Intro Post

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As of this writing, we now have all 37 artists confirmed for Eurovision 2024! The only songs we’re yet to hear are those from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Israel. I’m mostly super excited about the contest this year, but I’m salty about the song that Germany chose and, more importantly, worried about the drama that Israel’s presence will cause.

Introduction

If you know anything about Russia, it won’t surprise you that when they won Eurovision in 2008, they immediately decided to host in Moscow. It’s their capital city, it’s by far their richest city, and it’s designed to leave foreigners with a positive impression of Russia. Knowing recent events, it’s bittersweet to think that 15 years ago, Russia was on good enough terms with the rest of Europe to host the gayest musical competition in the entire world. They even designed the most complex and glamorous stage we’ve seen in any contest yet.

The contest this year was tantalizingly close to featuring all of Europe. Slovakia rejoined after last participating in 1998, San Marino withdrew, and only Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, and Monaco were still gone. It didn’t seem like a tall order for the EBU to get these four countries to return, but unfortunately, the dream of Eurovision with a complete map still hasn’t been achieved. In addition, Georgia caused some drama by sending a song protesting against Vladimir Putin, which the EBU rejected. This meant that Georgia withdrew and the contest had a total of 42 countries. Still, it’s amazing how close Eurovision came to featuring the whole map from 2008 to 2011.

As with 2008, the contest had two semifinals with ten countries from each qualifying to the final: nine from televoting and one from backup juries. Then in the final, each country’s 1 to 12 points were determined using a mix of jury and televoting (but Norway was 100% jury due to a malfunction). This marked the return of juries to the Eurovision final.

I’m really excited to review this year, because it’s loaded with fan favorites and glamorous in presentation. I’ve always found Russia to be a fascinating country, so it should be interesting—and as I mentioned, bittersweet—to see how they hosted Eurovision. I watched the first semifinal with German commentary, this time commentated not by Peter Urban (who was sick) but Tim Frühling. And the second semifinal with Swedish commentary, by Shirley Clamp and Edward af Sillén. For some reason, it’s always easiest to find Eurovision commentary in Germanic languages.