Intro Post

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Let me tell you guys right now: I am absolutely, utterly stoked about reaching Eurovision 2023. I hope you guys are at least half as excited to read my thoughts on it!

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Introduction

Well, I’ve finally reached the first Eurovision year I watched live. I started this blog post series just a few weeks after the contest, so you can imagine how impatient I was back then to reach 2023. Now I’m finally at this year, but another year has passed since then and now 2024 is the one I’m impatient to get to. But I’ll cherish this year anyway! I didn’t just watch Eurovision 2023 live when it happened, I also intensively followed the pre-season and memorized everything about all the songs. So I still know most of these songs like the back of my hand. Can you just stop and think about how crazy it is that Eurovision happens every single year (except for 2020)? Most international competitions occur only every two years, or every four years, but Eurovision still manages to be an annual event. That’s pretty awesome if you ask me.

After Ukraine won Eurovision 2022, the EBU faced a dilemma: should Eurovision 2023 be hosted in Ukraine, or in a different country in case the war doesn’t end? On June 17, 2022, they confirmed Ukraine wouldn’t be able to host the contest. Ukrainians were initially unhappy with the decision, but then on July 25, the EBU decided to host the contest in the United Kingdom, and Ukraine was on board with that. This was the UK’s reward for scoring second place, and their first time hosting Eurovision since 1998. It was also the ninth time the UK hosted Eurovision, and the first time the previous winner didn’t host since 1980. I’m glad we’re now in an era where every country is willing to host Eurovision after victory. Ukraine was just unable to because of the war, but they did lend a hand to help the BBC put this show together.

Cities in all four parts of the United Kingdom expressed interest in hosting Eurovision, and the winner was Liverpool, announced as the host city on October 7. It’s a city famed for its musical heritage, known for being the hometown of the Beatles and many other famous British musical acts, so what better place is there to host the world’s biggest music show? British fans were absolutely delighted to have Eurovision back in their country—I know because I met some of them in Malmö and they talked about how great it was. Since the UK has tons and tons of people, it was famously difficult to get tickets this year. Everyone I’ve heard of who saw the contest live said it was absolutely worth it.

This contest featured most of the same countries participating in 2022, but three skipped out: Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. This meant that the map of Europe had even more holes than last time, but we’ll make do with the countries that are there. We have a relatively small lineup of 37 countries, and thus only eleven non-qualifiers to go through.

I should also mention that this contest features two important changes to the voting. First off is that the semifinals are now televote-only, which I think is an excellent change. It gives more power to the people without messing with number ratios or the twelve points system. The second is exciting for me: viewers from the rest of the world can now vote in Eurovision! The contest has now embraced that people love it around the world—mainly in the US and Canada, Europe, Israel, and Australia, but it has scattered fans from many other corners of the world. Viewers in non-participating countries have the perk of being able to vote in both semifinals, and my European friends are jealous of me for that.

I had already written a short post reviewing Eurovision 2023, but I had always intended to write a full-length review of the year, and now the time has come! I had suspected that by this point, I’d write sprawling detailed paragraphs about every song, and I was right. I will watch the semifinals with German commentary, which I could have done back in 2023 without needing a VPN, but I didn’t know that at the time. This was Peter Urban’s final year commentating Eurovision. He has done this every year since 1997 except 2009, props to him for sticking around this long!

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Malta: Dance (Our Own Party)

Artist: The Busker

Language: English

Key: F minor

Some fans are salty that Malta got the death slot this year, but I’m willing to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt here. They didn’t put a native-language ballad into the death slot or a country that already had a bad non-qualification streak, so they probably thought “something has to go into the death slot, so let’s go with Malta”.*

Now that I have seen every single Eurovision contest in history (I’ve already watched this and 2024), I can appreciate some callbacks and jokes I never realized before. I burst out laughing when I saw the cardboard cutouts of prior Maltese contestants: Destiny, Chiara, whatsername, whatsername number 2, and the two whatsisnames.

This song made me remember that 2023 has a lot of songs that I’ve been never sure how to feel about, and now I’ve realized that most years aren’t like this. I have a clear, strong opinion on every single entry in Eurovision 2021, and all of 2022 except Belgium. This song, on the other hand, I never had much of an opinion about and still don’t a year and a half later. These guys went ambitious with the staging and try telling the story of a nerdy party where they wear sweaters, but it mostly just comes across as stilted. It’s kind of funky, but it’s not that danceable and mostly kind of repetitive, and the saxophone solos are inferior to Epic Sax Guy. Still, I feel bad for them getting last place because they really did go ambitious. In retrospect, this was a pretty obvious non-qualifier.

I’m a bit surprised that this song made Peter Urban think of Stefan Raab, but then again Stefan IS a big name in German television and he surely has tons of whimsical music I’m not even aware of. It’s just more restrained than something Stefan Raab would write.

* Not the first time “something” went into the death slot, if you remember 2013. 🙂

Latvia: Aijā

Artist: Sudden Lights

Language: English, with a tiny bit of Latvian at the end

Key: A minor

Now this song on the other hand… Sudden Lights are such talents! Their musical style is sentimental indie rock, usually in Latvian (which really DOES sound like the child of Finnish and Russian) but with a few songs in English, one of which went to Eurovision.

I like how you can tell from the postcards how far north each country is. It’s unusual that the postcards were filmed during winter, but I don’t mind because I love snow. Norway and Latvia’s postcards had tons of snow, whereas Serbia and Malta further south had milder weather. Also, the way Peter Urban pronounced the title sounds like “Eier”, which means “eggs” in German. Maybe this song is not directed at a human baby, but at a baby chicken about to hatch?

I love this song’s mix of 5/8 and 6/8 time signatures—you don’t get a lot of songs in a quintuple beat in Eurovision, and even fewer mixed with another time signature. It seamlessly alternates between quintuple beat in the verses and sextuple in the chorus. I love watching the guy on the beat machine looking just a tad hyperactive, while everyone else sings or plays their hearts out. It starts with a quirky electronic beat, then the guitars come in and you realize this is a heartfelt indie song. It’s full of quirk and is overall a great musical journey. I admit I think the chorus repeats a tad too much, but this is still a lovely song that I’ll happily listen to. The action really kicks in when we reach “please don’t wake me up”, then it ends as a sweet little lullaby in Latvian as the listener gets to process their emotions. The song starts eccentric and ends emotional, and I love that.

I wish this was the song that broke Latvia’s non-qualification streak, instead of their generic ballady ballad in 2024. I’m not as heartbroken about this song not qualifying as some fans are, nor does it crush me as much as “Työlki ellää” or “Az én apám” not qualifying, but this was robbed.

This Eurovision entry is a great gateway drug into the rest of Sudden Lights’ songs. “Mēs turpināmies” for one is a gem, just saying. I don’t actually know that much about their songs, but a lot of people do thanks to Eurovision, and I think that’s beautiful. I love when Eurovision songs are a gateway drug into the rest of the artist’s discography. Germany’s entries usually fail at that, but this year they DID have a great gateway drug entry, and it got fucking last place because Europe is biased against our entries. Or because of the Big Five rule, or because “Cha Cha Cha” and “Promise” ate up all our votes, or, I don’t fucking know.

Ireland: We Are One

Artist: Wild Youth

Language: English

Key: D♭ major

Bleh, this is another one of those songs where the artists can’t decide what key it’s in. The music video and studio version are in D major, but the live performances in Eurovision and the national final are in D♭ major. I know only people with perfect pitch care, but still.

Unlike Latvia, this song completely deserved to continue Ireland’s non-qualification streak. This is literally just corporate music with inane lyrics about peace and I don’t like the lead singer’s sparkly Elvis suit. Seriously, it’s insane how corporate this sounds. Vaguely warm and uplifting, repetitive chord progression, those annoying pianos that do not sound like music humans write, except as background music to sell medications in a TV commercial or some shit. Oh god, and it has that stompy final chorus too, except the song doesn’t end with one last rousing chorus or a key change because apparently these guys ran out of ideas. Oh yeah, in case I forget to mention later, this year has zero songs with a key change, much to my delight.

Wild Youth have better songs than this, like “Can’t Say No” which is in minor key and has a swing rhythm that brings back memories of Jedward. I’m not sure if that would have qualified either, but it would’ve been an honest effort instead of this embarrassingly bad pile of garbage.

Azerbaijan: Tell Me More

Artist: TuralTuranX, a duo of twin brothers

Language: English

Key: D major

The EBU should have absolutely punished Azerbaijan for cheating in Eurovision 2022. I wish they had banned Azerbaijan for at least a year as punishment, since their broadcaster seems to love participating in Eurovision so much, but I kind of get why they didn’t. The EBU is extremely reluctant to ban countries, especially as more and more have been dropping out. Remember, they didn’t ban Russia from Eurovision until multiple broadcasters threatened to withdraw. They DID kick out Romania in 2016 for not paying their debts in time, but I guess cheating isn’t worthy of punishment to the EBU.

Given that this song only scored four points in the semifinal, it seems to me like Azerbaijan finally swore off cheating in 2023. I think this is the year where Azerbaijan revamped their approach to Eurovision: they stopped trying to win (which to them means hiring Swedes and cheating) and started showcasing local talent, which I like a lot better. This is only the third Azerbaijani entry to be composed by locals: the first two are “Day After Day” (2008) and “Skeletons” (2017). The others mostly had Swedish songwriters, or other recurring names like Dimitris Kontopoulos and Borislav Milanov.

Anyway, this song is super underrated! It’s a sentimental British-sounding indie rock tune that sounds right at home in Liverpool. If the UK sent entries that sounded as British as this every year… well OK, I don’t know if they’d score well, because this song did really poorly. But what I’m saying is, I wish the British entries would always sound as distinctly British as this! It has simple but sweet guitar lines, creative basslines that reach into relatively high notes, and is overall a surprisingly lovely song. It’s a tune about a man wanting to confess to his love interest and end a period of uncertainty, who starts out nervous but eventually lets out his inner fantasies. The song is simple and calm for the most part, but builds up a surprising amount of tension and has a surprising diminished chord when they sing “and that is love… love… love”. It almost sounds like the song is then leading into minor key, but then it returns to major key so as to resume the dreamy atmosphere.

I never thought I’d say this before, but Azerbaijan was robbed! Not as robbed as Latvia, but still, fans don’t give this song enough love. The automated telephone intro reminds me of “Stemmen i mit liv”, another underrated entry that most fans think is awful.

Netherlands: Burning Daylight

Artist: Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper

Language: English

Key: F♯ major, let’s say. These three-chord songs are up for interpretation.

Ooh, this song has one of the most creative postcards—a showcase of cities with colorful buildings in Ukraine, the UK, and the Netherlands. This is what I love about the 2023 postcards, they go creative with they showcase and don’t just go for the obvious cityscapes and waterfalls.

I never liked this song, honestly. It’s just a drab sad-duo ballad with a generic three-chord progression that doesn’t seem to tell any personal story. I also don’t get why this was raised a whole three semitones from the studio version. Mia and Dion sound shaky on stage and look like they barely know each other. I’m so glad the Netherlands sent an ultra-Eurovisiony banger in Dutch next year, even though it got fucking disqualified because life isn’t fair. I’m still salty about that and I get to let out my anger two posts from now.

Peter Urban didn’t seem impressed by this song at the end. He said the anthemic melody is reminiscent of “Arcade” but Duncan Laurence could’ve sung it much better.

Semifinal 1 thoughts:

Fans love to praise Sweden for being the best country at hosting Eurovision, but as soon as the opening film and act began, I remembered that the United Kingdom deserves this honor. I’ll elaborate on this in the grand final; for now, I’ll give shoutouts to a joke near the start. Some of the hosts in recent years did the obligatory French portion while sounding very stilted, then cracked a joke about how tough French is that makes me roll my eyes. Hannah Waddingham, on the other hand, delivered the voting information in flawless French and then said: “You see, Europe? Some of us Brits do bother to learn another language.” This, people, is the kind of humor that’s actually funny! And plus, her French is so good that she earned the right to make this joke.

In case I forget to say it in the grand final, I’ll say it here: the postcards of 2023 are too fucking good. So good, in fact, that in pretty much every other Eurovision year with postcards that I watched, I thought to myself, “man, these postcards just aren’t as good as 2023”. Except the postcards of 2014, but that’s because I’m a flag lover. And the detail of the contestants appearing backstage before each postcard, I absolutely love that too! Why don’t more Eurovision years do that, seriously? Little touches like this are why Britain are the best hosts.

Another way the UK was an excellent host was that there was not a single overly long interruption between setting up each song! This means we got a host interlude between Latvia and Portugal, another interlude between Moldova and Sweden, and otherwise viewers enjoyed the songs and postcards uninterrupted. So much better than the excess of unplanned host interludes in 2022. Oh my god, this year is seriously such a huge upgrade to 2022. The song lineup is about the same level, but the hosting is infinitely better.

The first interval act is a moving dance ballad performed in a mix of English and Ukrainian, by British singer Rebecca Ferguson and Ukrainian singer Alyosha. The latter singer is way better at controlling her voice now than in Eurovision 2010, where she went Celine Dion mode. Then comes a medley performance by Rita Ora, an artist that I’ve heard British fans wanted to compete in Eurovision, so an interval act is the next best thing. These acts do exactly what they need to: keep the audience entertained and showcase the host countries’ music. The best song in the interval and opening acts I would say is Julia Sanina’s rock song in Ukrainian. I love how it establishes her as a musician before we even know she’s hosting.

As you’d expect from a country that natively speaks English, the history skits are great this time. I love the skit recapping the UK and Ukraine’s Eurovision history, narrated by none other than Graham Norton. The game were Måns and Filomena guess which entries qualified and didn’t is funny too, I love their banter. The BBC even made the Big Five interviews fun to watch, in the last year that they’d be done. Chris Harms is a very nice man who’s passionate about Eurovision and I’m proud his band got to represent Germany.

The qualifier reveals brought back memories of how nerve-wracking it was last year—this is why I love watching Eurovision. For five days a year, I let this contest take full control of my emotions and scream my ass off throughout the results. I remember being surprised that Switzerland made it through, and completely unsurprised that Finland qualified (Peter Urban felt the same about both). Czechia and Portugal qualifying joyed me too. The tenth qualifier was a rather sad moment, because it obviously couldn’t have been anyone other than Norway. The crowd made that abundantly clear. Pour one out for Latvia—and in retrospect, Azerbaijan. I’d have swapped these out with Serbia and Croatia, personally. The German commentator was sad about Latvia not qualifying, as are so many other fans. I think “Aijā” will remain a cult classic for many decades to come.

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Denmark: Breaking My Heart

Artist: Reiley (Rani Johann Petersen), the first Eurovision artist from the Faroe Islands

Language: English

Key: D major

This semifinal has a really weak opener for some reason. I guess this boring song had to go somewhere. It’s bad but not appallingly bad, so there’s really not much to say about it. It’s just a repetitive background noise radio song with quiet powerless vocals. His live vocals over the vocoder sound rather awkward. If nothing else, I wouldn’t mind hearing the studio version in the background. I know because I never felt a need to skip this back when I extensively listened to this year’s entries pre-show.

Also, I’m not a fan of his jeweled pink outfit and I don’t get why his pants have a hole near the top of his right leg. That’s not a spot where pants ever get holes, so I assume the hole was put in on purpose and I don’t get why.

One more thing: Alesha Dixon gives a few announcements right after this song and we see Daði Freyr behind her waving the Icelandic flag. If I was watching this show live unspoiled, I’d have assumed he was the Icelandic competitor this year, but instead he’s the interval act.

Romania: D.G.T. (Off and On)

Artist: Theodor Andrei

Language: Romanian and English

Key: A minor

I went back and forth on whether I liked this song during national final season, but now my opinion is clear: everything about it annoys the hell out of me. It’s an attempt at a 6/8 blues ballad with a few good musical ideas in the verses, but an annoyingly repetitive chorus and really creepy lyrics. It’s also one of two non-qualifiers where I feel like the singer is too young to sing about the subject matter—the other is Greece. That’s right, you guys: I’ve aligned myself to the mainstream opinion on this entry.

I also completely forgot the Eurovision revamp of this song changed the first half into a guitar ballad—I don’t think I had rewatched this live performance even once. I really don’t get why the revamp stripped down half the song, or why he’s wearing a shitty pink suit with shorts. He has a pretty good voice I guess, but still, this is a godawful song. I’m not at all surprised it got zero points.

Another thing that annoys me about this song is its title. No one who doesn’t speak Romanian will ever guess that “D.G.T.” means “degete” (fingers) or have any clue what the song is about. At least this isn’t as bad as Ireland… probably.

Iceland: Power

Artist: Diljá Pétursdóttir

Language: English

Key: F minor

A little before this, between Belgium and Cyprus’s entries, we have an interview with Graham Norton and Timur Miroshnychenko, who make such a great duo and should totally make a TV show together. Timur gets bonus points in my book, because his favorite Eurovision song of all time is the same as mine: Dancing Lasha Tumbai!

The theme of waterfalls in this postcard is really cool. Ukraine is not a country I imagined having waterfalls, but apparently it does! Proves there’s more to the country than being the breadbasket of Europe.

Anyway, Iceland was robbed! No, I’m not joking here. Iceland was robbed. Most fans don’t give two fucks about this song, but I give at least three fucks about it. I haven’t listened to it in far too long, I forgot how good it was. I never paid attention to what the lyrics are about before, but now I’ve realized it’s about her ending a relationship where she feels more powerful now that her ex holds no power over her—a good message that’s accurate to what a healthy breakup is like. It’s a total drum and bass banger—I don’t talk about it much, but I have a big soft spot for this genre. I love the tense buildup and the punchy drums and the insane drops, not to mention the parts where the instrumental drops out entirely. Plus, this girl has buckets of energy on stage and sells the song all on her own. She breathes into the microphone a bit too much, but this song is still a total banger. It’s the kind of song I love to turn way up and bop my head to. Why does nobody talk about it?

I never heard the Icelandic version (Lifandi inni í mér) and I like it too! I think I like the song equally in each language. It works in English, it works in Icelandic, and it’s slightly more of a novelty to hear this drum and bass song in Icelandic.

While it’s always nicer when all my favorites make it to the final, it’s way more fun to write these posts when a few of my favorites don’t qualify. That way I can tell everyone who thinks these songs deserved to flop why they’re wrong! Apparently Diljá’s a huge Eurovision nerd according to Peter Urban, so I’m sure she’d get a kick out of my review.

Greece: What They Say

Artist: Victor Vernicos

Language: English

Key: C major

What do you get when you roll a whole bunch of cookiefonster pet peeves into one not-very-good radio pop song? Answer: “What They Say” by Victor Vernicos.

This song totally baffles me. I would say it has always baffled me, but it didn’t actually until I saw Victor perform it live. He bounces around on stage like a goofy teenager at a party, which is incredibly dissonant with the sadboy lyrics about how hard life is. The lyrics actually drive me crazy because he sings about how life struggles is and keeps saying “save the others ‘cause for me it’s too late”. Like, no. It’s not too late for you to live a good life, you were only 16 years old in Eurovision. And you were only 14 when you wrote these lyrics, come on! Some teenagers have this mindset thinking that their life has already gone to shit, which I don’t like because in reality their life has barely begun. That’s what teenagers are like, I suppose.

I don’t get why he lies on the floor on stage near the start, and I also don’t get why the stage has so many English words with a letter or two changed to Greek. The people making the staging probably thought that was a good substitute for making a properly Greek-sounding banger, but it ISN’T. Oh god, I’m sorry Victor, but I wince watching this. All his jumping around really doesn’t help his singing. And I forgot it uses the stompy final chorus trope that I hate. I hate it even more than usual because it’s so out of place among the rest. Basically, in contrast to the last song, this completely deserved not to qualify. I’m told he only was selected to Eurovision because he was a nepotism baby anyway.

Georgia: Echo

Artist: Iru Khechanovi

Language: English, though it might as well be made-up sounds

Key: G minor

This song has interesting percussion, but otherwise it really does nothing for me. The lyrics are about absolutely nothing—I remember reading Iru wanted it to be about lesbian romance, but her team wouldn’t let her so she made it nonsense instead.

I don’t like saying that songs seem like they were generated by artificial intelligence, and I’m not saying the song itself sounds like it was. But her singing all these meaningless combinations of English words sounds like the output of a neural network, so it has an uncanny valley effect. Overall, I’m really not impressed with this.

San Marino: Like an Animal

Artist: Piqued Jacks

Language: English

Key: D minor

The lyrics of this song are freakishly similar to “Animals” by Maroon 5. I used to know someone obsessed with Maroon 5 who would always say he finds the lyrics of the song to be bad in a funny way because they’re comparing sex to animals preying on one another. And this song is exactly the same way.

As a piece of music, I don’t think this deserves so much hate. It’s an obvious non-qualifier and I’m unsurprised it got zero points, but musically it’s a perfectly pleasant alternative rock song you might hear on the radio. I like the 6/8 time signature and guitar riffs and for once, the instrumental sounds very normal. I’m not quite a fan of his long notes near the end though.

Semifinal 2 thoughts:

It’s been really nice going through these songs in 2023 that I never knew how to feel about, and finally forming a cohesive opinion on them. I think now that I’ve reviewed over a thousand Eurovision songs, I’ve become good at pinpointing what’s good or not about a song.

Back in 2023, after I watched the results of the first semifinal, I was quick to learn which types of songs do and don’t qualify. I then correctly predicted nine out of ten qualifiers from this semifinal: the only one I got wrong was Iceland, since I thought Cyprus wouldn’t qualify. And I think I would have made this swap if I was in charge.

One thing that never changes is, Ukraine is great at doing interval acts. They’re always proud to showcase their own language and musical genres, and love to go big and bold. Their interval acts in 2005 were delightfully Ukrainian, their acts in 2017 were the best part about their drab hosting, and now their interval acts make a perfect combination with the UK’s top-tier hosting. I’m not sure Ukraine is the number one best country at interval acts, because it was Ireland who gave us Riverdance. But that just goes to show how amazing Riverdance is. In any case, that medley of Ukrainian-language songs is delightful, especially the part with “Carol of the Bells”.

Maybe Eurovision should get the UK, Ireland, and Sweden to take turns hosting, Ukraine does all the interval acts, and Finland takes care of the visual design. And Germany should be in charge of designing the stage each year… oh wait, they already are! OK, not literally every year, but still. You see, guys, Germany does something cool for Eurovision too. The interval act with drag queens dressed as the hosts singing about freedom to be yourself is more on the silly side but also loads of fun.

(Oh yeah, Peppa Pig makes a cameo—brings back memories of the Wombles interval act from 1974. Those were simpler times, weren’t they?)

During the qualifier reveals, Hannah looks like she’s personally invested in the show while staying in-character as a confident host, whereas Julia looks totally calm and collected. Peter Urban said it was a small surprise that Cyprus qualified and I have to agree. Estonia qualifying is a significant moment because it proves jury bait can appeal to televoters too, which is why I defend televote-only semis. I still remember how much Belgium qualifying made me scream, of course. The German commentator was surprised Poland made it through, but said the journalist Lukas Heinser next to him shook his head as though he had prophetic skills. I also remember mumbling to myself “please be Slovenia, please be Slovenia” when the last qualifier was about to be revealed. Again, this is why I love Eurovision—I let this silly little contest control all my emotions for a week.

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See you next time I rant about how fucking unfair it was that Lord of the Lost got last place, and rave about how much I love “Cha Cha Cha”.

>> 2023 (Final): A Duel Between Jury and Televote Bait