At the time of my previous predictions post, 29 out of 37 songs for Eurovision 2024 were released. Now all 37 have been confirmed, so that means I have eight to comment on.

First off, the elephant in the room: the country that many fans, myself included, think shouldn’t be allowed in Eurovision this year. I’m not a big fan of Israel’s entry (1) as a song, nor the message it gives. It’s just an average ballad full of generic four-chord progressions and overall it feels kind of… artificial, if that makes any sense. Like it’s deliberately designed to make the audience feel sad, rather than the singer expressing her own thoughts on how the war makes her feel.

On a brighter note, let’s talk about Australia (2). My god, their song feels so Australian! It has a different attitude and vibe to all the European entries and overall sounds spacious and cultural. Another internally selected entry that feels very cultural is Greece (3). It’s a return to form for Greece, yet at the same time a totally new direction. It strongly reminds me of “Russian Woman” from 2021, which means it sounds exotic and harsh but intriguing at the same time, and full of ethnic personality.

I would love it so much if in 2025, Germany went the same route as Greece and Australia and internally selected a quality song in German. I think that would suit Germany in Eurovision better than a national final. I mentioned this idea in a long, pessimistic rant about Germany’s approach to Eurovision yesterday, so maybe you could read that and then continue this blog post.

Portugal (4) joined Serbia in sending a slow, sentimental native language song selected by a national final—not far from what I imagined Portugal sending. I love that Portugal still remains true to themselves after all those years. Sweden (5) had the last national final of the year and is sending a song that’s not as unforgettable as the title would imply—a predictable Swedish electronic dance song. Maybe someday, televoters are going to lose interest in these types of entries and then Sweden would need to refresh their approach. Maybe that could mean more Swedish-language or otherwise cultural songs?

Now only the Caucasus countries are left, but first I will discuss the English-language revamp of Albania’s song. It sounded like a predictable Albanian entry when it was in Albanian, but now it’s even more of a predictable Albanian entry and duller.

Now all that’s left is the Caucasus countries, all of which internally selected. For the first time, Azerbaijan (6) is singing in a significant amount of Azerbaijani! If there was any doubt that Germany has ZERO EXCUSE to pretend their language doesn’t exist, then now it’s gone. Their song is a decent enough minor key dramatic song with a handful of ethnic elements. I don’t have strong feelings about it otherwise.

I’ve gained a new appreciation for Armenia’s (7) approach to Eurovision now that I’m reviewing their Eurovision entries. They love their ethno-bops and they love sounding authentically Armenian. This time, they’re sending their second entry fully in Armenian! I wish the lyrics consisted of more Armenian words and less “la lai la”, but it’s super ethnic and super fun. It turns out Armenian is a very cool-sounding language! Fun fact: unlike the other two Caucasus countries’ national languages (Georgian and Azerbaijani), Armenian is an Indo-European language which means it’s distantly related to English.

Finally we arrive at Georgia (8), whose song is less exotic than their usual entries. It’s another dramatic minor key dance song, I’m not sure what I think of it yet. It didn’t leave a strong impression on me the first time I heard it, maybe because songs of this type are abundant in Eurovision. It might be easier to give thoughts on it when we see it live on stage.

Basically, all these entries have confirmed my suspicions that this will be like 2021 and 2022: it feels like pretty much every country is bringing a fiercely competitive song but Germany isn’t. Bitte Deutschland, ein gutes Lied auf Deutsch nächstes Jahr.