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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 Sails Across Eurovision 2018 (Final): Elaborate Props and Tight Voting

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Intro Post

< 2018 Semfinals | 2018 Final | 2019 Semifinals >

As of the writing, two Swiss cities remain in the running to host Eurovision 2025: Basel with two potential arenas, and Geneva with just one. I’m rooting for Basel because it’s a three hour drive from my grandma’s house in Germany, and thus I’d be more likely to go to next Eurovision if it’s in Basel.

Introduction

In Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, 26 countries battled on the annual Saturday night to take the prize of Eurovision 2018. It was a tight competition this year, especially among the jury votes where the country on top kept changing. Fortunately, no song came anywhere near zero points this year: on the bottom was Portugal with a still impressive 39 points. Two of the top three are countries we usually don’t see this high. In third place (and first in the jury) came Austria, in second place came a huge fan favorite from Cyprus, and the winner was a more divisive but perhaps more fiercely loved entry from Israel, who took home their fourth victory.

RTP clearly had a lot of fun showcasing their country with this show, but for the opening films they seemed to be on a tight budget—all three nights used the same film. On the other hand, the opening act has an indulgent medley of songs from famous Portuguese artists (including the first proper fado representation in Eurovision!), all sung in Portuguese because this country is too cool for anglophone pop. Then comes a nautical-themed flag parade set to Portuguese DJ music, which is just the most charming thing. As with last year, the host country was introduced last. The postcards are what I would’ve hoped Portugal would do: the artists opening a door to a location in Portugal and performing an activity there. As a soft spot for all things Portuguese, these postcards get my stamp of approval.

I watched the grand final with Finland Swedish commentary, parts of which my friend Liv translated for me. Finland Swedish is intriguing to listen to, because it feels like it’s from a parallel universe where Finnish is a Germanic language. The pronunciation is generally closer to the spelling than in Sweden, it doesn’t do silly things like pronouncing “de” (they) as “dom”* or the singsongy pitch accents, and there’s plenty of words that sound goofy to Swedes, but it’s better to ask a Swedish speaker to explain them. I would nerd about languages more, but that’s not the point of these reviews. These commentators are extremely funny and snooty and I’ll refer to them as the Yle commentators from now on, since that is Finland’s national broadcaster.

* That’s actually a simplified description of something more nuanced, which you can learn about in this video.

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Cookie Fonster’s Eurovision 2010 Ramblings (Final): The Happiest Year for My Inner Patriot

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Intro Post

< 2010 Semifinals | 2010 Final | 2011 Semifinals >

Introduction

Eurovision 2010 (Oslo, Norway) is a very happy year for me, because for the second and latest time in Eurovision history, Germany was the winner! I wish I could have seen the contest live as a kid, but I live in America so I would’ve had to discover it on my own. Given Germany’s current Eurovision slump, it’s easy to forget that they won quite recently compared to other western European countries. In second place behind Germany’s fresh upbeat pop song came a hard rock song from Turkey, which Turkish fans still passionately think should have won. And Romania finished third place for the second and latest time with a typical Eurovision pop song.

From this year onwards, the most common number of hosts changed from two to three (the first three-host year was 1999). This year’s lineup of hosts, as well as the next two, featured two women and one man. Nadia Hasanoui is the first Eurovision host of Arab descent (half Moroccan), Haddy Njie is the first host of sub-Saharan African descent (half Gambian), and Erik Solbakken is the only one of entirely European descent. They’ve all been lovely hosts so far, professional with a good sense of humor.

Norway went efficient with their opening act: first a quick film recapping Eurovision history, then fans from every participating country wishing luck, then Alexander Rybak performing “Fairytale” with a new custom intro. This contest has done a good job simplifying the presentation from last year while preserving its whimsy. I watched the grand final once again with Peter Urban’s German commentary, so I can find out how he reacted to Germany winning.

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Cookie Fonster Chronicles Eurovision 2006 (Final): The Victory of Halloween Costumes

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Intro Post

< 2006 Semifinal | 2006 Final | 2007 Semifinal >

Introduction

As with the last two years, the grand final of Eurovision 2006 (in Athens, Greece) featured 24 songs, ten of which had qualified from the semifinal. Overall the semifinal qualifiers scored much better than the finalists: ten of the top twelve (all but 4th and 9th place) had to get through the semifinal first. This was an early hint that the one-semifinal system needed an adjustment.

This year featured two changes to the voting. First, the countries voted in randomized order, which had only been previously done in 1974 and would be done every year up to 2010. Second, to speed up the voting sequence, the spokespersons announced only their eight, ten, and twelve points. Unfortunately, some spokespersons still were keen on hogging up their time in the spotlight, so this shortened the contest’s runtime only by 23 minutes. In all fairness, a lot of time was taken up by the extravagant opening acts. Greece did not hold back with those!

Finland scored their first ever victory this year with the iconic “Hard Rock Hallelujah”. In second place came Russian’s Dima Bilan, who would win two years later. And in third place was a Balkan ballad from Bosnia and Herzegovina, their highest result to this day. This is the second of four years in a row where all Big Four countries scored in the bottom half: the highest was Germany at 14th place. Although at least one Big Four/Five country has reached the top ten since 2009, these countries still have a less than great reputation in Eurovision (except Italy).

I couldn’t find the German commentary for this year, so I went back to Terry Wogan’s British commentary. I expect him to go extra-snarky once the voting begins. One more random fact: this was the first year in which the host country used the euro as their currency.

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