Category Archives: Eurovision Posts

Cookie Fonster Weighs in on Eurovision 2026 (Semifinals): The Year That Five Countries Boycotted

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Intro Post

< 2025 Final | 2026 Semifinals | 2026 Final >

Gonna be honest, after this year’s Eurovision ended, my motivation to review it has been much lower than after last year’s contest. The Israel situation soured the entire show for me this year, far more than the past two years. But I’m pulling through and 11 days after the grand final ended, I finished going through the semis! 10 songs down, 25 to go.

Introduction

Hello again to my readers—hope you’ve all had a good Eurovision week! I certainly did, despite my heart pounding near the end of the results, but I’ll get to that later. In my time zone the show starts at 3 PM, so to watch it I had to take Tuesday and Thursday off work. I chose to take Friday off as well so that I’d have three days off in a row.

Last time Eurovision came to Austria was in 2015 right after Conchita Wurst’s victory, and it took place in the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna. The very same building was happily willing to host the contest in 2026, so it was pretty obvious we’d be back in Vienna, and indeed we were. It was the first Eurovision hosted in a country’s capital since Lisbon 2018.

The EBU made a big deal about this being the 70th Eurovision Song Contest, so it’s quite ironic that this is the contest with the fewest competing countries since semifinals were introduced in 2004. There were 36 countries competing in 2004; this year there were only 35. Moldova returned after skipping last year, Romania after skipping the past two years, and Bulgaria after skipping the past three, whereas five countries boycotted the contest because of the EBU’s asinine refusal to ban Israel from participating even though their presence is bringing the contest into serious disrepute.

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Cookie Fonster Makes Sense of Eurovision 2025 (Final): My New Favorite Year

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Intro Post

< 2025 Semifinals | 2025 Final | 2026 Semifinals >

Almost two weeks after the grand final, and my review of Eurovision 2025 is finished! Warning: it’s long as hell.

Introduction

My new favorite year, you say? Yes, indeed so. The song lineup of Eurovision 2025 is nothing short of spectacular: out of 37 songs, there are ten that I’ve given a 9/10 or higher, 17 that I’ve scored an eight or higher, and 23 that are at least a seven. Only eight songs this year are below a five (songs I neither like nor dislike). As is usual in Eurovision, most but not all of the right songs qualified, and thankfully the Big Five and host all sent honest efforts, which makes this an exceptionally good grand final. The one problem: the results of the grand final absloutely fucking sucked.

I usually list the top three in the intro of my Eurovision final posts, but this time it’ll make me feel better to list the top five. The fifth place was predictable enough: Italy with yet another male ballad, but it was more likable than their usual ballads for reasons I’ll discuss later. Now in fourth place came the song I wanted to win: “Bara bada bastu” by KAJ, the first Swedish Eurovision entry to actually be sung in Swedish since 1998. Fourth place would normally be a good result, but it’s a cruel joke when you look at the actual top three.

The third place is incomprehensible to me: a joke entry from Estonia with as little musical merit as “Irelande Douze Pointe” or “Flying the Flag (for You)”. Israel sent a sequel to last year’s “Hurricane” and ran another massive ad campaign, which got them a terrifyingly close second place and even a televote win. I will rant about them exploiting Eurovision soon enough. And as for the winner, the juries think that opera vocals automatically make a song good, so they boosted “Wasted Love” of all fucking songs to the top and gave Austria their third victory. That song winning was a nightmare scenario for me already, but the other top three made for a worse nightmare than I could possibly conceive of.

Now the good news is, aside from the top three, almost every entry in the grand final has something to like about it. In fact, there are so goddamn many songs worth swooning over, I’m not prepared and neither are you. And plus, I am absolutely over the moon about my country’s entry: Germany finally sent a song in German for the first time since 2007, and a great one at that! That might end up being the longest review in the post, but we’ll see soon enough.

And now to discuss the opening of the show, which I watched live in the St. Jakob-Park football stadium for a public viewing, seated next to my mom and her friend. My mother only joined me for Eurovision on the day of the final, just so you know. The show begins with a hilarious video skit where the three presenters realize the trophy hasn’t arrived yet and debate over what to do. As the most comedic of the hosts, Hazel offers to make a trophy from her water bottle and aluminum foil, then drops it and says “at least it doesn’t break”. I love this little jab at Nemo breaking the Eurovision trophy last year so much. Then the trophy goes on an epic journey to the Eurovision stage, soon to be delivered by Nemo themself in the hopes it doesn’t get broken. The entire opening film is humorous, yet it amazes me with the production at the same time.

The opening act is your usual abridged rehash of “The Code” (sure, why not). Then comes the flag parade, set to a medley of dancey Swiss hits and some kickass percussionists. Everyone in the parade is carrying just one or two big flags, but they’re all having fun doing it and many of their personalities shine through. The goofy brothers from Iceland, proud and confident Erika from Finland, the classy guitarists from Italy, modest Zoë from Switzerland, it goes on. And finally enter not two, but three hosts: Hazel Brugger and Sandra Studer from the semifinals, now joined by Michelle Hunziker. No Swiss-hosted contest is complete without a quick introduction in all of Switzerland’s languages, so the hosts do that and then present us the second audience in the football stadium.

For this blog post, I watched the grand final with German commentary done by Thorsten Schorn. My German grandma said she found the commentary on the grand final hilarious, so let’s hope she’s right!

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Cookie Fonster Makes Sense of Eurovision 2025 (Semifinals): Calm After the (Shit)storm

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Intro Post

< 2024 Final | 2025 Semifinals | 2025 Final >

I started this post at my German grandma’s house on May 18, wrote parts of it at various airports and on flights, then finished it back at home! I hope you enjoy it, and you better get hyped for my grand final review.

Introduction

The time of year has come and passed, and Eurovision 2025 has just ended! I was originally going to wait a few weeks to write my review, but the contest had so many results that pissed me off, I decided I need to get my thoughts off my chest as soon as possible. Now the reason the results piss me off is because this year had an absolutely stellar lineup of songs, but not a single one of the top three actually deserved to be there. Two of them are songs I actively dislike, and one I find listenable enough but came from that country—you know, the one that gets a disproportionate amount of votes from their ad campaigns—at the expense of far better songs. But I’ll get into more detail in the grand final post.

Eurovision 2025 was the third edition of the contest hosted in Switzerland, after Lugano 1956 (the first contest) and Lausanne 1989. Four Swiss cities bidded to host (yes, technically the past tense is supposed to be “bid”, I don’t care), and those were Basel, Bern, Geneva, and Zurich. On August 30, 2024, the host city was chosen as Basel (first time in the German-speaking part of Switzerland) and the venue as the St. Jakobshalle: an arena with 8000 seats, and a full capacity of 12,400 when you include the standing audience. I was in this exact arena during semifinal 2, and I have quite a lot of stories from the trip to tell in this and the next blog post. But the main focus of these posts is the songs, not the trip. I will soon start making a YouTube video about my trip to Basel, and it’ll probably be 30 minutes to an hour long. For now, just know I had a fabulous time and the trip completely surpassed Malmö 2024 for me.

The semifinals were presented by a duo of women like last year. As the show points out, we yet again have a brown-haired Eurovision veteran and a younger blonde-haired Eurovision newbie. The veteran is Sandra Studer, who competed for Switzerland in 1991 scoring fifth place and provided commentary in Swiss German most years from 1997 to 2006. The newbie is Hazel Brugger, a TV host and comedian known for her dry wit. A third host, Michelle Hunziker, would join them in the final.

This is the third contest in a row with 37 competing countries. It was supposed to be 38 at first, but that number seems to be cursed. Montenegro returned after last competing in 2022 (and before that, 2019), only to get a dead last place. Moldova was originally going to compete too and even organized a national final to be held on February 22, but on January 22, they dropped out of the contest and canceled the selection, because of the heavy criticism of the entries chosen. A real bummer, because they had had perfect attendance since 2005 and would normally bring something fun to Eurovision.

So in terms of drama, how did the contest compare to last year? It went pretty well actually! I didn’t hear of any feuds between delegations or contestants during the show; it seems like they all got along and everyone was on their best behavior, including the Israeli delegation. In addition, I could tell that Israeli fans felt much safer in Basel than they did in Malmö. Not until the results did anything resembling a shitstorm erupt, but that’s a matter for my grand final review. One other difference from last year is a change to the qualifier reveals sequence: for all reveals but the last, the countries are narrowed down to three before we find out who qualified. I’ll discuss my thoughts on this change later in the post.

Since the German entry this year is a song I properly love, and better yet, a song that’s actually sung in German, I’ve decided to watch all three shows with German commentary. ARD hired last year’s German commentator for the show, Thorsten Schorn. I can tell he’s gradually finding his footing as a commentator and developing his own style that’s a little different from Peter Urban, more actively humorous. I have 11 non-qualifiers to get through in this post. Most of the NQ’s are understandable enough, but one was a major fan favorite that had zero reason not to qualify.

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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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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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Cookie Fonster Comes to Terms with Eurovision 2024 (Semifinals): The Best and Worst Year Simultaneously

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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.

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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My rankings of all Eurovision postcards, 1970 to 2024

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Introduction

Before I get down to reviewing Eurovision 2024, the most recent edition of the contest as of this writing and the most controversial in a long time, I’d like to do something silly for a change. I’m going rank every Eurovision year solely by how good their postcards are. In case you didn’t know, the postcards are the little short films that play before each song starts. They’re meant to introduce the next country and contestant, or just show some nice scenery for the viewer to watch, as the commentator tells us about the next song. Some of them succeed in this purpose, some are really dull, and some are just baffling. They were introduced in 1970 because the show needed to fill time due to so many countries skipping, and they’ve been done most years since. If a year post-1970 has no postcards, it automatically goes into the bottom of this list, or I guess the top since I’ll list them worst to best.

I will include every Eurovision contest starting from 1970 in this list, even if it had only haphazard substitutes for postcards. The only year I won’t include is 2020 because it was canceled of course. Now let’s begin!

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