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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 Revels in Eurovision 2021 (Semifinals): A Heartwarming Show, but a Heartbreaking Bloodbath

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Intro Post

< 2020 Semifinal 2 | 2021 Semifinals | 2021 Final >

Introduction

Some international annual events had to be canceled for two or three years in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we’re very fortunate that Eurovision only missed one year and maintained its host city of Rotterdam, Netherlands for 2021. The producers of Eurovision 2021 ensured the contest complied with all COVID-19 regulations, but cleverly disguised the fact that it occurred during a pandemic.

It feels strange to watch clips from the 2020 (actually 2021) Summer Olympics with almost no live audience, so it’s miraculous that the EBU put together a live audience for 2021. They did so by allowing only 3,500 seats in the Rotterdam Ahoy, about a third of the usual amount, and not allowing any standing seats—the space was instead used for a socially distanced green room. The audience members didn’t have to wear masks or sit two meters apart—they only had to test negative for COVID and wear masks when not seated. The audience consisted only of those who had bought tickets for Eurovision 2020, so there were no public ticket sales this year. One change that the pandemic did cause was that backing vocals could now be pre-recorded. It’s a bit of a divisive rule, but as we’ll see in quite a few songs this year, it’ll allow for a new layer of creative freedom.

All countries that would have participated in 2020 returned for 2021, except for Belarus who was banned due to sending a propaganda song, and Armenia who skipped out due to a war with Azerbaijan. Out of these 39 countries, 24 of them internally selected the same artist as 2020, two (Estonia and Lithuania) held a national final where the 2020 contestant won, and 13 selected an entirely new contestant. This means that exactly two-thirds of the entries this year have the same artist as 2020.

The running order for both semifinals looks pretty similar to the 2020 semifinals. The draws of who gets into which semifinal, and who is in which half, were reused from 2020, but the countries were reordered for the sake of the show. This means each semifinal will consist of the same countries as its 2020 counterpart (barring the ones that dropped out), but not always the same singers.

As of this writing, I’ve heard in full almost all Eurovision entries from 1956 to 2024, except for these countries’ entries this year: Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Georgia, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden. By the time I finish this post, I will have heard every single song in Eurovision history.

I watched the semifinals with German commentary by an increasingly raspy Peter Urban, who by this point I’ve warmed up to. I find his style of commentary to be deadpan in an endearing old man way. In case you were wondering, I’m back to watching these contests alone. If you’d like to know more about how I find commentary for recent contests, or would like me to send video files I have available, there are multiple ways to contact me listed on my home page. I’m open to helping you out!

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Cookie Fonster Gets to Know Eurovision 2013 (Final): The Year of Gratuitous Dubstep Drops

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Intro Post

< 2013 Semifinals | 2013 Final | 2014 Semifinals >

Introduction

“Good evening, my name is Petra Mede. And we just—”

crowd cheers

If you need proof SVT picked the perfect host for 2013, here it is. The fans absolutely adore her.

The final of Eurovision 2013 opened with the contest’s first ever flag parade. Set to a choir number composed by Avicii (rest in peace) and Björn and Benny, all 26 finalists walk across a bridge meant to represent the Öresund bridge that connects Copenhagen with the contest’s host city: Malmö. I’ll be crossing that bridge many times next month. The parade feels rather solemn compared to the flag parades of later years, a bit too much like that of a sports event rather than a zany song contest. Still, this grand final has an admirably efficient introduction, especially compared to some years.

Just like last time Eurovision was hosted in Sweden, Denmark won with a radio pop song, more specifically one that I’d argue is a good radio pop song. Now the second place and third place… this hurts because Greece should’ve been AT LEAST top three, but I’ll list them anyway. In second place came Azerbaijan with some pop song much worse than “Alcohol Is Free”, and in third place came Ukraine with another pop song that doesn’t hold a candle to “Alcohol Is Free”.

To alleviate my dread of going through all these radio pop songs, I’ll take a different approach when reviewing this final. I decided to watch all the songs with my Swedish friend Liv, the watch-through broken into three parts. She’s the same friend I mentioned a few times in my last post, and we’re both going to Malmö for Eurovision 2024. I took notes on our opinions on each song, so that it’ll be easy to transform those into proper reviews. We watched the show together with German commentary, then I watched it alone with British commentary.

One more fact worth noting: The full points from the jury and televote (both in the semifinals and final) aren’t publicly known this year. The reason why is simple: Azerbaijan cheated and the EBU added new anti-fraud rules the next year. The best we have is each country’s average rank, which is a bit annoying but we’ll make do with it.

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Cookie Fonster’s Eurovision 1994 Rundown: The Interval Act Steals the Show

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Intro Post

< 1993 Review | 1994 Review | 1995 Review >

We got the first confirmed Eurovision entry early this time, before even the list of participating countries: “Mon amour” for France. It’s a nice song that blends classic and modern styles, but its score will come down to how well it’s staged.

Also, I’m telling you in advance: the contests from 2004 onwards will get two posts each. One for the semifinals, where I review the non-qualifiers and the presentation of the semifinals, and one for the final.

Introduction

I was originally going to call this post “ireland op plz nerf” before I settled on something less ridiculous. After being the fourth country to win Eurovision twice in a row, Ireland became the first to host twice in a row and put on Eurovision 1994 in Dublin. When the contest ended, Ireland became the only country to win three times in a row and the first to win six times.

Despite the repetition in the contest’s winners, the lineup of countries was way different from last time. This was the first Eurovision to use a relegation system to limit the number of participants: the seven lowest-scoring countries from last year were locked out to make way for newcomers, at least in theory. Cyprus, the seventh lowest-scoring country, got lucky because Italy willfully quit the contest. This means that seven countries didn’t return from 1993 (Belgium, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Turkey) and seven joined for the first time (Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia).

The relegation system doesn’t seem fair to me and I’m guessing it’s what drove Italy and Luxembourg away from Eurovision. It also broke Belgium’s perfect attendance, leaving only Switzerland and Germany as having attended every year… for now. The newcomers were a lot more successful than last year; Poland even got second place, by far their best result to date. On the other hand, Lithuania’s first entry got zero points and they didn’t return until 1999.

An interesting fact about one of the hosts: Cynthia Ní Mhurchú originally worked as an Irish language teacher. It shows with how confidently she spoke Irish on stage, and because she looks like a teacher. A sad fact about the other host: Gerry Ryan died in 2010, at only 53 years old, to the shock of his entire country.

The most famous thing part of this contest was actually the interval act. It was a folk dance performance called “Riverdance” and it’s perhaps the best known Eurovision interval act, rivaled only by “Love Love Peace Peace” in 2016. I’m quite excited for it! Oh yeah, I watched the contest with British commentary.

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