Author Archives: cookiefonster

Cookie Fonster Re-Reviews Eurovision 1956: Let’s Begin Round Two!

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< Intro Post | 1956 Review | 1957 Review >

Introduction

OK, so… I just got fired from my job shortly before my one-year anniversary. And while I apply for new ones, I need to find something to do during the cracks in the day. Since I’m done with all the 2025 national final reviews I wanted to write, I’ll do what my heart wants and restart my Eurovision blog post series! And do other projects when I need a break from this, like my large number site. The main change in round 2 of my Eurovision blog is: this time I will rank all the songs per year. I wasn’t up for the task of ranking all the songs in round 1, because I was getting to know most of these songs for the first time, but now I’m ready to rank.

In case you aren’t aware of how Eurovision came to be: shortly after they were founded in 1950, the European Broadcasting Union wanted to make a collaborative telvision program between multiple countries. All the European countries speak different languages, but the one language they all can understand is music. The EBU took inspiration from Italy’s annual Sanremo Music Festival, which began in 1951 and was first broadcast on television in 1955, and adapted its format into a competition between multiple countries. Italy sent the winner and runner-up of the Sanremo Festival to Eurovision this year.

Now to recap the basic facts about this contest: seven countries participated—the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Italy—and each of them sent not one, but two songs. Some countries sent the same artist singing two songs, others sent two different singers. Switzerland was given the duty of hosting in their Italian-speaking city Lugano, and most people believe that was because they’re closest to the center of the competing nations. In the early years, the show was hosted in the host city’s language, so the contest was presented entirely in Italian by the TV host Lohengrin Filipello. Luckily, his diction in Italian is very clear and easy to understand for those familiar with at least one Romance language, as is the case for me with French.

Switzerland sent Lys Assia to sing two songs, one in German and one in French, and her francophone song “Refrain” won the contest. Some people suspect that the only reason Switzerland won was because back then there was no rule against voting for your own country, and Switzerland had the extra boost of Luxembourg hiring Swiss citizens as their jurors. But this is nothing more than a theory, because the voting results of 1956 are lost to the sands of time. Plus, the huge applause at the end of “Refrain” is evidence against this theory. Also lost to time is the video footage of that year (except for Lys Assia’s winner reprise), and apparently even one of the interval acts. Luckily, we have audio footage of all 14 competing songs, which I’ll start reviewing right now!

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Festival da Canção 2025: The Angry Rock Song Should’ve Won

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Introduction

Now comes the third and last national final for me to review this year: Festival da Canção 2025, a three-week competition to determine which song will represent Portugal in Eurovision 2025. Festival da Canção, FdC for short, is one of the oldest Eurovision national finals, having begun in 1964. It’s as big of a deal to the Portuguese as the Sanremo Festival is to the Italians, or Melodifestivalen to the Swedes. I won’t go into the full history of FdC here, but just know that even though it’s a long-running tradition in Portugal, after years of sending songs that no one really cared about, the contest was completely reinvented in 2017, and that’s how FdC as we know it today began.

This national selection consists of two semifinals (February 22, March 1) and a final on March 8. The semifinals consist of ten songs each, then six from each make it to the grand final. This means I have 20 songs in total to review: 19 fully in Portuguese, and just one in English.

I didn’t watch the semifinals live and instead watched them starting on March 2, right after I finished my review of the German national final. I wanted to start watch the final live, but I was so absolutely amazed at the song that won Melodifestivalen that I couldn’t watch FdC right afterwards, plus I had other shit to do. So instead, I started watching the final on a day I was sick, March 11, then finished it on another sick day three days later.

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Eurovision Side Post: Changes to My List of Winners (early 2025 edition)

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Introduction

When I review Eurovision 2025, probably a few weeks to a month after the contest ends, I’ll have quite a few changes to my list of winners per year. But instead of going through the changes one by one in my 2025 review, I’ll discuss them now in a fun little side post. Then when I release my review of 2025, I’ll link to this post near the end.

Starting about five months ago, I’ve been putting Eurovision songs (among others) into my Spotify playlist, which I mostly put on while I’m driving, because when I’m on the computer, I prefer deciding on my own what music to put on. Thanks to this playlist, there are some Eurovision songs I’ve started to love more and more (e.g. “Disco Tango” from 1979, “No No Never” from 2006, “Með hækkandi sól” from 2022), and others that I gradually became tired of (e.g. “SloMo” from 2022, “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” from 2024). You’ll find more examples from both categories throughout this post. There’s also a few that I have always loved and will never stop loving the fuck out of (e.g. “La dolce vita” from 1989, “Alcohol Is Free” from 2013, “Europapa” from 2024).

My previous list of winners per year can be found near the end of my 2024 review, Ctrl-F “Who’s my favorite?”. I’ll discuss each of the winners I retconned, then present the updated list.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Chefsache ESC 2025: German-Language Music Does Exist!

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Introduction

Now the time has come for me to review the German national final for Eurovision 2025. It’s titled Chefsache ESC 2025: Wer singt für Deutschland? (Top Priority ESC 2025: Who will sing for Germany?) and it’s organized by none other than Stefan Raab, a German TV host and musician who came back to the screen in 2024 after seven years working only behind the stage. Among Eurovision fans, he’s most famous for organizing the German selection in 2010 which led to their second victory. He has a long history in Eurovision but hadn’t been involved in the contest since 2012. Most of Germany’s entries since then have been boring as hell and got bad results, so the more years passed, the more fans wanted Stefan Raab back in Eurovision. He’s back to Eurovision at long last and he says at every opportunity that his goal is for his country to win Eurovision.

Several of Stefan Raab’s decisions in this show have been questioned among fans. For one thing, the show consists of two heats, a semifinal, and a final, but in the heats the contestants didn’t sing their competing songs. Instead, they all sang covers of other popular songs or their older songs, and the juries selected who should make it to the final based on those performances. Additionally, the jury consists of only four people per show: Stefan Raab himself, his TV co-host Elton who is a music lover but doesn’t make music himself, the German singer Yvonne Catterfeld, and a different fourth jury member each show. The juries eliminate contestants in the heats and semifinal, and in the final, only the televoters decide who wins. No wait, that was changed a few days before the final, so that the juries now eliminate further down to five last songs. That’s pretty annoying because I had mentally prepared myself for a fully televote final.

I tried watching the heats live (February 14 and 15), but the covers weren’t very interesting to me, mostly just renditions of American and British pop songs. I think this was an idea that Stefan Raab insisted on, and the rest of his team didn’t question him at all because they trust every single idea he has. I was going to watch the semifinal live the next Saturday (February 22), but unfortunately that day I had to put down one of my cats. So instead, I watched the semifinal the day after—a good way to take my mind off the heartbreak of losing a pet.

The shows were all hosted by a familiar name to German Eurovision fans: Barbara Schöneberger, who hosted most of the German national finals of the past decade and seems to be the only holdover from the slop pop fests that were the last few German selections. She’s a TV and radio host from Munich, and my mom happens to be a fan of hers because of her observant humor and ability to improvise.

In this post, I won’t review the covers from the heats, nor will I split the songs between non-qualifiers and qualifiers like I did in my Supernova review. Instead, I’ll review the fourteen competing songs in their order from the semifinal, then discuss the show as a whole.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Supernova 2025: An Ethnic Choir Won My Heart

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Introduction

It’s now time for me to review my first national final of the year! I’m not going to watch all of the national selections, oh no, nowhere close. But there’s a few I have planned to watch (see this post) and Latvia’s is one of them! I don’t know much about the prior Latvian selections, but I do know that this one has a higher than usual portion of songs in Latvian (5 out of 20 fully in Latvian,* 2 in a mix of English and Latvian), which is really cool because I know very little about the language and look forward to getting more acquainted with it. I also know that Latvia got a big confidence boost in Eurovision after Dons brought them to the grand final for the first time since 2016, which is why I chose to watch this selection.

Supernova 2025 was originally going to have 20 songs compete, but “Monster” by Grēta was withdrawn because the singer was sick. The semifinal took place on February 1, and ten songs qualified to the grand final on February 8. I’m not just going to review the songs, but I’ll also rank them with a list at the end! I plan to do this for every Eurovision-related blog post I do from here on out.

Spoiler alert: there’s one song from the selection that I immediately fell in love with the moment I first heard it. I have been listening to that song over and over again for the entire past week.

* OK, technically “Ramtai” has a tiny bit of English.

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My plans for pre-show posts on Eurovision 2025

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In case you guys didn’t know, I will be going to Basel for Eurovision 2025! I’ve already pre-registered for tickets this year, so let’s hope I’m able to get some. Since this is my third time following Eurovision live, my plan was to do something different this year and not spoil myself on any of the songs. But upon further consideration, I’ve decided I will watch a small handful of national finals this Eurovision season, and write blog posts about three of them. This will inevitably mean I will spoil myself on four entries for 2025, and leave myself unspoiled on the other 34.

The first national final I’ll review is Latvia’s Supernova 2025 (semifinal February 1, final Feb 8). The 20 songs for this selection are already out and I’ve heard so many good things them that I figured, why not watch the show live? Dons brought Latvia to the grand final for the first time since 2016, which seemed to give them a big confidence boost for next Eurovision. Their selection has seven songs in Latvian, which is pretty awesome because the last few selections only had one or two each. It’ll be a good way to get acquainted with a language I know very little about.

The second selection for me to review is the big one: Chefsache ESC 2025: Wer singt für Deutschland? Stefan Raab, the man who organized Germany’s selection in 2010 which led Lena to win Eurovision, is back from a nine-year retirement from the TV screen and is intent on giving Germany their third Eurovision victory. I’m absolutely stoked to see what he has cooked up and excited to describe what the national final was like for those who don’t speak German. The heats are on February 14 and 15, the semifinal is on Feb 22, and the final is on March 1.

And the third national final that I’ll review is Portugal’s Festival da Canção (semifinals Feb 22 and Mar 1, final Mar 8). The reason I plan to watch that one is simple: because I trust Portugal. I also plan on watching the final of Sweden’s Melodifestivalen 2025 on March 8, but I don’t plan to write a blog post about it.

I’ve started to really miss writing Eurovision reviews since I finished reviewing the 2024 contest, so these blog posts will be a nice way to continue writing music reviews. Hopefully I can make them interesting even for those who didn’t watch the selections.

Bonus Eurovision Post: My least favorite entry from each country 1956 to 2024

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Introduction

I’ve wanted to do this post for quite a while after finishing my 2024 review, and it finally occurrent to me to do so on a Tuesday where I woke up much too early. Please enjoy this list of the most horrific song from every country in Eurovision! Most countries have sent at least one song that I hate so much, listening to them makes me want to murder someone. OK, maybe not that far, but punch a wall, throw my computer out the window, destructive stuff like that. I don’t know why these songs make me so angry to listen to, but they do. Some countries have sent multiple rage-inducing entries, so it’ll be a real challenge to find the worst entry from some of them. This post also serves as an excuse to tear into songs which I previously didn’t give the scalding rant they deserved. I won’t include Morocco because they only sent one entry, or Serbia + Montenegro because they only sent two.

See also my two posts about the best song per Eurovision country: 1956-1998, and 1999-2024 (plus overall).

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Bonus Eurovision Post: My favorite entry from each country 1999 to 2024 (and overall)

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Introduction

Ah, you thought I was done writing blog posts about Eurovision, didn’t you? Well, not quite—I’ve been meaning to make a follow-up to this post which listed my favorite entry of each country in 1956 to 1998. And now I am doing this!

One thing that’s helped me determine my favorite of each country is that I put together a Spotify playlist for the first time about a week ago. The way I react to a song coming up on my playlist helps me learn how much my heart loves it, as does whether I want to put it on my playlist to begin with. The playlist has some Eurovision songs, some others by Eurovision artists, some by bands I’ve grown up with my whole life, and quite a few songs that family or friends introduced me to.

My all-time favorite entry from a country will be colored green. My favorite from only 1999 onwards is cyan, and my favorite only from 1956-1998 is red (if it’s different from what I had initially chosen). I will include all countries that have ever participated in Eurovision in this list, except Morocco because they’ve only sent one entry, and Yugoslavia because they broke up before 1999. Once again, I’ll get some help from the recap videos by SchlagerLucas, who I actually became friends with thanks to meeting him in Malmö.

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Cookie Fonster’s Eurovision Blog Conclusion Post

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Yesterday I finished reviewing the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 (semifinals, final), the most recent contest as of this writing, which means I’ve finally finished my project of reviewing every single Eurovision song, along with the production of every contest. As always, it feels so goddamn great to finish a project. I’m especially pleased with the speed at which I finished this project: it took me only a year and five months in total! And I didn’t go on any ultra-long breaks; the longest was between my 1985 and 1986 reviews, because I went on a trip to Germany and then made a video about part of the trip.

I had so much fun making all these blog posts and I’m really glad I got an audience of commenters here, unlike so many of my prior blog projects. I’m especially flattered I inspired a few other people to write their own Eurovision blogs. I love reading people’s reviews of prior Eurovision years and I’ll be real, I can never get enough of them. They make for such great reading material, whether I’m bored out of my mind or just want to chill out and read people be right about some songs and completely wrong about others. And especially when people defend a song that I never gave much thought.

In this post I’ll list some overall records throughout my Eurovision journey, then list 20 songs that I consider to be hidden gems, and finally give some shoutouts to my commenters.

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Cookie Fonster Comes to Terms with Eurovision 2024 (Final): The Year of Native-Language Bangers

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Intro Post

< 2024 Semifinals | 2024 Final | 2025 Semifinals >

This is it, everyone—the grand finale of my Eurovision blog post series. Till May 2025 anyway, but that’s a matter for another time. I hope you enjoy reading this post, but I’m not done just yet—I still have a few bonus posts to write!

Introduction

“It’s been quite an eventful Eurovision this year, but hopefully tonight, we’ll bring you the usual beauty, mayhem, madness, and of course male nudity.” Never change, Graham Norton. Never change.

After Joost Klein from the Netherlands got disqualified and the protests against Israel’s participation continued, the final of Eurovision 2024 felt like it could collapse any minute. In the dress rehearsals, some of the contestants (like Ireland’s Bambie Thug) refused to show up, others (like Norway’s Gåte) almost withdrew from the contest, and Slimane from France paused amidst his song to give a speech pleading for peace. This was not a normal Eurovision year at all, but let me tell you… I flew across the ocean to Malmö for Eurovision, so as salty as I was, I did not let the Eurovision drama or my personal drama dent my excitement. I went to a bar in Malmö to watch the grand final with a few friends and really did have a great time there. It was also nice to watch it in the warm indoors, since I had underestimated how much warm clothing I needed to pack.

We should all be very fortunate that this year had such talented hosts to keep fans’ spirits afloat: the queen of Eurovision hosts Petra Mede, and the Swedish-Canadian actress Malin Åkerman. It was the first time a pair of women hosted Eurovision, and the third time Petra was one of the hosts. Another thing that belies this year’s hectic drama are the postcards, which are simplistic in contrast to 2023: they show a map of where each country is, clips from two of each country’s prior Eurovision songs, footage of each participant in their country filmed on cell phones, and finally a dramatized shot of the artist. I feel like this is a very SVT style of doing postcards, since they love their efficiency and minimalism.

In spite of all the protests, Israel’s controversial entry landed fifth place thanks to televoters, and fans don’t agree on how it managed that. France achieved an excellent fourth place with a ballad by a man who sings his heart out, Ukraine landed third place singing in the language they used to be afraid to sing in, then the top two are both particularly special songs. The massive fan favorite “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” earned Croatia their best result in history, a second place. Switzerland won for the first time since 1988 with “The Code”, sung by Nemo Mettler, the first non-binary artist to win Eurovision. In this post, you better get ready for me defending Switzerland’s victory, though I would’ve been equally happy with Croatia taking the prize.

The grand final starts with Sweden’s twice Eurovision contestant Björn Hwifs… sorry, I mean Björn Skifs. Damn sj-sound, I’m still not over how many different spellings it has. Anyway, he performs his famous cover of “Hooked on a Feeling” to open up the contest, then comes the flag parade set to a medley of Swedish international hits in English. It has a more restrained feeling than the flag parade of the last two years, perhaps due to the nasty drama of this year, or perhaps because the contestants, audience, and production crew were all unusually cautious this year.

I should mention that as was the case in 2010 and 2011, viewers were allowed to vote since the first song started. Given Israel’s voting campaign I’m not sure it was a good idea this year, but I’ll get to that later. For now, let’s begin this unusually controversial grand final.

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