilt for the difficult feelings that she expresses. As I said, even though I can’t understand Dutch, if a song in Dutch speaks to me enough, I’m able to make myself understand the lyrics. It’s not a case where I’ve just memorized the translation; I actually know what each individual Dutch word means.

Musically, this is the flavor of ballad that I don’t just tolerate but outright love. It’s melancholy and in minor key, it has a really lovely guitar, it has simple chord progressions that suit the song perfectly. It has some nice “na-na-na” bits for the audience to sing along to, and they play over some super-deep piano chords that always give me goosebumps. Then the guitar and drum beat come together for the chorus. It has an extra beat in the chorus, it has an extra gloomy bridge, and a beautiful outro that combines guitar and piano one last time.

We saw through the interval acts of Eurovision 2021 (which was wonderfully hosted, don’t get me wrong) that the Dutch are averse to acknowledging their language. So it’s an absolute miracle that the Netherlands was rewarded for singing in Dutch this year! They qualified to the final with ease and landed twelfth place, so it’s no wonder they sang in Dutch again just two years later. They sadly got disqualified and that still doesn’t sit right with me, but “Europapa” ended up a huge fan favorite anyway. If the Netherlands can make a native-language song that fans love, that means every country can. I’m looking at you, Germany.

(Psst… if you want to know about a language that is mutually intelligible with German, and is debatably a dialect of German, look no further than Luxembourgish! I’ll talk more about this when I watch the first semifinal of 2024 with Luxembourgish commentary.)

* Originally said “Oh, I look like a child”; see the comments for the correction.

Ukraine: Stefania (Стефанія) (the winner)

Artist: Kalush Orchestra

Language: Ukrainian

Key: D minor

And now we have the oddball of the winners of modern Eurovision. It was the winning song of 2022 and got a lot of attention, but it’s nowhere close to being the song this year that fans talk about the most—I’d say that honor goes to “SloMo”. This is evident in the ESC250 rankings from 2023: it got ranked lower than all other winners starting from 2012, except “Toy” from 2018. This tells me there is no way this song would have won if it weren’t for the war in Ukraine. But at the same time… the rules of Eurovision are the rules, and they led this song to a perfectly legitimate victory. The war had begun three months ago and shook the entire continent, so voters naturally flocked towards this song as a showcase of Ukrainian culture. Ukraine didn’t intentionally send a song to be sympathy vote bait, and they didn’t run any ad campaigns pleading for Europe to vote for their entry, unlike a certain other country two years later. The song just ended up speaking to viewers at exactly the right time. I think Ukraine would’ve been less likely to win if they had sent a regular pop song in English.

Another reason why I’m OK with this song winning is that in practice, it feels as though Ukraine and the United Kingdom were the dual winners of 2022. That is of course because the UK had the honors of hosting Eurovision 2023, and the two countries worked together to put on the show.

It’s hard to imagine how I would’ve felt about this song if it weren’t for the war, but I’ll try. I actually do enjoy listening to this song and come back to it now and then. It’s nowhere near as good as “Solovey” or “Shum”, two massive fan favorite entries, and part of me does wish Go_A was competing this year instead. But I love the chorus with the mournful melody and bouncy folk beat. The rapping sections I like a little less, but I’m always impressed by his flow especially in the first verse. The section with the flute over the ethnic beat is a bit repetitive but fun to listen to no less. I also like the little touches in the final instrumental section where the beat changes.

I would have absolutely not voted for this song in 2022, because I’d have wanted to try my best to let a different song take the spotlight or at least get a massive televote score. I don’t think I would’ve voted for this even if it weren’t for the war, so I’m neither glad nor salty that it won. I view it as inevitable given current circumstances, and that’s why I view the UK as… not necessarily the real winner, but the alternative winner of 2022. “Real winner” implies I have a gripe with the song that won, like I do with Greece coming nowhere close to winning in 2013, but I have no gripes with Ukraine winning this year.

Germany: Rockstars

Artist: Malik Harris

Language: English. No, German-language music still doesn’t exist.

Key: G major

One thing that unites all German Eurovision fans is that they will never, ever, EVER forgive NDR for rejecting Electric Callboy from Eurovision 2022. So I’m legally obligated to go on a rant about this topic:

NORDDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK, HOW FUCKING DARE YOU REJECT THE ABSOLUTE GENUISES KNOWN AS ELECTRIC CALLBOY FROM YOUR NATIONAL FINAL FOR EUROVISION 2022???? Seriously, that might be the stupidest thing the broadcaster has ever done for Eurovision. “Pump It” by Electric Callboy would’ve been an ABSOLUTELY FUCKING PERFECT REDEMPTION ARC for Germany, a guaranteed top five finish at least, but noooooo, NDR thinks it’s not radio-friendly enough. Electric Callboy has everything you could possibly want from a Eurovision artist: their songs hype the audience up, their music is crazy and out of the box, and most importantly: the Germans absolutely LOVE Electric Callboy. That is not something I can say about even one of our contestants post-Lena—the closest is probably Lord of the Lost, and even their fandom is a bit niche. My favorite Electric Callboy song isn’t “Pump It”, which is a banger but a little too metal for me, but the insanely addictive “We Got the Moves”. I’m pretty sure that most artists loved by the Germans have no interest in this contest, but in 2022 NDR had a perfect opportunity to send an artist beloved in Germany and make themselves stop being a punching bag of Eurovision, and they FUCKING THREW IT AWAY, THE ABSOLUTE BASTARDS! This is why I fucking hate my country’s approach to Eurovision.

OK, now to talk about “Rockstars” by Malik Harris. It’s another goddamn entry that could pass as an American radio pop song, the kind of song that I am sick and tired of my country sending. We are not America or England (ok, I’ve lived in the US all my life and was technically born in England), we’re supposed to be Germany! I’m not just saying this because these songs sound like the output of the Anglophone world, many of them are (at least in part) the output of American or British songwriters. Where’s the local talent, god dammit?! To be fair, this song was actually written by Germans, but it’s still way too American-inspired.

But at the same time, this song isn’t actually half bad, and Germany really tried their hardest with the staging. It’s the same four chords throughout almost the entire song and it has a repetitive trap beat, but the song tells a good story about moving on from childhood, and Malik has good flow in the spoken word section. The staging is surprisingly well-done and I’d have thought it would appeal to the jury at least a little bit. Not get fucking zero points from the jury. I like what Malik does with all his instruments and he expresses himself very well. Two years later Germany sent the same type of song with the same type of staging and it did way better; personally I think that’s because of the Big Five change.

Lithuania: Sentimentai

Artist: Monika Liu

Language: Lithuanian, for the first time since 1994

Key: D minor

Now this song on the other hand, I am absolutely fucking obsessed with. It’s the second of my three big favorites, and the one it took the longest for me to love. I didn’t think too much of it the first time I heard it (which was the studio version, because I’m in America and didn’t have a VPN yet), but it totally comes to life on stage thanks to Monika Liu’s insane amounts of charisma. She is just an absolute gem and it’s impossible not to focus on her cute bowl cut and lovely disco ball dress as she grooves to this masterpiece. Plus, she composed and wrote the song all on her own, so she’s showing the world her own creation on this stage! And it’s in a language that most of the world knows nothing about, which is extra cool.

It is absolutely fucking insane that this is the first Eurovision entry in Lithuanian since 1994. Well, that’s unless you count “Strazdas” in 1999 in Samogitian, or the handful of songs with one or two lines in Lithuanian. It had been 28 years since the last entry in Lithuanian, so suddenly I feel no right to complain about Germany ignoring their language. For 28 years, the only Eurovision entry in Lithuanian ever had gotten zero points. The country shied away from Eurovision entirely until five years later, then until 2022 they all but ignored the existence of their language.

Lithuanian has an intriguing sound to it—I like to say that Latvian sounds halfway between Finnish and a Slavic language, and Lithuanian sounds halfway between Latvian and (insert Slavic language here). It sounds roughly Slavic with the heavy amount of v, sh, and zh sounds, but has a higher amount of diphthongs than Slavic languages do, as well as not so many consonant clusters, so there’s a real charm to how the language sounds. I tend to like Slavic-language music best when it’s sung slowly, and going by this delightful song, I feel like the same is true for Lithuanian.

This song starts with a minimalist disco beat and has a really lovely gradual buildup. The chords gradually become more complex, and the instrumental gets deeper. The buildup gradually leads to some lovely string notes and a bassline that jumps between octaves (remember how much I love basslines?), plus some subtle electric piano chords. And I absolutely adore the xylophone arpeggios in the background when she sings “bėga bėga ten, kur ir tu” and “skęsta jūroje debesų”. The whole song manages to sound classy and playful at the same time. I should also mention I love her crisp, clear, and expressive voice, and the quirky harmonies that go both higher and lower than the notes she sings. She’s all alone on stage, so I assume the harmonies are pre-recorded.

The song is slow and relaxed and I could easily imagine putting it on as I get through a long drive. The melodies are lots of fun to hum and have a slow-paced French chanson sound. I don’t know the lyrics of this song by heart, but maybe someday I could memorize them—there are way fewer words than “Cha Cha Cha”, which I have memorized, so it can’t be too hard! The verse melody, the chorus melody, and the “la-la-la” melody in the end each sound unique and stick in my head easily. Even though the song has some French-esque classiness, this song avoids feeling like a Lithuanian cover of a song built for French. I can’t claim to know what makes a song sound Lithuanian, but I just know it was built specifically for this language.

If I was Lithuanian, I would be so incredibly fucking proud to be from the country that sent this song. Since this is the first song in Lithuanian in 28 years, 14th place was (and is) good enough for me. The juries did this beauty dirty—only 35 points, for real?—but the televoters gave it a more respectable 93.

It’s amazing that I didn’t think too much of this song when I first heard it, but now I’ve heard it enough times that I’m totally in love. I cannot overstate how much I adore this song.

Azerbaijan: Fade to Black

Artist: Nadir Rustamli

Language: English

Key: A minor

My happiness fades to black when I think about Azerbaijan’s cheating this year. At least the EBU caught them before the results were out, but the result was six countries giving a stupid-ass fake vote that represents nothing.

I find it crazy that if the semifinals had been televote only, Azerbaijan would have been the dead last place of the entire competition with a whopping zero points. They got only two points from the televoters in the grand final, whereas the juries rewarded this shameless jury bait ballad. Come on Azerbaijan, if you think your Eurovision entries are so great, there’s no fucking need to cheat!

Anyway, this song is super dreary and ballady and honestly a little pretentious. I just get the vibe that the composers of this song think this is better than the actually fun songs like “Give That Wolf a Banana” or “SloMo”.

Belgium: Miss You

Artist: Jérémie Makiese

Language: English

Key: F♯ minor

This is one of few entries this year I have no strong feelings on one way or another. It’s a decent enough mix of a ballad and rhythm and blues, but overall it’s really restrained. I think I’d like the song better if it didn’t take so long to build up to the R&B chorus. It’s actually really nice that I have an opinion on almost everything else here; I just don’t have much of an opinion on this.

Greece: Die Together

Artist: Amanda Georgiadi Tenfjord

Language: English

Key: D minor

I completely agree with Erica about the Swedification of Greece. It’s pretty sad to see them abandon Greek-sounding music in favor of songs that sound like any other country could send. Thank god Marina Satti ended that era in 2024.

There are two things I like about this song. First, the usage of vocoders to complement her singing, before the song devolves into a dreary ballad. Second, I like that when she sings “I won’t lose you for another / but if we”, the instrumental forms a juicy A augmented chord thanks to her singing F over a backing that plays A major. Otherwise it’s an overly sadgirly ballad where the mix of singing and pre-recorded vocoding eventually starts sounding awkward. I also don’t get why the stage has a huge mess of melting chairs. Is it supposed to represent the end of high school?

Surprisingly, Graham Norton loved this song and hoped it would do well. I can see the appeal in the composition, which is why if you want to listen to a good version of this song, you should check out this piano cover. It works way better as a piano tune than a vocal ballad.

Iceland: Með hækkandi sól

Artist: Systur, a trio of sisters

Language: Icelandic

Key: D minor, for the fifth and last time this year

I’m afraid I don’t share Erica’s love for this song—her secret love for country music in Eurovision is just bigger than mine. I think it’s no more than alright and can see why it scored near the bottom. It has nice guitar work and sweet performers, but it’s missing that extra spark of greatness and doesn’t grip me. It’s just too understated and doesn’t have enough progression, and I’m not the biggest fan of their quiet, mumbly singing style. It has potential to be a great relaxing song, but I’m afraid I can’t feel more than lukewarm about this. I think Portugal and the Netherlands pulled off the moody guitar style much better.

The countries that gave this song the most points from the jury and televote both take a shining for melancholic music: Portugal for the jury, and Ukraine for the televote.

EDIT (Dec 20, 2024): This song has massively grown on me and now I properly love it. Maybe it’s due to the depressingly cold weather right now? This is exactly the kind of song I need to soothe my mood during a cold rainy day and the guitars pluck straight at my heart now as do the ladies’ harmonies. Given how much I obsessively adore “Calm After the Storm”, I’m surprised this didn’t click with me sooner.

Moldova: Trenulețul

Artist: Zdob și Zdub (returning from 2005 and 2011) featuring the Advahov Brothers

Language: Romanian, plus a few phrases in English

Key: A major

Now here’s where the fun really begins! I can’t decide if this is Moldova’s best entry of all time, or if it’s “Hora din Moldova” from 2009. Both are exactly the type of entry that Moldova does best: a dancey bouncy ethno-bop that makes me smile three minutes straight. It’s lowkey genius of the producers to put this song after six slow entries in a row. This means the audience is put into the maximum excitement this song could possibly give them, and it shows because this landed second place in the televote (7th overall). Thankfully it wasn’t after something like ten ballads, otherwise we’d repeat Eurovision 1994 where all the good stuff came after ballad soup.

The fact that this masterpiece isn’t even among my three biggest favorites should tell you how much of a fucking great grand final this is. I’m hesitant to call 2022 a great year overall, because for me the hosting is part of what makes a Eurovision year good, but pretty much all the crap was weeded out in the semis, so we’re left with a grand final where almost everything has something to love about it.

As a piece of music, I just love everything about this. I love the way it starts with a rocking guitar, which is the instrumentation we’ve been acquainted with from ZsZ’s last two entries, then the Advahov Brothers dive in with their accordions and violins, which is where the song truly kicks off. The original version of the song started with the accordion, but I like the revamp starting with guitars so much better. It turns out Zdob și Zdub were absolute geniuses the whole time—it just took them three tries to make a song I truly adore!

In each verse, Roman Iagupov raps in an even rhythm that goes really well over the bassline and violins. I’ll talk more about the lyrics, be patient—for now, know that the chorus that comes right after is delightfully easy to sing along to. Most of the song alternates between verses (whose beat gets slightly more developed each time) and the ultra-catchy chorus. I love the second violin and accordion melody after the second chorus, and I also love the buildup of snares that leads up to that part.

After the third verse, the rest of the song plays the chorus over various mixes between rock music and accordion music. I love the alternation between the Romanian and English verses: “Pleacă trenul! Unde eşti?” (the train is leaving, where are you?), and “Join the train, be our guest”. Interestingly enough, the music video for this song has a third translation in the subtitles: “The train’s route is east to west”. It’s not a literal translation of course, but rather a rhyming translation, which is cool because I love rhyming translations. Oh yeah, the polka ending with the last two guitar notes is done to perfection.

Even though this year has been filled with entries that make me feel jealous because they’re so much cooler than Germany’s, I truly don’t feel any jealousy that Moldova sent a song this awesome—the song is just too damn happy for me to care. Wait what’s that, did I forget to talk about the lyrics? Why, thank you for reminding me!

I’m really glad ZsZ sang almost entirely in their native language for a change, because most people’s writing skills are at their best when in their native language. An exception is when they’ve spent many years living in a foreign country, or if they’re an absolute expert another language, but that’s definitely not the case for them.

The lyrics tell a story based on the reopening of a train route between the capitals of Moldova and Romania—as any Eurovision fan should know by now, they’re called Chisinau and Bucharest. The verses say using a whole bunch of creative rhymes that with the train route opened, it feels as though the border between these countries has disappeared. Supposedly the train can’t even tell where one country begins and the other ends.

Some people interpret the lyrics as a call to unify Romania and Moldova; I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s most certainly a celebration of kinship between these two countries. This ties into something Eurovision has made me realize about eastern Europe: the countries further east have much tighter-knit friend groups than those in the west. The Czechs and Slovaks collaborate on TV shows; the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Montenegrins know everything about each other’s favorite musicians; the Poles go to great lengths helping Ukrainians in times of war; and the three Baltic states speak vastly different languages but share a strong unity. And this song makes it clear how close the Romanians and Moldovans are. As much as western European fans complain about the east (and north) voting for each other, even the western European countries that share a language (e.g. the UK and Ireland; Germany, Switzerland, and Austria) are insistent on not being too close with each other. At least, that’s my own perception of how the west and east differ.

In the first semifinal, at the end of this song Peter Urban said (translated): “If the Deutsche Bahn had entertainment like this, no one would mind the delays.” This guy is usually dry and deadpan, but he can be funny when he wants to be.

(Psst… check out this Mario Kart 64 cover of “Trenulețul” by my Australian friend who got me into Eurovision. It is all his fault.)

Sweden: Hold Me Closer

Artist: Cornelia Jakobs

Language: English

Key: F♯ major

After their dud last year (which still managed a 14th place because the juries love Sweden), Sweden is back to sending entries that are widely appealing and predictably score well. This song ended up fourth place, which is no easy feat post-COVID even for the juries’ favorite country.

The producers did something clever with the running order this year: after the series of slow songs and after Moldova’s Eurovisiony fun comes one of the most emotional songs of the evening. This is a perfect way to make both Moldova and Sweden stand out, which is good because both are extremely appealing for different types of Eurovision fans.

Unlike Erica, I don’t actually mind the croony singing all that much.* It’s objectively just as croony as Roxen or Victoria’s entries, but it’s a lot more pleasant because the instrumental isn’t a bunch of weird aimless wandering, but has a clear progression and consistent beat. The instrumental sounds surprisingly moving, especially thanks to the string parts and subtle guitars, and the chord progression goes in surprising places near the end. It’s a very Swedish-feeling song, and I mean it in a good way this time. Unlike most Swedish entries of this century, I can tell that she actually feels the lyrics, which are about a romantic partner who she hates and loves at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lyrics were based on a personal story in Cornelia’s life.

It’s too bad the floor looks butt-ugly compared to the Melodifestivalen performance, but I wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t know Swedish fans who are crazy obsessed with Melfest. This is overall a surprisingly good entry from Sweden, I think I’m enjoying this the more I listen to it. I could never be as obsessed with it as (for example) Portugal or Moldova, but it’s very much growing on me. If you’re surprised my review of Sweden is this positive, then don’t worry, I am too.

* My Polish commenter mentioned on this post that she can’t figure out what crooning means, and I’m afraid I have no idea how to explain it. All I can say is, for me the archetypical example is “Growing Up Is Getting Old”.

Australia: Not the Same

Artist: Sheldon Riley

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor

Sorry to all the fans, but I hate pretty much everything about this song. It might be my least favorite entry of 2022, because it’s actively unfun to listen to. Australia did their usual shtick of X Factor jury bait that gets like a hundred jury points and almost no televote points, but cranked it up to eleven this time.

Look, I know Sheldon is singing about his experiences with autism, and as someone who’s been diagnosed with the very same condition, I am sure this is a very personal song to him. But I really don’t like the way the lyrics are presented. I never liked this type of overemoted dramatic male singing; I never feel like the singer is expressing their personal life in these types of songs, even when I know Sheldon is. As far as I’m concerned, this type of singing is only good for getting tons of points on the X Factor, and I guess also from juries in Eurovision. And plus, I’m sorry to say this, but I never enjoy dramatic sadboy lyrics about how hard life is. Don’t even get me started on this song’s severe title repetitis. Why why why does he have to sing “I’m not the same, whoa-oh-oh-oh” so many times? It gets old so fast.

I wrote the above paragraph after finishing Sweden, then I realized I have to hear this awful song again. It’s another one of those ballads that has no clear beat and relies entirely on dreary piano and strings, plus maybe a bit of cinematic percussion. I honestly think this song is just as pretentious as Azerbaijan. Both songs think they’re objectively the best kind of music in the universe, better than actually fun songs like Norway or Moldova. Sheldon Riley doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who actually has these opinions, but that’s how this song comes off no less.

United Kingdom: Space Man

Artist: Sam Ryder

Language: English

Key: B major

And now, we have the last of my three big favorites, which means the last of three candidates for me to choose a winner from! Fuck me, this is going to be the hardest winner decision I’ve ever had to make.

This is it, everyone. This is the long-awaited British Redemption Arc. After over two decades consisting mostly of poor results, the United Kingdom skyrocketed into a jaw-dropping second place. In modern Eurovision, that’s a more impressive feat than even winning any 20th century contest. Graham Norton was so energetic and positive when commentating on this song. He lauded the piece of music, the staging, Sam Ryder as a person, and the audience’s love for this. I’m just thinking, I wish Terry Wogan could have lived to see this special moment. He quit commentating for Eurovision on a sour note in 2008, then died in 2016 amidst the UK’s slump era.

Even though they got zero points in 2021, there’s one thing that the United Kingdom did right when selecting their entry: they picked someone who’s optimistic and positive. Graham Norton had nothing but kind things to say about both James Newman and this year’s contestant, Sam Ryder. He described Sam as “the nicest man imaginable” and “such a positive, warm, lovely man”. Having a contestant who’s this positive about Eurovision does wonders for hyping their country up. And if the locals get excited for their country’s entry, that positivity will spread around the rest of Europe. Proof of this lies in the enormous cheering when Sam Ryder’s song was about to begin.

All the excitement around “Space Man” warms my heart as, well… is it weird to say it warms my heart as an American? Nah, it’s probably not that weird—the phrase “special relationship” exists for a good reason. Americans and Brits tend to get along well and easily relate to each other. Americans look up to and idolize all things British, and out of all Europeans, I think the Brits are least likely to talk trash about America.

Anyway, let’s talk about this song! The way it begins is clever: it has a modest intro free of percussion that establishes Sam Ryder can sing, then comes the snares and the drop into the first chorus, which confirms it’s an enticing composition too. This song is so incredibly British: it really reminds me of those famous songs by Queen or David Bowie, but doesn’t feel like a knockoff of them, but rather like its own thing entirely. There are little elements that give it some British character, like the guitar riff after each “I’m up in space, man”, as well as the piano chords at the very end of each chorus. As with Spain, this is the kind of masterful song that the Big Five should have been sending all this time! Alas, the UK doesn’t have Sanremo either.

The second verse is like the first but more developed, clearly the middle of the story that the song tells. And the drop into the second chorus is just as mind-blowing as the first! The bridge is cool too, I love the way the chords and bassline descend as he sings “gravity keeps pulling me down”. The tinge of blues in the instrumental where he sings “oh, I’ll stick arooooooooooond” is another way this song reminds us of what makes British music so beloved. The final chorus has a clever leadup to it and then goes into an incredible guitar solo which is the best part of the song. Sam Ryder is handed the guitar offscreen and plays it with the perfect suspension of disbelief. And then comes the piano intro where the song realizes how far it’s come, and it concludes on a simple heartfelt piano chord.

This song has the perfect combination of factors to shine as a Eurovision entry: not only is it a fantastic composition, it has the perfect staging to send the audience flying. Sam Ryder has the perfect stage presence and I love his space-themed suit, as someone with a soft spot for the beauty of space. And the abstract art surrounding him that looks like a rocket is splendid too; I love how it descends and turns yellow in the final chorus. The lyrics are about a man who explored the cosmos and found there is nothing but space, thus wants to go back home, and they’re imaginative yet sentimental in a very British way.

For the longest time this was by far my winner of 2022, but now it has some strong contenders. That’s because this song leaves an absolutely stellar first impression and while I still love it to death, I can’t claim I get equally wowed every time. There are some songs this year that give me a more consistent wow factor, but no others that reach the maximum wow factor the UK can give me. Luckily I still have time to pick a winner.

Holland… I mean Poland: River

Artist: Krystian Ochman

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor

If you need any proof that time is a flat circle, this isn’t even the first time a Eurovision host confused Holland and Poland. In 1996 the Norwegian host mistook Poland for Holland when Spain gave their votes, which meant the results had to be corrected after the contest. This year Mika accidentally called referred to Poland as Holland, but luckily he corrected himself right after.

Gonna be real, you guys, I am NOT used to Poland sending something this good to Eurovision. This is the only truly great Polish entry of the 21st century, and one of two contenders for my favorite Polish entry of all time—the other is “Ale jestem” from 1997. For once, Poland managed to send a song that’s professional, in terms of music, vocals, AND staging. They don’t usually manage to nail all three! It’s professional in a good way, not in a sour way like Azerbaijan.

This song starts seeming like a standard piano ballad, but it gains a really interesting trap beat with bass synths that prevails for the rest of the song. It’s a perfect example of why post-COVID ballads in Eurovision tend to be more up my street: they aren’t afraid to vary the beat and subvert expectations. Ochman performs this song with emotion and has a professional singing voice that sounds like X Factor, but not the insanely overemoted X Factor singing we heard from Australia. And it’s a lucky coincidence that the stage features all this water, considering the song’s title. The mysterious backing dancers and despairful main singer all suit this song really well.

Compared to Poland’s crappy results the past few years, this landed in a respectable 12th place. I would’ve expected the points to mainly come from the jury, but out of its 151 points, 105 came from the televote! The late running order probably helps, but it shows that this song really does resonate with viewers.

Serbia: In corpore sano

Artist: Konstrakta (Ana Đurić)

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Serbian), plus a bit of Latin at the end

Key: G minor

I think it’s partly due to the rise of the Internet that native-language songs in Eurovision are becoming cool again. This fan favorite song got popular enough among the other countries that spoke Serbo-Croatian that the momentum spread outside the region, and soon enough the entire continent became aware this song was taking the piss out of the Serbian health care system, as well as how society treats artists and celebrities compared to the common folk. The popularity of this song got so huge that the producers ended up putting it in the coveted life slot, and the televoters ultimately propelled it to fifth place. That’s right, we’re at the second last song of the grand final now!

I am so jealous of Serbia for sending a native-language song that spread around the continent like wildfire. It makes me wonder why Germany still refuses to acknowledge their language and only ever puts one or two songs in German in their national finals. German is spoken in multiple European countries too, you guys! A native-language entry as good as this in German would get free twelve points from televoters in Austria, Switzerland, and maybe even Luxembourg. Just like this song got the second most twelve points from televoters this year behind Ukraine: all the other former Yugoslav countries plus Switzerland.

I don’t really know how to describe this song, so I’ll quote Graham Norton: “it’s sort of like performance art, experimental theatre, with a Eurovision song latched onto it”. It’s weird as shit in the best way, because it’s a genuinely well-composed song. It sounds mysterious and whimsical at the same time, and Konstrakta has a distinct mix of seriousness and whimsy on stage.

This song’s broadcast has occasional English subtitles to get the message across, and I actually like the way they’re integrated: first the music pauses and the screen goes black to display “What is the secret of a healthy body?”, then the occasional particularly spicy lyrics get captioned. The Latin lyrics at the end are subtitled entirely in English, which is fair because all the native Latin speakers are dead.

Oh, if only I could speak Serbo-Croatian, then I could do a deep analysis of the lyrics for international viewers. But if I was able to speak that language, I’d instead wish I could speak another language. Serbo-Croatian seems like an underrated choice of a language to learn: it unlocks four countries that natively speak it and is widely understood in the rest of former Yugoslavia. I think the only reason more people aren’t learning this language is because of the whole debate on whether it’s really one language.

Estonia: Hope

Artist: Stefan Airapetjan

Language: English

Key: B♭ minor

As is so common, the final slot goes to a simple song that keeps fans in a good mood but obviously won’t win. Not that this is a bad song at all—I quite like this, not as much as other songs but it’s a gradual grower. It’s a handsome beardy dude singing about hope over an instrumental reminiscent of “Heroes” from 2015, but more committed to the country style. He has a deep male voice that sounds rich and smooth, but not overemoted, very much like Poland.

This actually stands out in the final more than in the semifinal; it’s a great way to end the songs on a positive note. It’s especially fitting to put at the end since the video ends as though someone is closing their eyes.

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Who’s my favorite?

This is an incredibly difficult choice, so much that I was genuinely tempted to make an exception to my rule of one winner per year and choose Portugal, Lithuania, and the UK at once, since I said those were my three big favorites and I love them equally. I could do that, it’s my blog after all—but that’s a bit of a cop-out, isn’t it? It hurt to choose between “It’s Just a Game” and “Eres tú” in 1973, but my pain about it seemed a bit silly in retrospect; it’s just a silly song contest, does it matter which one I pick?

Fortunately, I’m able to force myself to choose just one of the three. As much as I adore Portugal’s entry, I prefer the clear-voiced singing from the other two just a tad. And as for the UK, I’ve already said the other two wow me more consistently. I can’t think of a reason to favor the other two over Lithuania, so, um… congrats to my girl Monika Liu! Lithuania, Sentimentai is merely one of my trio of winners of 2022, but after thinking of it carefully, I’ve picked it as the solo winner for the sake of this blog.

• 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, 2 (2005, 2019)
• Iceland, 1 (1992)
• Ireland, 4 (1970, 1980, 1993, 1994)
• Israel, 1 (1987)
• Italy, 1 (1958)
• Latvia, 1 (2002)
• Lithuania, 1 (2022)
• 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, 4 (1971, 1984, 2008, 2017)
• Russia, 1 (2020)
• Serbia, 3 (2004, 2011, 2012)
• Sweden, 3 (1974, 1996, 2018)
• Switzerland, 2 (1986, 2021)
• Turkey, 2 (1978, 2010)
• Ukraine, 2 (2007, 2016)
• United Kingdom, 2 (1962, 1981)
• (22 winners)

All three Baltic states are now on my list! OK, I admit: I was a bit biased towards “Sentimentai” this entire time, because it’s the most underrated of the three and I wanted to give it some love. It’s the mystery song I had used as ear bleach after reviewing Montenegro.

General thoughts:

I’m really happy with Eurovision 2022 overall. The hosting is a mess in many ways—there were way too many host interludes between the songs, which I assume were put in because there were so many delays with stage setup. I wish more of the host interludes were green room interviews, because that way we’d have heard more people’s voices than just the three hosts, and because the hosts were mostly weird and tacky. I’m not a big fan of these presenters especially compared to the Dutch ones last year.

The hosting may not have been as good as the Netherlands’ last year, but the song lineup was every bit as good as 2021! Sure, there a few big stinkers but most of them stayed in the semifinals, so we’re left with one of the most fantastic finals in Eurovision history. It especially helps that two of the Big Five sent their absolute A game, which is what they should have been doing all this time. This semifinal has so many native-language songs and so many different genres, and really has something to love for everyone. Portugal, Lithuania, and the UK are my three big favorites, sure, but that’s a bit discrediting to everything else. If you want to know which other songs I loved, then read the rest of the post, you doofus!

You know what? I’m down with more Måneskin songs as the first interval act. They please the crowd and these songs show us that they’ve become massive icons in just one year. I’m glad they didn’t throw in a rehash of “Zitti e buoni”. I also enjoyed seeing an interview with these guys, they seem like lovely people. The rehash of “Non ho l’età”, the winner of 1964, is really touching I must say. I love that the audience sings along with 74-year-old Gigliola Cinquetti—they’re filled with admiration or her. You could now interpret the lyrics not as “I’m too young to love you”, but “I’m too old to love you”. All the details of the song I didn’t appreciate back when I reviewed 1964 tug at my heartstrings, like the string riffs near the end of each verse and the touching expressive way she sings the lyrics.

The history skits this year are really bad unfortunately. Those are a necessary evil at this point because the voting time window has gotten so long. Still, some countries do these skits well, particularly Sweden and the Netherlands. Graham Norton hyped up the medley of Mika songs that came next, and he was right to. That act is a lot of fun and interval act-y, mostly because of the huge amount of other people on stage. Great variety of songs and styles! I’m reminded of Ronan Keating (the male host) doing the interval act in 1997.

Then comes the voting, and my god, it feels so surreal and amazing to see the UK get so many points. Graham Norton was incredibly happy throughout the voting. It’s the happiest voting sequence for me since 2010, where Germany won. Honestly it’s bullshit that the juries gave Germany zero points. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the song, but you’d think that given the diverse tastes of the juries, you’d think a few of them would give it points.

Three countries had Martin Österdahl announce the points instead of a video spokesperson: Azerbaijan, Romania, and Georgia. He and the hosts pretended that was because of technical difficulties, but now we know the real reason is due to the voting scandals. The spokespersons from those three countries refused to read the results of the fake aggregated vote, and I cannot blame them since this band-aid solution is stupid. Come on, just duplicate the televote instead. If you need any extra proof that the aggregate vote represents nothing, Romania’s fake vote ranked Moldova second last. It’s so fucking obvious their real jury votes would (and did) go to Moldova, since their entry was about the friendship between the two countries. No wonder that no one from Romania wanted to announce their fake twelve points, which went to Ukraine.

Hm, what else, it was fun to see the Serbian, Slovenian, and Croatian spokespersons showcase their Italian, and my French knowledge means I had a good guess what they said, pretty much the usual platitudes. And I’m guessing the Cypriot guy made a pun on this year’s slogan in Italian, as he usually does. Note that out of the six countries that participated in Azerbaijan’s cheating scandal, only Romania has revealed their real jury votes.

Now for the televote points. Most songs near the bottom didn’t get many televotes either, but Moldova (who the jury did dirty because they hate fun) got a well-deserved 239 points. I’m peeved that Germany landed on the bottom again, but if I manage to ignore that, the televote sequence is mostly happy. Many countries rose way up thanks to the televotes, except for Switzerland which got a shocking zero points—Sam Ryder actually gave Marius a hug offscreen because he’s such a wholesome guy. I feel bad for Sheldon Riley getting only two points, even though I really don’t like his song. That’s the brutality of televotes!

The Netherlands got 42 televote points, landing them with 171 points in total—a delightfully good result for a Dutch-language song. Fills me with a mix of neighborly pride and jealousy. Ukraine getting an insanely huge televote score was a foregone conclusion, but in the end I’m OK with them winning because the UK got the prize of hosting next Eurovision, so it got to be a triumphant moment for two nations. Spain, Sweden, and the UK all got satisfyingly huge televote points, and I love how Laura Pausini praised “SloMo” in Spanish. Ukraine deserved this moment of happiness amidst their war, and the UK absolutely deserved this change of fortune. Overall, as clumsy as the hosting may have been, Eurovision 2022 is a very happy year.

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See you next time as Eurovision comes to the United Kingdom for the first time since 1998.

>> 2023 (Semifinals): The First Year I Watched Live