Intro Post

< 2023 Final | 2024 Semifinals | 2024 Final >

I’m almost done with this blog post series! I just have the 2024 grand final and then a few bonus posts in mind. Then I don’t know what the hell I’ll do with my time.

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Introduction

(The best year of Eurovision was actually 2021, but shh. Let me be dramatic for the sake of this title.)

And so, we’ve finally arrived at the most recent Eurovision contest as of this writing. It was filled with exorbitant amounts of drama, the most drama in… who the hell knows how long? Is it comparable to all the ruckus Italy caused when hosting 1991? The controversies Russia caused hosting 2009, or Azerbaijan in 2012? Or going back further, the quadruple tie of 1969 hosted in Francoist Spain? I’ll save most of my drama ranting for “Hurricane”, the controversial Israeli entry of this year, and try my best to be positive otherwise. Even though one of the biggest fan favorites of the year, “Europapa” from the Netherlands, was disqualified after qualifying from the second semifinal. This didn’t just piss off fans; it also angered the broadcaster AVROTROS who was very excited to share their Eurovision entry and insisted it was unjust to disqualify Joost Klein. And even though Israel insisted on sending a song that they knew would be controversial with zero regard for how other broadcasters or viewers would feel, which caused massive protests and the EBU to bend backwards… I’ll try to be positive anyway.

The usual big three Swedish cities bidded to host Eurovision 2024, plus an outsider: the subarctic city of Örnskoldsvik, which happens to have a nice big arena that has hosted Melodifestivalen heats. The Malmö Arena was the only viable option due to scheduling issues in the other venues, so that’s what SVT went with. It turns out that Malmö was a fitting city to host this year, considering the contest went to the very same arena after the last time Loreen won. It’s also a very modern and polished city that saw tons of growth after the bridge to Copenhagen opened in 1999, and it’s got a really nice network of trains and buses, so it’s well-suited to host Eurovision. But for Israeli fans, Malmö was an unfortunate city to host due to the amount of immigrants who protested against the country’s participation in Eurovision, or for some people, even the country’s existence. This meant that most fans from Israel had to hide all signs of their nationality, including speaking Hebrew, and it’s really sad that they had to do this in the 21st century.

This was the first Eurovision year that I visited in person. It was my first time in Scandinavia and my first time visiting both Denmark and Sweden; lovely countries that I’d be glad to visit again. I wrote a blog post about the trip months ago, but honestly I sugar coated the description a little bit. Not only was I stressed out from all the Eurovision drama, I also got into some really bad personal drama that I won’t elaborate on in public. But… despite everything, I am extremely glad I got to go on this trip. And I promise you this won’t be my last time visiting Eurovision.

Aside from all the drama, Luxembourg came back to Eurovision after last participating in 1993! Romania skipped out, which means this contest had 37 competing countries just like last year. And the semifinals have an exciting change: the Big Five and host country now each perform in the semifinal they can vote in, but still automatically qualify. This is a long overdue change that greatly offsets these countries’ disadvantage, and I’m really happy about it. And after the success of worldwide voting last year, the rest of the world’s voting period was extended to begin 24 hours before each show. I think Australia should have this luxury too.

To twist things up, I will watch the first semifinal with Luxembourgish commentary, then the second with German commentary by Thorsten Schorn, who has a picture of the old commentator in his booth. This will be my first time watching the semis’ TV broadcasts in full, since I watched the first as a rehearsal from the arena, and the second as a live show from the arena. And I will include “Europapa” in this post, not the grand final post.

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Poland: The Tower

Artist: Luna (Alexandra Wielgomas)

Language: English

Key: F major

The first five songs of this semifinal—technically first six, since the UK performed before this and they’re in the Big Five—all qualified, so we have a rather late first non-qualifier here.

Annoyingly, I have pretty much no opinions on this song. It’s a generic fast-paced pop song that goes in one ear and out the other. Her singing sounds a bit too croony, and there’s too much happening on stage. Are the chess towers and green-screen horses supposed to tell some kind of story? If so, it’s anyone’s guess what. And did this need the pyrotechnics near the end? I’m not convinced, but I’m sure it was exciting for those in the audience. At least she has a cool sci-fi outfit.

Iceland: Scared of Heights

Artist: Hera Björk, returning from 2010

Language: English

Key: C major

Let me start by saying that Hera Björk is an absolute sweetheart, probably one of the nicest people to ever compete in Eurovision. I recently watched this interview with her, and a few things of note she said were that she thoroughly believes Eurovision should be about putting aside politics and having fun, and that she expressed empathy for the contestants going through anxiety in this chaotic year and did her best to provide emotional support. She also said that as someone in her fifties, she loves watching a new generation of Eurovision fans and artists blossom. Please give a round of applause to Hera for being a ray of sunshine in this dramatic mess of a year.

Now with all that said, I don’t like this song at all. I find it to be very weak, below the usual standard of qualify for Eurovision 2024. I love her sparkly gold outfit and the little tower she stands on, but this is an unimpressive feel-good dance song with a repetitive chord progression. It does nothing to excite me and it’s an extremely obvious non-qualifier, a big downgrade from her prior entry “Je ne sais quoi”. On the day after semifinal 1, I remember telling friends while in Copenhagen that I’m guessing that Iceland got dead last place, and I was right—this only earned three points. One from Cyprus and two from Sweden. My friend Vlad told me during the trip that he thought the song would get a good amount of votes from middle-aged moms who like to party, but it didn’t seem to get that many in the end.

One good thing I can say isn’t about the song, but rather the postcard. I’m not a big fan of this year’s postcard format as I discussed in this side post—the style of filming just feels too much like social media. But Hera Björk looks positively delighted in her winter clothes as she explores the barns and geysers of her home country.

Moldova: In the Middle

Artist: Natalia Barbu, returning from 2007

Language: English

Key: G♯ minor

I cannot think of anything to say about this as a song, which for Eurovision 2024 is a bad thing. Erica describes this as a “much of a muchness ballad” and sure, let’s go with that, minus the ballad part because I don’t think it counts as one. I also agree with her that Natalia’s saggy tit-dress is awful, and that Moldova is so much better when they go quirky and out of the box. Honestly this song is terrible and Natalia deserves ridicule for being such a sore loser. This is the first grand final in who even knows how long with no returning contestants; both of the veterans flopped this year.

Azerbaijan: Özünlə apar

Artist: Fahree Ismayilov featuring Ilkin Dovlatov

Language: English and, for the first time, Azerbaijani

Key: G minor

Azeris sure love their board games, don’t they? And these guys seem to like cats too, going by the postcard. I can never stay mad at cat lovers.

Now this right here is the most underrated entry of Eurovision 2024, and my second favorite Azeri entry behind “Cleopatra”. No one ever talks about it, but I actually really love it. It’s the first Azeri entry that truly feels authentically ethnic—an homage to the musical heritage of this Turkic country, not a Swedish-written pop song with a few ethnic elements designed to become a radio hit.

I can see why this didn’t qualify—voters prefer a full ethno-bop like Greece or Armenia—but this is the non-qualifier I’m saddest about (the Netherlands does NOT count). I agree with Erica that it has just the right lick of ethnicity to make it intriguing. It has all these dramatic Middle Eastern string riffs, as well as Turkic flute-sounding instruments that remind me of “1944” by Jamala. Ilkin contributes some of that ethnic mugham singing that Azerbaijan is known for. Everything in here comes together nicely and makes for a great listening experience. Erica is also right that this song proves Azerbaijan only qualifies when they cheat.

Maybe this could’ve used more Azeri lyrics than just the chorus, but I’m joyed that Azerbaijan is finally representing their language at all. It’s been long overdue! This means that every single country to have participated in Eurovision has now represented their language at least once. Well OK, Azerbaijan technically did in 2021, but that was just three words. The chorus here is seven words repeated throughout the song, which is good enough to count as proper representation.

Australia: One Milkali (One Blood)

Artist: Electric Fields

Language: English, plus a few words in Yankunytjatjara

Key: C minor

Just like the previous country, Australia went for some local flavor and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. As with last year, they internally selected an artist who had competed in their national finals before: the electro-pop half Aboriginal duo Electric Fields. I don’t know how I feel about this personally; it’s grown off me since the pre-season. It has some funky chords and synths, plus a chorus that evokes expansive nature, befitting for Australia. But it does get repetitive after a while and I think it was a mistake to strip down the instrumentation for the final chorus. Additionally, the digeridoo guy near the end gets barely any time in the spotlight.

If you know anything about Australians, you’ll know that they love flying to faraway countries and making themselves at home, so it didn’t surprise me that I met so many of them in Malmö. One Australian girl I met said that fans from her country were really excited about their song and sad it didn’t qualify, but she saw it coming because she knew this wouldn’t click with Europeans. This is clear when you look at the rankings of the semifinal: Australia scored 11th place but Serbia and Slovenia, two songs that are easy for their neighbor cultures to appreciate, landed 10th and 9th respectively.

Semifinal 1 thoughts:

Even though I still maintain that Britain is the best country at hosting Eurovision, Sweden’s hosting has a positive reputation for good reason. They put together a hell of a great show that flows seamlessly and wows newcomer viewers and longtime fans alike. I know this because my mother, who watched Eurovision this year for probably the first time since I was born, kept telling me how much of an amazing show it was. She also told me how much she loved the hosts this year. I’ll take some time to praise both Petra and Malin in the grand final!

I find it symbolic that only four minutes into the first semifinal, we already have an indication of this year’s Eurovision drama: the keffiyeh (a clothing symbolic of Palestine) that Eric Saade, himself of Palestinian heritage, wore on his arm. SVT gave him permission to wear it but the EBU did not, which is just one of many examples of the EBU having unreasonable rules and poor communication with their broadcasters.

The opening act with the rearranged versions of three Eurovision hits is fun enough, but the action really begins when Petra and her new sidekick enter the stage. I find it incredibly sweet that the audience is cheering so loud for her; it really brightened up my mood after thinking about all the drama. When Petra said, “We’re back in Sweden, and I know. Don’t blame me; even I voted for Finland”, my good mood has been restored. Malin is a great host too, and the audience kindly gave her a roar. 

This contest uses a formula of two interval acts per semifinal. The first is a crossover between the two double winners, the king and queen of Eurovision: Johnny Logan singing a stunning cover of Loreen’s “Euphoria”, six days before his 70th birthday. He still can sing great and he looks dignified at this age, like a grandpa who has the coolest stories to tell his grandkids about the 1960’s. And the orchestration of the song is lovely; it’s been totally rearranged to suit his voice.

For the second interval act, Sweden brought their 2018 contestant Benjamin Ingrosso to perform a medley of three of his songs, and I have to say that one’s a real crowd pleaser. He kept me entertained in the arena and while rewatching for my blog, so his performance works perfectly as an interval act. They’re a bunch of upbeat dance songs with a similar style of lyrics to “Dance You Off”, honest talk about his relationships with women. He’s even more handsome six years later and I think I might have a man crush on him.

I sharply remember my reactions to the qualifiers, which I watched on my laptop after hurrying back to the apartment I was staying in. Portugal pleased me and most others didn’t surprise me, except Ireland which was a great moment of triumph. They hadn’t qualified since 2018, and it felt unreal that they finally made it back to the final. I was still reeling in amazement from it the next day.

The Luxembourgish commentators were mostly invested in their own entry this year and didn’t talk much about how much they liked the other songs. But it was so worth it to hear them scream when Tali was revealed as the final qualifier. They had said they were worried Europe wouldn’t pay much attention to this tiny country, but happily their worries were wrong! Let’s hope Luxembourg can maintain this momentum, just like they did in the old days.

If you’re wondering how well I understood the Luxembourgish commentary: pretty well, actually! I’d say I understood about nine out of ten words, but sometimes I had to rewind to pay attention to what they’re saying. As a German speaker, hearing Luxembourgish is probably a good approximation for how Swedes feel when they listen to Norwegian. It’s easier for me to understand than Swiss German, and way easier to understand than Dutch.

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Malta: Loop

Artist: Sarah Bonnici

Language: English

Key: G♯ minor

I’m annoyed that the producers did their usual shtick of starting with a girl bop then a ballad for both semifinals. Semifinal 1 started with a Cypriot girlbop and a Serbian ballad; this semifinal starts with a Maltese girlbop and an Albanian ballad. And both of the opener girlbops are shameless ripoffs of the two most iconic girlbops: Cyprus sent off-brand Fuego and Maltese sent bootleg SloMo.

Dear god, this song is so painfully overproduced and overchoreographed. There is absolutely nothing this song did that “SloMo” didn’t do better. It even has a dance break with a weird blindfold gimmick. I do not feel sad at all that this didn’t qualify, but part of me feels bad for Malta getting last place. They really put a lot of work into this choreography. Still though, did I say this is overproduced yet? Because it really fucking is. It wants to be the greatest girlbop in all of existence, but that’s the problem with modern girlbops: they all way too hard to impress. Each of them tries to out-girlbop the other, but all this song managed to do was girlflop. Malta’s not the only country this year that tried too hard to impress with staging; see also the UK.

Also, the valley girl-sounding “oh my god, you got got got me on” drives me crazy. Overall I don’t like this one bit.

Albania: Titan

Artist: Besa Kokëdhima

Language: English

Key: E minor

In her 2012 review, Erica has a good point when she says she’s pissed “Suus” was Albania’s best result, because that means it’s their most iconic entry. That certainly shows in this postcard, which features snippets of “Carry Me in Your Dreams” and then “Suus”. I don’t mind most of the choices of past songs in these postcards—Edward af Sillén hand-picked them and he’s totally obsessed with Eurovision, so I can’t blame him for wanting to highlight songs he loves. But I am peeved that he went with “Suus” for Albania.

This is one of those Albanian entries that was made almost into a completely different song after it won Festivali i Këngës, which it technically didn’t; rather, it won the televote only, and the rule at the time was that the televote winner of FiK it made it to Eurovision. When is Albania going to learn that these complete revamps of their FiK winners don’t work? This is just an average Albanian female ballad. I kind of like that the beat changes in the second verse and final chorus, but otherwise this is really weak. This means the streak of Albania being good only in odd-numbered years (starting 2019) has continued.

“Titan was originally submitted with an Albanian title that means Heart in Hand. Its lyrics have been changed to English, which makes it more international but also more interchangeable.” –Thorsten Schorn translated to English. I like his commentary, actually. He’s observant in a similar way to Peter Urban.

Czechia: Pedestal

Artist: Aiko (Alena Shirmanova-Kostebelova)

Language: English

Key: F♯ minor

Czechia was so robbed, you guys! I didn’t like this song much at first during the pre-season, but now I fucking love it. At first I didn’t like that it used the same four-chord progression all the way through, but now I think it does so in a way that works; the revamp definitely helped. As with “If Love Was a Crime” or “Uno”, the variance in instrumentation and beat between each part makes up for the simple repeated chord progression.

This is a totally sassy 90’s sounding indie rock song, except it doesn’t have a band to back Aiko up. It’s heavy in guitars and pumping basslines and has a killer drum beat to tie it together. I love the little percussion breaks before each verse, and I also love the trope where the pre-chorus has a fast pumping drum beat to build up the hype. She successfully improved her vocals from the national final to Eurovision. She may not have the strongest vocals of the night, but her expressive singing style works here. She sounds like she just broke up with her boyfriend and is processing how much better it is without dealing with his shit. And props to her for singing so confidently as the backing dancers lift her up!

The bridge is also a great section. It keeps the same four-chord progression and builds up really effectively to the final chorus, which has some cool guitar solos too. I don’t think I’ve turned around this hard on any Eurovision song in 2023, or any other this year either. Oh, and props to the song for censoring the profane lyrics in a seamless way, instead of lazily omitting them like Germany.

I think this is the most undeserved qualifier of 2024, with Azerbaijan at a close second. I’m not quite sure which song I’d have swapped it out for. It’s a bit of a cheat to say Israel, because I think they should’ve skipped Eurovision this year. The two weakest qualifiers are probably Latvia and Georgia, but I wouldn’t want to have taken away their happy moments since they both hadn’t qualified since 2016. So instead, let’s say I would have swapped it for Austria, who qualified just last year. I do like “We Will Rave”, but I like this a lot more.

Denmark: Sand

Artist: Saba Lykke Oehlenschlæger

Language: English

Key: E minor

The postcard scenery of Copenhagen really brings back memories of my trip; the city has such a distinctive personality I can’t put into words. I’m sure I’m not the only fan who went to Malmö that felt this way, because the cities are merely a bridge apart.

Unlike Czechia, this is an example of a fully four-chord song that doesn’t work. The repetitive chord progression makes the song seem like a chorus for three minutes straight. It’s just a mediocre club anthem sort of thing whose instrumentation remains pretty much the same throughout. It’s not that bad or anything, but to me it was a very obvious non-qualifier. It varies the chord progression in the bridge at least, but even that portion feels a bit aimless.

San Marino: 11:11

Artist: Megara

Language: Spanish, plus a phrase in English. It had Italian lines in San Marino’s national final, but those were removed.

Key: G minor

Spanish fans were spoiled this year—this year contains two songs by Spanish bands sung entirely in Spanish. It almost feels like Spain pulled a Eurovision 1956 and sent two songs.

This was one of my mom’s favorites of semifinal 2, and the only non-qualifier that stood out to her. Suffice to say, it’s more her kind of sing than mine. It’s the kind of punky alternative rock that she loves and I like sometimes, but it’s a bit too much for my ears and the talk-singing bothers me. I don’t get the intro that sounds like an opening to a Disney movie, I guess it’s supposed to be a bait and switch? Also, she forgets some of her lyrics in the second chorus, and that can’t have done her favors. The one part I do really like is the flamenco breakdown near the end.

In her review, Erica said that this is what Ireland might have sent if Bambie was more restrained, and I can actually see that. Maybe that’s why Ireland qualified and this didn’t. I will say, “que si tú no me quieres, otra gente me querrá” is a damn catchy line. The band must have been proud of writing it, considering it has an English translation on screen: “If you don’t love me, someone else will!”

Belgium: Before the Party’s Over

Artist: Mustii (Thomas Mustin)

Language: English

Key: D minor

OK, maybe these postcards are better than I gave credit. They do a good job showing scenery from each country in a fun fresh format. But I still find them a downgrade from most years 2018 onwards, except 2022—I wasn’t big on those.

I’m not sure which country flubbed their staging worse this year: Belgium or the United Kingdom. I don’t get why he’s wearing an oversized white jacket and has sparkles on his torso, or why he’s surrounded by a circle of fifty microphones. And his vocal performance is sadly really weak and I felt it through the arena. He even drifts off-key in the second chorus. Shame because the studio version is a really lovely James Bond ballad with a great mix of pianos, strings, and modern cinematic drums, plus a bit of James Bond-style brass. And the bridge (I got a soul on fire, I’m gonna raise roofs tonight) always manages to move me, at least in the studio.

If you thought televoters didn’t care about whether the contestants can sing, this song not qualifying whereas Latvia did proves they actually do—just not quite as much as the juries.

Netherlands: Europapa

Artist: Joost Klein

Language: Dutch, plus phrases in English, German, and Italian

Key: B minor

Let’s go, you guys. Let’s fucking GO!!! This is the number one song I was most excited about leading up to the show and I am still absolutely heartbroken it got disqualified. I want to draw attention first and foremost to what makes the song great, and when that’s done, I’ll provide my own opinion on the drama. My fingers are trembling, I’ve been excited for months to reach this song but don’t know where to begin. Why not start with a bit of background?

After their streak of non-qualifications from 2005 to 2012, the Netherlands had greatly improved their approach to Eurovision. They got second place in 2014 (robbed by a beard), won in 2019, and got a surprisingly good result with a Dutch-language song in 2022. But what this country had been missing all this time was an entry that’s completely, utterly, shamelessly, indulgently Dutch, like “SloMo” is for Spain, “Ein bisschen Frieden” for Germany, or “Alcohol Is Free” for Greece. In 2024, the Netherlands decided to do just that.

When they sent a dull safe song in 2023 that failed to qualify, the Netherlands decided they had enough of slow, dreary ballads and sent to Eurovision a singer, rapper, and YouTuber who was extremely popular in his home country, as well as Belgium and Germany. Joost Klein, as you surely know by now, is a leading name in the Dutch happy hardcore scene. He likes to make hectic dance music in Dutch whose lyrics have a deeper meaning behind them, and given that a song like that got second place in 2023, it’s no wonder the Netherlands viewed him as a perfect candidate for Eurovision. It helps that his lifelong dream was to go to Eurovision, so he was insanely excited once he got selected.

As I saw when I went to Malmö, his excitement spread not just to the entire Netherlands, but also to the entirety of Europe. Fans from many different countries carried Dutch flags and wore costumes themed upon “Europapa”, such as a replication of Joost’s blue suit, shirts with his face, or shirts saying “Netherlands 12 points”. There were two other entries that fans expressed their hype for this exuberantly: “The Code” from Switzerland and “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” from Croatia, which landed in the top two. I also saw a scattered amount of Windows95Man outfits but nowhere near as much as these three. This is exactly the kind of hype around a Eurovision entry that I love to see. My dream is for Germany to send a native-language entry to Eurovision that gets the entire continent this excited, instead of yet another radio pop song in English. It took until 2023 for Finland to come up with “Cha Cha Cha” but they eventually did, so let’s hope my country can do the same. It would’ve so easily happened if we had sent Electric Callboy, god fucking dammit.

But don’t just take my word on how excited the Dutch are about this song—take Erica’s, because she wrote a blog post about “Europapa” months before the contest and extensively goes over what’s so great about it, and how patriotic it makes her feel. I’ll be rehashing her words a little bit for this song’s analysis, which starts… now!

This song starts with a few platitudes to the audience in English, which make the arena cheer just as loudly as they did for “Cha Cha Cha”. Then he introduces the first half of the chorus, which goes “Welkom in Europa, blijf hier toot ik doodga, Europapa, Europapa” repeated twice, which means “Welcome to Europe, I’ll stay here until I die”. It’s so simple yet brilliantly written and easy to sing along to. The rhyme of “Europa” and “doodga” shows us something great about the song: the insane amount of clever rhymes, which I’ll go over in the next paragraph. Again, Erica can back me up on this, because she said in the aforementioned post that the lyrics are absolute genius.

Then we dive into the first verse where he achieves something I thought was impossible: dropping place names in a way that works. In my older Eurovision posts, I would often complain about songs that name-drop tons of places just so that viewers who don’t speak the language understand a bit of it. The language rule is long gone, but native-language songs are now having a renaissance, so it makes sense that place names are only included when they truly add to the song. The inclusion of all the place names and international words in verse 1 (France, Wenen, Netherlands, paspoort, visum, Polen, Berlijn) really works here, because the place names are cleverly rhymed with Dutch words. “Neem de benen”, a Dutch expression that means to go away or take off, is rhymed with “Wenen” (Vienna), and in turn it’s rhymed with “mijn passport is verdwenen” (my passport is missing). As I said when I reviewed “De diepte”, I can’t speak or understand Dutch, but if I really love a song in Dutch then I can make myself understand the lyrics—it happened with both that song and “Europapa”.

The first verse begins the story Joost Klein tells: he wants to travel around Europe but his passport is missing, but fortunately he doesn’t need a visa to do it. It’s an homage to the openness of 21st century Europe, all these countries that were once at war trusting each other and having open borders. Not every country in the entire continent, but by this point the Schengen Area covers most of Europe. This notion of countries trusting each other this much bends my mind as an American. The United States doesn’t even have open borders with Canada, a country that’s way closer to us culturally than most European countries are with each other, let alone with other nearby countries—the only countries Americans can access without a passport are three island nations in the Pacific. All these European nations, on the other hand… they have a fundamental level of trust for each other after World War II which made events like the Eurovision Song Contest possible. As an owner of a German passport this kind of feels normal to me, but also kind of feels mind-blowing.

The last two lines of the first verse contain an early hint at the melancholy side of this song: he sings “Ik ben echt alles kwijt behalve de tijd / Dus ben elke dag op reis want de wereld is van mij”, which means “I lost everything except time / So I am traveling every day for the world is mine”. We get a funny moment on stage with a blue screen saying “I even lost the visuals for this part. Sorry I’m looking for them”, which made me laugh out loud while in the arena. More on what this song was like in the arena later; for now, this is one of many parts of the song that reads differently once you know it’s about the loss of his parents.

The first chorus returns to “Welkom in Europa, blijf hier tot ik doodga” with a full happy hardcore instrumental, then delves into a part that’s insanely fun to sing along to: the repeated “Euro-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa”. That part is pure fun and joy, and whenever I sing along to this song, after the first “hey” my voice gets louder for the whole rest of the song.

Then we dive into verse two, which has a harder, more pumping beat than the first verse, signaling that we’re now in the meat of the song. He sings in three languages in short succession: “Ich bin in Deutschland aber ich bin so allein / Io sono in Italia maar toch doet het pijn” (I am in Germany but I’m so alone / I am in Italy but I still feel pain), which is another one of my favorite parts of the song. First off, yay for singing in a bit of German! Second, I love the way this section mixes in multiple languages while keeping the rhymes. And third, this is the part where his hardships become clearer. He still feels lonely and helpless despite having the keys unlocked to all of Europe, and while one might assume this is whimsical, the meaning becomes clear when the song ends.

In these two lines, the visuals also have a laugh-out-loud moment. First the screen shows a bunch of German dishes (Ich bin in Deutschland), then a bunch of fully eaten plates (aber ich bin so allein), then Italian dishes (Io sono in Italia), then the word “PAIN” made of fire (maar toch doet het pijn). This is the perfect whimsy that Joost Klein is known for in his music videos, and I’ll talk about that more once I finish the song.

He proceeds to name drop European foods that he doesn’t want because they won’t make him feel better, then comes another hard hitting line: “Zet de radio aan, ik hoor Stromae met Papaoutai” (I turn on the radio, I hear Stromae with Papaoutai). This is a significant moment because it shows that everywhere Joost Klein goes, he’s reminded in some way of his dead parents. “Papaoutai” is a major hit across Europe and is itself about the singer having a dead father.

The second chorus starts with the drums cut out then resumes the usual hectic percussion shortly after, which proves how much love was put into composing this song. Every detail of it was created to be comedic and whimsical with a tinge of unease, so that the emotion slams you in the face at the end. But not before the “Euro-pa-pa-pa” part continues and reaches a climax with a huge amount of repeated “pa”s. Then the backing track says “Welkom in Europa, jonge!” (welcome in Europe, boy) and we get an insanely awesome hardcore section, very characteristic of Joost’s music. All I can do in this part is bop my head like crazy and slap my hands on my legs. The instrumental then repeats the “Euro-pa-pa” melody and Joost sings “Eu-ro-pa” one last time. And then… we get to the ending.

When Joost Klein speaks about how much he misses his parents, the song unravels and its message becomes clear. He says we’re all human at the end of the day and his dad always told him the world has no borders. He admits he misses his parents every day, then says that by participating in Eurovision, he listened to his dad’s words after all. In the studio version he sounds deadpan in this section, but in his live performance he’s clearly full of tears. It’s a live demonstration of how much he misses his parents who died when he was a kid—no matter how old people get, they’ll always miss their loved ones who passed away.

This song really is such a good representation of modern Dutch-language music. His pronunciation of the language is markedly different from all those old-timey Dutch entries. He uses guttural R’s (and at the end of syllables, English-style R’s) instead of the more traditional rolled R’s, he frequently drops N at the end of words, and his lyrics are full of slang and those silly little Dutch diminutives ending in -je. It’s really hard to imagine a song more Eurovision than this. It accurately represents a European country’s music, it’s zany and whimsical yet has a deep message behind it, and it tells international viewers a lot about the participating country.

Watching this song in the arena was a truly unforgettable experience. The staging and visuals felt special because they prove this is more than just another Eurovision song: it’s Joost Klein sharing his sense of humor to the world, adapted for the Eurovision stage. Every second of the song, there is something going on in the screen behind Joost, on the floor under him, and on the five cubic LED monitors above. The Eurovision broadcast only shows a small portion of the full stage experience. I knew from hearing his vocals live that he wouldn’t do so well in the jury, but he didn’t need to win Eurovision this year. He only needed to make the Netherlands proud.

Throughout the song, I could tell he was insanely excited to live his childhood dream and could hardly believe this is real. This especially goes for him singing “welkom in Europa, blijf hier tot ik doodga” in the second chorus: he covered his face and almost tripped over the words, because he couldn’t believe his dreams became real. He truly had the time of his life on stage and I had the time of my life watching him—I’m sure the same goes for everyone else in the arena.

Now about the disqualification… let me start with this question. In what scenario is it acceptable to film someone who insists, over and over again, that they do not want to be filmed? Maybe when it’s necessary to investigate someone for a crime, but not in a fucking song contest! People take their privacy very seriously and the camerawoman completely ignored it despite agreements not to film him, which AVROTROS claims were clearly made. I mean, I don’t personally care that much if people secretly film me, but Joost Klein clearly does. He just finished the three minutes he had been waiting for his entire life and was surely busy processing his emotions, especially because the song ended with a tribute to his parents. Can you blame him for wanting to be left alone after he arrived in the green room? I sure can’t.

Look, I am not denying his response to the camerawoman was inappropriate. He made verbal threats to her and supposedly even broke the camera, but if the latter part is true, I’m surprised neither the EBU statement nor the AVROTROS statement mentioned it. The AVROTROS statement mentioned he did not touch the camerawoman, which makes me doubt he deserved a punishment this severe. When his entire team who supported him through Eurovision and got him on the show were opposed to disqualification, including those who were with him the moment the incident happened, and especially when a TV broadcasting company sent a statement this scalding, that means the EBU did something very wrong. I am not saying he shouldn’t have faced punishment for the verbal threats—he did do something inappropriate. But why couldn’t the punishment have solely gone to him, instead of something that punished his entire delegation and the Dutch broadcaster who paid a fuck ton of money to send this song to Eurovision? And why couldn’t the final have at least used his rehearsal footage?

Some people argue that since he was put under police investigation, there was no option other than disqualifying him. AVROTROS’s insistence that the disqualification was unfair makes me doubt that. It might be true, but even then the disqualification was so easily preventable, if only the EBU had actually listened to their broadcasters’ clearly made agreements. I feel like this year, the EBU only really cared about what Israel’s broadcaster wanted and pretty much ignored the rest; some say it’s because Moroccan Oil, the company that currently sponsors the contest, is from Israel. Not just that, the EBU staff were clearly invasive of the contestants’ privacy and filmed every minute of what they were up to far more than they needed to. It’s good that the EBU has a zero tolerance policy about threats against their employees, but why don’t they have a zero tolerance policy for threats against Eurovision contestants? Why does the EBU treat their contestants like dolls? This isn’t even new to 2024; S10 from the Netherlands said recently that in Turin two years prior, she felt that her privacy was invaded but had assumed that was just a cultural difference.

And because of this incident, we never got to see Joost Klein get an insanely huge televote score and do his country proud. He got second place in the semifinal, 12 points less than Israel, and I firmly believe that’s only because of Israel’s advertising campaign. His performance definitely was not appealing to the juries—we know this for a fact, because the juries would’ve given him 58 points. But the televoters would’ve probably propelled him into at least the top 10, which would be the first top ten finish of a song in Dutch since 1998.

Joost’s criminal charges were dropped in August 2024, three months after the contest, and AVROTROS and the EBU maintained their respective opinions on the disqualification. As of this writing, the Netherlands still hasn’t made a decision on participating in Eurovision 2025, and has until November 1 to decide. I really don’t know what’s next for them in Eurovision, but I hope this song can be remembered as a fan favorite and tribute to what makes the contest so great, not just as the one song that got disqualified.

Woo, I finished the song I’ve been waiting to review this entire time! This has now surpassed “Tout l’univers” (2021) as my longest Eurovision review, which surpassed “Guildo hat euch lieb” (1998), which surpassed “It’s Just a Game” (1973), which surpassed “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” (1965), the oldest Eurovision song that I truly love. I wasn’t expecting this review to be almost three thousand words long, but I guess I just had that much to say!

Semifinal 2 thoughts:

Let me just say, it still feels unreal that I was actually in the arena during this live show!!!!! All the memories are flooding back. It was one of the best times of my entire life to be in the arena during semifinal 2, especially in such a good seat right in the front. It was mind-blowing to have my entire field of vision be the Eurovision Song Contest. I can’t help but smile my way through the whole show, because I was actually there. If you’re a Eurovision fan and can afford going to whichever arena the contest is going to next, then for the love of all things holy, DO IT! And if you can afford it, get tickets to an actual live show. I completely disagree with the advice spread around Reddit that the rehearsals are just as good as the real thing.

The first interval act is a singalong rehash of three Eurovision winners: “My Number One” (2005), “Take Me to Your Heaven” (1999), and “Every Way That I Can” (2003), whose singers are each able to command the stage on their own. I’m normally not a fan of rehash interval acts, but singing along to the lyrics on screen is loads of fun. The one part I don’t get is why Petra and Malin pretend they can’t sing at the start. I love both of them but they sang in an exaggerated wrong way that sounds nothing like people who can’t sing.

I completely forgot about that “best of almost Eurovision” skit, it’s actually really cool. Unlike most Eurovision history skits, it actually teaches something new to people who have seen every prior Eurovision contest, like me. I’m guessing that skit was Edward af Sillén’s doing because I know he’s a massive Eurovision nerd. There are too many great host lines for me to quote, so I’ll just say that Malin saying “what it all comes down to is sharing the moment, building bridges, coming together, and uniting by music”, I snickered. Such a sneaky reference to past slogans! The scene amidst the songs where Petra and Malin speak as many languages as they know made me smile too, both in the arena and in the rewatch.

And then comes this year’s entry in the “satirical song sung by Petra and written by Edward” series, “We Just Love Eurovision Too Much”. This time she’s joined by Charlotte Perrelli and Sarah Dawn Finer. I still love the sense of humor of these songs, how could I ever not? Amidst the song came a rehash of “Cha Cha Cha”, and unsurprisingly I sang along like crazy in the arena. My mom, who watched the contest with her German friends, said she thought of me when that part came on. The German commentator was wowed by that act too; he said it was better than anything from Broadway.

Finally for the qualifier reveals… those are always the part of Eurovision where my nerves are tensest, so you can imagine how hard I screamed at all of them in the arena. I was absolutely shocked when Latvia was the first qualifier, and I’m still not sure if it makes sense or not that they made it. But I’m joyed for Latvian fans since they hadn’t qualified in eight years. The Netherlands is an unsurprising qualifier; according to Thorsten Schorn, the Dutch commentators in the neighboring booth cheered “Joost Klein Europapa”. He also had said at the end of the song that he and the Dutch commentators just exchanged a wink. Georgia as the ninth qualifier was another surprise, but again it’s good that they ended their non-qualifying streak. I still remember in the arena, I knew in my heart Armenia would be the tenth qualifier and I’m happy I was right. If it was anyone else I’d have been pissed off.

Oh, and at the end comes a rare Eurovision closing act: a reprise of “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley” by Herreys, on the 40th anniversary of their win. Nice way to close the semifinal on a lighthearted note and represent Swedish-language music.

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See you next time as I try my best to focus on the positives of Eurovision 2024, including a winner that for once I’m really happy with.

>> 2024 (Final): The Year of Native-Language Bangers