Category Archives: Eurovision (Other Posts)

Progress on updating my Homestuck posts, continued

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The latest shitstorm of drama involving Andrew Hussie (not gonna go into it here) has made me realize, I still need to fix a bunch of shit in my old Homestuck posts and these articles aren’t going to fix themselves. So I will continue from this earlier post and write a progress log, mostly just for myself.

By the way, Andrew Hussie is a complete and utter asshole. I knew this already, since 2020 if not earlier, but it still shocks me how much of a dick he is to fans. Especially the ones who made it possible to read his comic after the website fucking broke!

Changelog:

  • August 12, 2025: Updated the images for posts 34 to 36. I’m making progress, people.
  • August 13, 2025: Updated posts 37 to 38. I should say the pesterlog in part 37 where Tavros reveals he killed Jade’s grandpa is one of my favorite scenes in Homestuck because it’s peak cringe comedy and Jade handles the whole thing like a champ. Especially the part where Tavros starts fucking hitting on her. Now with all that said, developing feelings for someone you met online after just a day is a real thing that happens. That doesn’t make Tavros’s confession any less embarrassing.
  • August 14, 2025: Updated posts 39 to 40. “The Miracle of a New Beginning” is such a banger post title.
  • August 15, 2025: Updated posts 41 to 43. Karkat imagining Jade’s selfcest is just the most Karkat thing, isn’t it?
  • August 16, 2025: Updated post 44. Fuck, it’s annoying to have to keep fixing the GIFs.
  • August 18, 2025: Updated posts 45 to 46. In part 45 (released a few days before Act 7) you can see me holding out hope for the final update being something it simply wasn’t. Since then, I’ve come around on Act 7. And part 46 is a tipping point for my blog, I feel. My analysis of John and Vriska’s conversation was more intensive and earnest than any till this point. I was quite self aware with the line, “I’ll probably look back on THESE posts and think they could’ve been a lot better, but for now, as far as I’m concerned they are supreme masterpieces that I am totally in love with.”
  • August 20, 2025: Updated posts 47 to 48. Holy shit, this is tedious.
  • August 22, 2025: Updated posts 49 to 50. “Hey, didn’t this comic have something to do with a clown killing people? I really can’t remember with all of John’s gushing about Liv Tyler and how gorgeous she is.” is a banger quote.
  • September 5, 2025: Updated posts 51 to 53. Now I’ve begun with the Doc Scratch intermission, my favorite part of Homestuck! Some long-ass posts where I need to fix the images coming right up.
  • September 7, 2025: Updated posts 54 to 55. These are some of my best Homestuck posts before the two-year hiatus, even though I wrote them when I was 17.
  • September 8, 2025: Updated posts 56 to 58. Doc Scratch’s ancestor exposition (in part 58) is one of my favorite parts of Homestuck to reread, whereas Mindfang’s exposition is one of my least favorite parts to reread.
  • September 9, 2025: Updated post 59, the Cascade post. That was a real pain in the ass, but hey, I got to rewatch Cascade for fun. I didn’t need to screenshot the flash all over again, I just once more used the readmspa.org storyboard.
  • September 15, 2025: Updated posts 60 to 61. Fuck, Act 6 Act 1 is fucking boring and I wrote the most pointless walls of text about it. You know how Caliborn insists Dirk is the only good alpha kid? I’m sort of that way with Roxy now. She’s fucking awesome.

Cookie Fonster Picks Apart Eurovision 1971 Again: A Duet That Slowly Won Me Over

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Intro Post

< 1970 Review | 1971 Review | 1972 Review >

Introduction

There are some Eurovision years I’m passionate about and am looking forward to reviewing again. But before I reach them, I need to get through some of the contest’s dullest years, such as Eurovision 1971. I remember it not being a terrible year, just one with no songs I’m passionate about. This year was the first of seven to be hosted in Ireland; it took place at the Gaitey Theatre and was hosted by Bernadette Ní Ghallchóir. This production was a huge undertaking for RTÉ at the time, but the Irish have always known how to put on a good Eurovision show.

All the countries that skipped 1969 or 1970—Austria, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden—returned this year, and the island country of Malta made their debut, though they weren’t successful in their first few years. This made for a total of 18 participating countries. The winner was Monaco for the first and only time, then in second place came Spain and Germany in third. The newcomer Malta landed at the bottom both this year and the next year, which discouraged them from further participation for the next two decades.

I’ll paste my description of the voting system from round 1: This contest completely redid the voting system, presumably to appease the countries that were mad about the four-way tie two years ago. This time, every country had a pair of jury members (older and younger than 25 years respectively), who each gave songs 1 to 5 points, and the points were all added up so that every country got no less than 34 points. I think that’s a cumbersome system with the obvious hole that a country could vote others low so that they’d comparatively score higher, but somehow it was in place for three years in a row. Plus, rating anything numerically is dumb because number ratings mean different things to different people. I’m also not a fan of this voting system because it means far fewer juries decide how many points each song gets, but I get why it was done: to make the voting more transparent and assuage the unhappy countries. It was temporary anyway.

The show opens with an opening film of a man riding a horse-drawn carriage through the streets of Ireland and welcoming the guests to the Gaitey Theatre. It’s a tiny venue with a capacity of only 1145 seats, which I suppose was the best Ireland had at the time. Then the presenter introduces the show in Irish, French, and English, and the songs kick off. I love the pattern of the hosts introducing the show in Irish each time the show came to Ireland, and I hope it continues should Ireland win again. When speaking English, Bernadette sounded like she was trying to hide her Irish accent, but it slipped through a fair amount anyway. This year had postcards similar to last year: once more tours of each participating country. This time, the producers didn’t cheat and film four different postcards in Paris.

Last time I said I watched the contest with Austrian commentary, but it seems in retrospect it was a mix of Austrian and German. The YouTube upload I used this time is listed as having entirely German commentary, and I’ll trust that.

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Cookie Fonster Dives Back into Eurovision 1970: The Year with Female Terry Wogan

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Intro Post

< 1969 Review | 1970 Review | 1971 Review >

Introduction

After Lenny Kuhr won Eurovision 1969 in a completely deserved landslide, her home country of the Netherlands hosted Eurovision 1970 in its capital city of Amsterdam… wait, why are there only twelve countries? Were some of them mad about something that happened last Eurovision? Oh right, there were four winners that year due to a tie, and several countries were so pissed about the result that they dropped out of the next contest. Norway, Sweden, and Finland up north all dropped out, Austria had originally planned to return in 1970 but joined the Nordic boycott, and Portugal skipped too but still organized Festival da Canção that year. Clearly the Portuguese just loved that annual festival too much.

Out of the four winners of 1969, one of them had to be chosen to host the show. Spain and the UK, as the hosts of the last two years, were out of the running, so a random draw was held between France and the Netherlands. This meant that the Dutch broadcaster NOS put on the show this year, which conveniently matches my headcanon that Lenny Kuhr is the rightful winner of 1969.

The opening film starts with a series of graphics captions with text welcoming the audience to Eurovision 1970 in Dutch, English, and French. It’s set to some eccentric dissonant music, which I feel is more of what the 1969 interval act should have been, because it’s weird and surreal but still sounds like music, then stops being dissonant as it progresses. We get a view out of a plane, some exploration of canals and cyclists and all that fun Dutch stuff. I have a soft spot for those old touristy opening films, they just make me feel good.

After the opening act concludes, the presenter Willy Dobbe gives an introduction so absurdly short (just saying “welcome to Eurovision 1970 in Amsterdam” in French, English, and Dutch) that it almost feels a little rude, but maybe that’s just my perception. Immediately after her introduction begins, we get the postcard for the first entry. Since this contest had only 12 countries participating, to fill the time we get little opening films called postcards to introduce each singer. Eurovision in the 1970’s and early 80’s would feature postcards on and off, then every year from 1984 onwards used those things in many different formats. I love Eurovision postcards and even once did a blog post ranking them all up to 2024.

I always thought this contest was only archived with Irish commentary, but the Dutch commentary is on YouTube as well. I’m still watching with Irish commentary though, because I remember the RTÉ commentator Valerie McGovern being absolutely hilarious, and because I don’t speak Dutch. She is the “female Terry Wogan” referred to in this post’s title. It’s a shame this is the only year she ever commentated Eurovision, but she was lucky to have commentated when her country won. While 1968 and 1969 are fully available in color, the archived broadcast of this year has a few sections in grayscale. I wonder if the majority of this broadcast being in color would make the grayscale portions easier to colorize?

Oh yeah, this year is the first of seven times Ireland won Eurovision. They won with 32 points, the UK came second with 26, and Germany third with 12 points—all three were women singing cutesy upbeat songs. There was one zero-pointer, Luxembourg with a song I remember nothing about.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Investigates Eurovision 1969: The Year That Almost Killed the Contest

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Intro Post

< 1968 Review | 1969 Review | 1970 Review >

Introduction

Eurovision 1969 (the year of my mom’s birth) was the most controversial year up to this point, even before the show began. It’s not a controversial year to fans today, unlike Rome 1991 which is still hotly debated among modern fans, but at the time it was very much controversial. There are two big reasons for the controversy: first, that it was hosted in Spain which was at the time a dictatorship ruled by Francisco Franco. Second, the voting sequence had four countries tied for first place, and since there was no tiebreaker rule, the producers decided to make all of them the winner. Many countries were not happy with this decision.

When I did round 1 of my Eurovision blog, I said this was the first Eurovision in a city I’ve been to: Madrid, which is a beautiful city and lots of fun to explore. But now, the oldest Eurovision in a city I’ve been to is Copenhagen 1964. The count of Eurovisions hosted in cities I’ve visited was “anywhere from four to eight” last time, but now that number has increased by eight because I went to Gothenburg (1 contest), Malmö (3), and Copenhagen (3) in 2024, and Basel (1) in 2025. Now the number of Eurovisions where I have visited the host city is anywhere from twelve to sixteen. Sixteen is also the number of competing countries this year, because Austria skipped out. Ostensibly they couldn’t find a representative, but most people believed the real reason was as a protest against Francisco Franco.

Now the contest having four winners is ridiculous for two reasons. First because the EBU should have had a tiebreaker rule, or at least thought of one on the spot. Second because there was one song clearly far better than everything else that should have won outright: “De troubadour” from the Netherlands. The other three winners (Spain, the UK, and France) I remember being likable songs, but not half as good as the Netherlands. There were no nul-pointers this year: Norway landed at the bottom with one point.

The show opens with “Te Deum” on the organ set to a metal sculpture onstage by Amadeo Gabino, then a kickass promotional poster by Salvador Dalí set to an orchestral arrangement of “La la la”. Why did Eurovision have to abolish the orchestral reprises of last year’s winner early on? They were so cool and fun! Then the presenter Laurita Valenzuela comes in to do the show mostly in Spanish. Her diction in Spanish is very clear and quite easy to understand, even with my limited level of Spanish, and she’s a rare presenter who’s more comfortable speaking in French than English. After the intro in Spanish, French, and English, she said “guten Abend” so I thought she was going to give a speech in German, but she just said “good evening” in all the remaining languages.

As with last time, I’ll watch this with Spanish commentary, done by longtime commentator José Luis Uribarri. He last commentated for Spain in 2010 and died two years later.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Scrutinizes Eurovision 1968: The Result That Shocked Europe

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Intro Post

< 1967 Review | 1968 Review | 1969 Review >

This is going to be my last Eurovision blog post before I leave for my trip to Eurovision 2025! When I get home, my plan is to make not just a blog post, but a full-fledged video about how the trip went, then write a pair of blog posts reviewing each song in the contest.

Introduction

Though the United Kingdom had hosted Eurovision twice already, 1968 was their first opportunity to host right after winning, and they were clearly intent on pulling off another win. Eurovision 1968 was hosted in the Royal Albert Hall in London, a concert hall opened in 1871 with a seating capacity of over 5000. It’s an impressively sized audience for its time and there are multiple floors of seats, as you can see in the broadcast. I bet it must have been an unforgettable experience in the arena! The show had the same presenter as the last two British contests, Katie Boyle, and it’s most notable as the first Eurovision contest to be broadcast in color. This means we’ll finally get to see what horrific color choices some contestants have been making. And hopefully a few nice outfits too.

The contest featured the same 17 countries as last year: all the previous participants over the years but no Denmark. The voting system is the same as last year too: each county has ten jurors who vote for one country each, but never their own. In third place came France with a returning winner, in second came the UK with the legendary Cliff Richard, and beating him by one point we have Massiel from Spain. This is the first year where Spain won the contest and the only year where they were the only winner, which means that of the countries that have already won, Spain hasn’t won in the longest. The result came as a shock to Eurovision viewers, even more to Cliff Richard himself, and it led to a bunch of conspiracy theories.

The show begins with an upbeat orchestral reprise of last year’s winner “Puppet on a String”, and as usual I enjoy the arrangement a lot. Then enters Katie Boyle to introduce the show in her usual British fashion, and after just five minutes the songs begin.

The BBC broadcast the contest without commentary this year, but unfortunately we don’t have a copy of the uncommentated broadcast. On YouTube, I could find full commentary from Norway and Sweden in color, Spain in grayscale, and a few snippets of France’s commentary in color. Last time I watched it with Norwegian commentary, so this time I’ll watch with the other commentary viewable in color, which is from Sweden and done by Christina Hansegård. I wonder how much of it I’ll understand? I picked up on a decent amount of the language throughout the middle third of 2024, partly due to my Eurovision trip that year. I think I caught her saying that the contest will be broadcast in color in seven countries, among them Sweden? See, I’m fairly good. The trick is a little something called context clues.

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Cookie Fonster Uncovers Eurovision 1967 Again: The Year Where the Host Spoke Russian

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Intro Post

< 1966 Review | 1967 Review | 1968 Review >

Only ten days left till I go to Basel for Eurovision 2025! The trip is pretty much all I can think about right now. I’ll try to get at least one more round 2 review done before I leave.

Introduction

The host didn’t do the whole show in Russian of course—she spoke other languages too. I’ll get to that in a moment.

After Udo Jürgens gave Austria their first victory, Eurovision 1967 came to Vienna in the Großer Festsaal der Wiener Hofburg, a hall in the palace that was once the summer residence of the Habsburg dynasty, and is now the residency of the president of Austria. Austria went all out showcasing their culture in the show, as much as they could in a grayscale broadcast. We begin with the theme song “Te Deum” arranged in the style of a Johann Strauss waltz, then a piece composed by Strauss himself. Following that, Udo Jürgens conducts an orchestral arrangement of “Merci, Chérie”, and I love how happy he looks.

The contest featured a lineup of seventeen countries, one less than the last year because Denmark began an eleven-year break from Eurovision. That’s because the director of TV entertainment in their broadcaster thought Eurovision was a waste of money, sadly. The voting system was changed back to how it was from 1957 to 1961: each country’s jury gets ten votes to distribute across various countries. The top three were all power players of 20th century Eurovision: France went back to their usual high results with a third place, Ireland scored their first ever second place, and the UK won for the first time with a Europe-wide hit, “Puppet on a String”. The only nul-pointer this year was Switzerland, and they deserved it because their song is fucking awful.

As a presenter, we have the Austrian actress Erica Vaal, and she was pretty awesome. She opened the show with a friendly yet professional speech in German, which was neither too long nor too short. She continued with the same speech in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. I give hats off to her for that speech, especially because of the Russian part because she didn’t need to do so but did it anyway, and made viewers in the Soviet Union feel welcome as a result. Then she finished with a sweet addendum: “Ladies and gentlemen of Sweden, Netherland, Norway, Finland, Portugal, and Yugoslavia: I would have also liked to welcome you in your native tongue, but time was too short for me to learn them. But should there be another contest in the near future in Vienna, I shall do my best to also please you.” Also, her voice is quite pleasant to listen to—I went off in my last post about how much I love the sound of deep female voices, and we get even more of that here. Once she finishes her multilingual speech, the pleasantries are done and the songs begin.

I can only find two countries’ commentary on Eurovision 1967 on YouTube: the Austrian commentary and the French commentary. I’ll watch with Emil Kollpacher’s Austrian commentary once again, because I can understand the host and don’t need to hear her being talked over. Also, here’s a good point to promote my German-language commentary spreadsheet! It contains all the Eurovision commentary from the DACH countries that I could possibly find, and I’ll be sure to update it after Eurovision 2025.

I already ranked this year a few months ago when deciding what song to 8-bit cover for 1967, so the rankings for this post should be easy. I don’t expect them to change much.

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Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966: The First Woman Not to Wear a Dress

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Intro Post

< 1965 Review | 1966 Review | 1967 Review >

Introduction

My original review of 1966 was titled “Cookie Fonster Revisits Eurovision 1966”, which wasn’t entirely accurate because I was watching the year for the first time. Now that I am watching it for the second time, the old title is accurate, hence the title “Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966”.

We’re back in Luxembourg City, once again in the tiny Villa Louvigny, but this time the place is decorated much better. There’s a cute spiral staircase to the right of the stage and an elaborate chandelier behind the stage that looks nice in black and white. The presenter is different too: this time, her name is Josiane Shen, and she seemed to have a slightly bigger career than the last Luxembourgish host.

The lineup of countries was exactly the same as 1965, so once again we have 18 participant countries. Only two got zero points, and both are surprising ones: Monaco and Italy. In third place came a beautiful guitar tune from Norway, in second came a fun but bizarro jazzy waltz from Sweden, and in first place came Austria with an Udo Jürgens ballad. For him, third time was the charm! I should also mention that this was the first year where the EBU enforced a language rule, so it’s rather amusing that the winner had a few phrases in a different language thrown in.

I can’t find British commentary for this year, so I’ll watch with French commentary. François Deguelt commentated for France this year—he’s the singer of the wonderful “Ce soir-là”. He said at the start that he had to fill in for Pierre Tchernia who was unavailable and that he hoped he could comment the show in the same fashion.

I absolutely love the orchestral reprise of “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” at the start of the show and I’m pissed that rearranging the winner at the start of the show wasn’t done every year. Josiane gives us a short, no-nonsense introduction, then the first song begins.

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Cookie Fonster Reevaluates Eurovision 1965: The Year That Gave Me a Headache

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Intro Post

< 1964 Review | 1965 Review | 1966 Review >

Introduction

Since Gigliola Cinquetti won 1964 with her smash hit “Non ho l’età”, the next destination for Eurovision was Italy, who hosted the 1965 contest in the concert hall of their broadcaster RAI, located in Naples. After having seen the catastrophically bad hosting of Eurovision 1991, it gives me whiplash to see RAI put on a professional (if not particularly inspired) show with a host who’s fluent in three languages. Renata Mauro did most of the show in Italian, but as with the Danish host last year, she also gave a speech in French and English at the start, and had no trouble using those two languages in the voting. Her French sounds fluent with only a slight Italian accent, and her English is a surprisingly good imitation of Received Pronunciation.

While Eurovision 1991 makes up for the shit production by having an amazing lineup of songs, 1965 has the opposite problem: every song but one is a total piece of crap. Well OK, I’m exaggerating here, but it really is insane how much better the winner—“Poupée de cire, poupée de son” by France Gall—is than everything else. She was a French singer who competed for Luxembourg in Eurovision with a song I absolutely love, then went on to have a stellar career. In second place came the United Kingdom with “I Belong”, and in third came France with a song I hate with a passion, “N’avoue jamais”. I’m warning you now: if you like any song this year other than the winner, you probably won’t like my review of it.

The lineup of countries had two additions from 1964, making for 18 in total: Sweden returned with a controversial entry after skipping last year, and Ireland (who would soon become a 20th century powerhouse) made their debut. Crazy enough, this was the fourth year in a row with four zero-pointers. The good thing about ranking this year is, I already did it a few months back (which was a pretty miserable experience) so my job this time is easier. That’s assuming none of my rankings change.

I watched the contest with British commentary last time and I’ll do the same again, even though the French commentary is archived too. That’s because the video quality on the French-commentated uploads is pretty bad and I tend to enjoy British commentators more, even though I can understand both. Our old friend David Jacobs is back for the second last year, though it doesn’t look like his 1966 commentary has been archived, so for our purposes it’s our last time seeing him.

One more fact: this is the first Eurovision contest broadcast outside the EBU. As I said in round 1, it was also broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Viewers in those countries would gradually long for the day they could join the Eurovision family.

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Cookie Fonster Reassesses Eurovision 1964: A Winner I’ve Turned Around On

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Intro Post

< 1963 Review | 1964 Review | 1965 Review >

Introduction

As of this writing, Eurovision 1964 is the oldest Eurovision to take place in a city I’ve been to: Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. The show took place in the Tivoli Concert Hall, known in Danish as Tivolis Koncertsal. It’s hard to visit Malmö without also visiting Copenhagen, especially if you’re playing from abroad, and it’s a real beauty of a city. This couldn’t have been reflected much in the broadcast because it was in black and white, and fans aren’t able to see it today because nobody has been able to find the full video broadcast of Eurovision 1964. The reason why is that Denmark’s DR is one of few host brodacsters in the early years that didn’t save a copy of the show. At some point, DR wiped their video tape of Eurovision 1964 to make way for a different recording. The missing video broadcast is what the contest is best known for today. Well, that and the smash hit from Italy that won by a landslide, “Non ho l’età”.

Sixteen countries competed once again, but the lineup was different from the last three years: Sweden dropped out due to a strike and Portugal made their debut. Italy got first place as I said, the UK got a distant second, and Monaco scored third. Strangely enough, for the third year in a row, four countries got zero points, one of which was the newcomer Portugal. The voting system was changed from each jury awarding 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 points to just 5, 3, and 1 points, and the headcount of each jury was reduced from 20 back to 10. The scoreboard was redesigned too: now it showed only country names without song titles, and had a horizontal bar graph to the right showing how many points each entry had.

Now back to the video footage problem: the only parts of the show that have surviving footage are the winner’s reprise and a few other snippets from the beginning and end of the show. Some of those snippets came from Denmark’s broadcaster DR, others from Finland’s Yle. This means we have small portions of the commentary from both countries, as well as audio of the French commentary. Over the past few years, fans have been making video reconstructions of the 1964 contest assembled from these snippets, as well as footage of contestants performing their songs in other shows. You can look at these YouTube uploads (1, 2, 3, 4) to see how the reconstruction has evolved over the years. Italy is lucky enough to have the winner’s reprise recorded. Portugal’s song has their national final performance archived, since RTP has preserved every single year of Festival da Canção. Not too surprising because FdC is Portugal’s pride and joy. Most other songs use a later video recording of the artist performing their song, but a few use footage of the artist performing a completely different song, which I don’t like because the lip movements don’t match the song.* For those songs I’d have preferred to just have photos, but I admire fans’ efforts to reconstruct the show regardless.

The show opens with a military march of some sort, which if the reconstruction is to be believed is interspersed with a video montage of Copenhagen. Then comes the presenter, Danish actress and TV presenter Lotte Wæver. She did most of the show in Danish (which I can understand much more of than last time), but graciously gave short speeches in English and French at the start. Fitting the increase in internationality of the hosting, the scoreboard had all the country names in English this time, instead of the local language. The reconstruction has the screen captions feature each country’s name in Danish, but I’m not sure if the show itself did that or not. I’ll watch the latest reconstruction I linked for this blog post. It’ll feel a lot like watching the music videos and national final performances of Eurovision 2020.

* As of this writing, those are the Netherlands, part of Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Spain. 11.5 out of 16 songs have a recording of the artist performing them, which is pretty damn good!

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Cookie Fonster Re-Examines Eurovision 1963: The Danish Couple Saves the Show

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Intro Post

< 1962 Review | 1963 Review | 1964 Review >

Note: I’ve decided I will only rewrite my Eurovision reviews up to 2019. For 2020 onwards, I’ll just post ranking images with annotations. The reason why is because my posts for 2020 onwards are already extensively detailed and I don’t feel a need to remake them.

Introduction

After having hosted Eurovision 1959 and 1961 and won 1962, France declined to host 1963 and passed the duties to the United Kingdom, who ended up hosting one of the strangest Eurovision years. Eurovision 1963 took place in the BBC Television Centre in London and had an unusual format in several ways. For one thing, the audience didn’t see the performances live, but rather on a TV screen that showcased special effects. The host, audience, and scoreboard were in the studio TC3, whereas the singers and orchestra were in TC4 which had an elaborate stage full of props. I get that Eurovision has always loved to showcase technology, but not letting the audience see the live performances in person was just ridiculous. At least it was fun for TV viewers though.

The producers put quite a few special effects into the performances, which wowed some viewers but caused others to suspect the performances were all pre-recorded, which it turned out they weren’t. If that wasn’t controversial enough, the voting sequence had an infamous mishap that had to be corrected, which caused many viewers to suspect the winner was illegitimate. I find that a real shame, because the winner (“Dansevise” from Denmark) is by far the best song of the show. The second and third places (Switzerland and Italy) are alright enough, but nowhere near as interesting.

For the second time of four, the BBC hired Katie Boyle to host, who is a dignified and confident presenter as always. She opens the show with a parade of sorts to introduce each country set to comfy orchestral music, and I like how she says something different for every contestant, such as “Austria’s entry tonight will be sung by Carmela Corren” or “The first of our Scandinavian guests: from Norway, Anita Thallaug”. It’s a heartwarming and welcoming introduction and just makes me sad that Eurovision 2024 was such a horrible shitshow. Ah well, we have another Eurovision to look forward to in just a month and everyone is praying it goes better.

The voting system was changed from last year: now each jury had 20 members and they awarded five to one points to each of their top five songs. Even though each country could now award points to five others, we still ended up with four zero-pointers. This time, each song is preceded by a map with a flashing light at the capital of whichever country is up next, which is great because I love maps. The map also has an overlay in a nice bold sans serif font, showing the country name in English, the song name in all caps, and the singer name. What hasn’t changed is the lineup of countries: it’s the same sixteen as last year.

In round 1, I watched this contest with Dutch commentary, and it looks like I tried my hardest to understand it. This time I’ll watch with British commentary, which is linguistically easier for me. The BBC once again hired David Jacobs to commentate, who has a dry sense of wit in a distinctly British way.

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