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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 Relives Eurovision 1999: The Death of the Language Rule (and the Birth of Me)

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Intro Post

< 1998 Review | 1999 Review | 2000 Review >

Please enjoy my first Eurovision review of the new year! I wonder how far I’ll get when the 2024 contest happens? I don’t think I’ll catch up, but maybe I’ll reach 2015 or so. Remember, I’ll be in Malmö and/or Copenhagen during the contest.

Introduction

An audience filled with flags, cheerful hosts accompanied by electronic music, a stage full of flashy light effects, seemingly endless pleasantries before the contest properly begins… yep, the first Eurovision contest after I was born isn’t far from what we know it as today.

Eurovision 1999 took place in Israel just as it would twenty years later, in its capital city of Jerusalem just as it did twenty years earlier. The number of participating countries was reduced from 25 to 23, so seven countries were relegated (Finland, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland) and five rejoined (Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania). Lithuania had last participated in 1994 and Hungary wouldn’t rejoin until 2005. Perhaps this decrease in participants was done to allow for commercial breaks between the songs, which were filled by mini-interval acts for the live audience and non-commercial broadcasters.

This year featured two massive changes to the rules: (1) the orchestra was abolished and (2) just like from 1973 to 1976, the language rule was abolished. Technically, the orchestra wasn’t fully abolished, but broadcasters could now opt out of providing one, which is what Israel did. From this point onwards, all Eurovision entries were sung entirely over a backing track.

The first winner of post-orchestra and post-language rule Eurovision was none other than Sweden with “Take Me to Your Heaven”, who would become the biggest power player till the present day. Iceland scored second place with another pop song in English, and Germany combined four languages to reach a respectable third place. One more fact: This was the first Eurovision with three presenters, which would be the most common amount from 2010 onwards. One of them sang Israel’s entry in 1992, “Ze Rak Sport”.

I frankly don’t have high expectations for these next few years of Eurovision. I’m bracing myself for a bunch of cheesy Eurodance, painfully off-key singing, and nonsensical English lyrics. Maybe Terry Wogan’s commentary will make it more bearable, we’ll see.

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