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Cookie Fonster Documents Eurovision 2015 (Semifinals): The Nadir of Linguistic Diversity

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Intro Post

< 2014 Final | 2015 Semifinals | 2015 Final >

Here is my first Eurovision post after coming back home from Eurovision 2024! And here’s my post about my Eurovision trip in case you missed it.

Introduction

Just like last time Austria hosted Eurovision, which was way back in 1967, Eurovision 2015 took place in Vienna. Five other Austrian cities were in the running to host, but they had only one potential venue each whereas Vienna had seven. It makes sense that after almost 50 years without hosting Eurovision, Austria once more went for its capital.

Three countries returned this year, one skipped, and one made its debut, adding up to 40 participants. Cyprus and Serbia returned after skipping 2014, the Czech Republic returned for the first time since 2009, and Ukraine skipped out due to the war in Crimea. Four other countries that would later return were absent this year: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Luxembourg. Most notably, after years of foreshadowing, the newest addition to the family entered Eurovision: none other than Australia. Since Australia qualified directly to the finals this year, I’ll talk more about their presence in the next post. For now, in case you didn’t know, Australia was originally intended to be a one-time guest for the contest’s 60th edition.

Austria went for an all-female trio of presenters with hard-to-spell names: Mirjam Weichselbraun, Alice Tumler, and Arabella Kiesbauer. The previous winner Conchita Wurst served as the green room host. 2014 to 2017 are the “almost everyone sings in English” years—are you ready for the second of them? I’m kind of not, but at least the language diversity ramps up in 2018. We begin with the 13 non-qualifiers, all but two of which are in English.

This is the first year to feature interviews with the automatically qualifying contestants during the semifinals, an attempt at redeeming the Big Five’s disadvantage that didn’t work very well. The contest implemented a much better solution in 2024, by having the Big Five and host perform in the semifinals.

I watched the semifinals by myself with German commentary. Not Austrian German, as fitting as that would’ve been.

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Cookie Fonster Researches 2007 (Semifinal): A Near-Complete Map, but at What Cost?

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Intro Post

< 2006 Final | 2007 Semifinal | 2007 Final >

Introduction

Seven cities in Finland submitted bids to host Eurovision 2007, and the winner was unsurprisingly its capital city of Helsinki. Most of the bidding cities were on or near the southern coast, but two cities far north offered to host—one was even north of the Arctic Circle! The northernmost Eurovision host city remains Bergen and will probably stay that way unless Iceland wins. In case I forget to mention it later, Lisbon (2018) is the westernmost Eurovision host city, narrowly beating Millstreet (1993).

This contest featured the second largest number of countries to ever participate at Eurovision, a whopping 42. Hungary and Austria returned after skipping 2006, Monaco left the contest till the present day, and four new countries joined: Czechia, Georgia, and the newly separate countries of Serbia and Montenegro. This contest featured almost the entire map of Europe! The only significant gaps were Italy, Slovakia, and Luxembourg. A participant map with so few holes is unthinkable these days.

The huge amount of countries raised a problem: the semifinal consisted of 28 countries and was going to an absolute bloodbath. That’s the largest number of countries that have ever competed in a single night of Eurovision. All ten qualifiers were from eastern Europe—we’ll see for ourselves if that was a coincidence. I’ll review the 18 non-qualifiers in this post. Argh, I’ll have to wait so long before I get to “Dancing Lasha Tumbai”. Oh, and I watched this semifinal with German commentary.

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