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Cookie Fonster’s Wall of Text on Eurovision 2017 (Final): All New Countries in the Top Three

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Intro Post

< 2017 Semifinals | 2017 Final | 2018 Semifinals >

Introduction

Hosted in Kyiv, Ukraine, the usual 26 countries battled to see who would be the winner of Eurovision 2017. We start with an opening film showcasing life in Ukraine, then a flag parade that sadly didn’t have physical flags, but instead stylized flags projected onto the LED screen. The flag parade did something unusual reminiscent of the Olympics: Ukraine, the host country, was put last, for the only ever time as far as I’m aware. The Olympics’ flag parades always start with Greece, so I think if we’re going this route, the Eurovision flag parades could start with Switzerland. But then again, that would mean Switzerland would have to qualify every year, and it makes more sense to list the countries in running order anyway.

The top three this year consisted entirely of countries who had never achieved podium places before. Moldova scored third place with a sequel to their Internet meme entry, “Run Away”. Bulgaria scored second place with X Factor jury bait, and most specially of all, 53 years after their first time participating in Eurovision, Portugal FINALLY won the contest with an old-fashioned jazz waltz. Their previous best (and still second highest) result was a sixth place in 1996.

The postcards this year are similar to those of 2016: the contestants performing various activities they like, but not necessarily in their home countries. I like that they all start with the contestants pretending to be still, then they burst into life at the end. I watched the final together with Liv with a mix of Swedish and Norwegian commentary, then by myself with German commentary. Somehow I’m just in a Peter Urban mood this time.

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Cookie Fonster Looks Back on Eurovision 2005 (Semifinal): The Year of Overcomplicated Staging

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Intro Post

< 2004 Final | 2005 Semifinal | 2005 Final >

We have such an exciting variety of songs confirmed for Eurovision 2024, and we’ve still only heard 13 songs out of 37. That means we’re only a third of the way through! Right now I think Ukraine is most likely to win, followed by Italy. If Ukraine wins the contest, I really hope the country will become safe enough to host in 2025.

Introduction

We’ve now reached the 50th annual Eurovision Song Contest! Less than nine months ago I was reviewing the first ever Eurovision, and now here I am at what’s unquestionably a modern Eurovision. It’s got hosts in colorful outfits, extravagant self-deprecating opening acts, a black stage full of fancy light effects, an overview of the televoting system in English and French, and it’s even broadcast in widescreen! Aside from the 3D visual design of the screen captions, this looks very close to the Eurovision we know today.

Eurovision 2005 was one of two contests to take place in Ukraine, both of which were hosted in its capital city of Kyiv. This year, Ukraine had freshly come out of the Orange Revolution, so the country hoped that hosting Eurovision would boost its relations with the EU. But hosting the contest wouldn’t be easy for them. While Istanbul had a hefty stadium available with over 10,000 seats, in Ukraine the best available arena needed a lot of renovation and ended with only 5,000 seats. Tourists also had a lot of problems with hotels in Kyiv, with many bookings getting abruptly cancelled, but I’m sure that when it was all finished, Ukrainians were proud to have hosted Eurovision.

This year’s contest featured all 36 countries that appeared in 2004, plus three more: Bulgaria and Moldova made their debuts, and Hungary returned after skipping the last six years. The last major gap in Europe was the Czech Republic, which would join the contest in 2007, though Italy, Luxembourg, and Slovakia were still on Eurovision hiatus, and tiny little San Marino was still yet to debut. Crazy enough, Lebanon was almost going to participate this year and even had a song ready, but unsurprisingly for an Arab country, they withdrew because of Israel.

This time the semifinal featured 25 countries, ten of which would qualify to the grand final. Are any of the 15 non-qualifiers worth listening to? We’ll find out together, with some German commentary to guide us.

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Cookie Fonster Retells Eurovision 2004 (Final): Ethno-Bops, Balkan Ballads, and Future Hosts

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Intro Post

< 2004 Semifinal | 2004 Final | 2005 Semifinal >

Introduction

The grand final of Eurovision 2004 featured 24 countries that can be split into three groups: the Big Four, the top ten non-Big Four countries from 2003, and the top ten countries from the 2004 semifinal. The running order of the first two groups was determined before the semifinal, so the qualifiers were slotted into the remaining spots.

All 36 countries that participated in the contest televoted in this year’s final, even Monaco which used a backup jury in the semifinal. It was the only grand final in Eurovision history where all the points came from televoters. Ukraine won the contest for the first of three times, Serbia and Montenegro (S+M) made a strong debut with second place, and Greece scored third place for the second time. The top three countries all came from the semifinal, and the bottom three were all automatic qualifiers. This makes sense because the semifinal filtered out the less popular songs while the automatic qualifiers had no such filter.

As an opening act, Sertab Erener performed the reliable combo of last year’s winner and her latest single. I still far prefer the orchestral rearrangements of the previous winner, but this opening act reminds us that Sertab’s career has shined bright since winning the contest.

I won’t lie, I’ve started to warm up to Peter Urban’s commentary. He still sounds like he’s reading from a script at times, but he does what he needs to as a commentator and provides plenty of trivia and side remarks. Maybe that’s why he stuck around as the German commentator for so long. I already discussed the history behind this contest in my semifinal post, so there’s not much else to say—let’s get on with the songs!

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Cookie Fonster’s Eurovision 1992 Commentary: Anglophone Bias to the Extreme

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Intro Post

< 1991 Review | 1992 Review | 1993 Review >

Introduction

Eurovision 1992 completed the trio of major cities in Sweden by taking place in Malmö, the same city that hosted in 2013 and will host in 2024. It had more participating countries than ever before, at a whopping 23. This included every country that had ever participated, except for Monaco and Morocco… though Yugoslavia wasn’t quite the same country as last year. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and (North) Macedonia had all seceded, and the next year, what remained of Yugoslavia was banned from the competition until 2004.

This contest is best known for Johnny Logan’s third victory for Ireland, but this time only as a composer. Just like 1984, Linda Martin sang a composition of Johnny Logan’s, but this time, she won with a power ballad called “Why Me?” Power ballads are going to score highly throughout the 1990’s, so be warned. As the post’s title suggests, this is the first contest where the top three songs were all in English, and that sets another recurring theme of 90’s Eurovision. As more new countries poured into the contest, the juries became more and more biased towards English until the language rule was abolished.

YES, they brought back the orchestral arrangements of last year’s winners at the start! I missed that so much!!! The opening orchestral music transitioned into a jazzy arrangement of “Fångad av en stormvind”, which made me smile. I was expecting the contest to be presented dominantly in English with a bit of French, so I was surprised the hosts spoke this much Swedish. Though if I didn’t know better, I might have mistaken it for Danish because of those guttural R’s.

I wanted a break from Terry Wogan, so I watched the contest with Austrian commentary this time. Ernst Grissemann is by far my favorite of the German-speaking commentators I have heard.

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Cookie Fonster Unearths Eurovision 1988: The Year of Francophone Superstars

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Intro Post

< 1987 Review | 1988 Review | 1989 Review >

Introduction

We’re back to Dublin, Ireland for Eurovision 1988, in the same building as 1981 (the year after last time Johnny Logan won). However, it doesn’t look like the same building at all! It’s dark inside and the stage is surrounded by walls displaying a computer screen, much like 21st century Eurovision. This contest had almost the same lineup as last time, except Cyprus withdrew because their entry broke the rules. If Cyprus hadn’t skipped, we would’ve had the same 22 countries participate four years in a row.

Another way this contest resembles modern Eurovision is that it has multiple presenters. From 1957 to 1987, most contests had one female presenter; from 1988 to 2008, the norm was instead one man and one woman; and from 2009 onwards, most contests had three or four presenters. From this year on, the only solo presenters were in 1993, 1995, and 2013. As for this contest, the presenters introduced it in Irish, French, and English in order. The female presenter’s French has the weirdest Irish accent I’ve ever heard. She overenunciates the R’s and pronounces “bienvenue” as “pianvenue”, with a heavily aspirated P. After the introductions, the presenters made a lot of jokes throughout the show, with a much heavier saturation than the subtle humor of the last few years.

This contest had Switzerland’s second and latest victory, performed by perhaps the second most famous name to come from Eurovision: Celine Dion. Another famous French-speaking singer represented Luxembourg, the legendary Lara Fabian. No French-language song has ever won Eurovision since then. Switzerland beat the UK by only one point, in one of the tensest voting sequences in Eurovision history.

Just like last year, it was very hard to find commentary on this contest because all the uploads on YouTube were blocked. Through extensive research, the only two languages I could find were Greek and Dutch, so I’m gonna settle for Dutch.

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Cookie Fonster’s Journey into Eurovision 1987: An 80’s Fever Dream

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Intro Post

< 1986 Review | 1987 Review | 1988 Review >

Introduction

Hosted in Belgium for the first and only time, Eurovision 1987 had quite a lot of drama behind its production. Two broadcasters had agreed to organize Eurovision together in the event Belgium won: the Dutch-speaking BRT (now called VRT), and the French-speaking RTBF. However, when the time came for them to team up, they were as good at cooperation as a nerd and a jock assigned to do a high school chemistry project. When the French-speaking broadcaster chose Brussels as the host city, the Dutch-speaking broadcaster threw their hands up and left RTBF to organize it alone, while BRT chose the Belgian entry. If you want to see two broadcasters successfully collaborating, you’d have to wait until 2023.

This contest had the largest lineup of countries so far: Greece and Italy returned after skipping last year, making for 22 countries total. All countries that had ever participated in Eurovision were present this year, except Monaco, Malta, and Morocco. This is an intimidatingly long contest, almost as big as a Eurovision final in the current era. The winner was the first person to win Eurovision twice: Johnny Logan, representing Ireland. The postcards are themed upon what comes to most people’s minds when they think of Belgium: Belgian comic strips.

Annoyingly, this is another year where due to one particular song (glares intensively at Spain), you can’t find many commentary uploads on YouTube, and most of them are of terrible quality. So, um, I guess I’m watching it with Swedish commentary this time. The video description contains a link to the full unabridged Swedish commentary in good quality, so I’ll use that. I won’t be able to understand the commentary, but I’ve at least picked up on a few words from Scandinavian languages by reading translations of their Eurovision entries.

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