Eurovision

There is a precedent for stationery-adjacent music reviews here. Whilst this one is not exactly stationery-related, as I’m a collector of European pencils I can’t avoid being somewhat plugged into European consumer culture, and the Eurovision Song Contest probably best encapsulates European culture. Unlike European political institutions, Eurovision is pretty much open to any country that wants to join the European Broadcasting Union, a pseudo-private corporation funded largely by governments and broadcast license fees. This makes it more geographically and culturally inclusive than other European institutions. As one would expect considering the population and national borders of the region, these days the majority of acts are Slavic, making “Dobry Vechir” the most common greeting heard over the evening.

Whilst English is the overwhelming language of both content and presentation, every national broadcaster (or contracted private broadcaster) has their own flavour of presentation. Many (most) countries choose to present an English song, but a surprising number, including often the most popular songs (and in 2021 including 4 of the top 5), are in the national languages of non-English-speaking countries. Ultimately, it’s a contest whose linguistic content could be enjoyed by a plurality of the world, not least because of European countries such as Britain, France, Spain and Portugal brutally imposing their language and culture on so much of the planet.

Eurovision requires countries to submit a politically-neutral (a subjective measure, to be sure) new/original 3-minute tune and perform (at least the vocals) live in performance. There used to be requirements that entrants use their national language, but that’s obviously been scrapped. The biggest, wealthiest European markets (Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) are given automatic advancement to the finals, and the rest of the countries compete in a round that culls less than a third of them, making the idea of even having a “finals” somewhat absurd. Besides these regulations, however, the field is open, and quite a few surprising songs have worked their way to the top, including in 2021.

Despite the requirement that songs be politically neutral, quite a bit of politics makes it into the show. In the past some obviously political songs have made it past the censors when an obvious international sentiment existed (such as Russia’s annexation fo Crimea in 2014). Having Israel as part of the competing nations calls up a fairly well-organized BDS presence in the years when they host. Citizens and judges can’t vote for their own countries, but lucky for Greece and Cyprus, they can always just vote for each other.

Whilst I have often been aware of the contest and its results, 2021 was an oddball year for the contest, and the first that I can remember watching the full broadcast from start to finish (though not live). 2020 was cancelled due to COVID, but the promotional videos in the run-up had already been released, so organizing the eventual contest was complicated, as no one wanted to replay the year-old tunes that everyone had already heard. So Eurovision allowed countries to bring back the same acts as 2020 if they did not want to hold another national contest, but they had to submit a new song.

We watched the Swedish feed from the SVT app, so I got to practice a little bit of my Swedish whilst indulging in the decadent pop fun of the event. What follows are some comments on my top-10 favourite acts, with links to the videos from YouTube and elsewhere.

#10: Italy - Måneskin: Zitti E Buoni

I did not personally like this song very much, but it has to be on my highlights list. It was not sung in English, it was not a pop ballad with choreographed cleavage (not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things - as you will see by my other picks below), it’s an Italian band with a Danish name, it won the contest as a whole and it did so by sweeping the citizen votes. That’s a lot of cool stuff, honestly.

#9: Malta - Destiny: Je me casse

Some of these tiny nations need to outsource their talent (hell, even Switzerland once outsourced its entry to Québec), but Malta has this gorgeous home-grown lady with a catchy feminist tune appealing against slut-shaming and accompanied by a engaging stage performance. Hard to avoid including this in the list.

#8: Russia - Манижа: Russian Woman

Russian feminist anthems were not something I expected to hear on Eurovision, let alone from a country that seems to be slowly diminishing the role and rights of independent women, and who uses a national contest to select their Eurovision candidate (tangent: I found a good Russian series on Netflix called “To the Lake”, but by the end of the first season they’d managed to write every woman in the show into a caricature of a toxic diva). Accompanied with a final scene of a chorus of thousands of Russian women joining in on Zoom to sing “Борются, борются/ Все по кругу борются, да не молятся/ Сын без отца, дочь без отца/ Но сломанной family не сломать меня” (“Fight, fight/ Everyone is fighting in a circle, but do not pray/ A son without a father, a daughter without a father/ But a broken family won't break me”).

#7: Lithuania - The Roop: Discoteque

Just a super catchy tune.

#6: Belgium - Hooverphonic: The Wrong Place

When they first announced it, I was asking myself “isn’t this the band I remember from the 90s?” In fact, it was. I’ve been listening to Hooverphonic since my teens, alongside the likes of Portishead and latter-day Everything but the Girl. It was great to see that old alt-rock veterans are still allowed on the cool kids’ stage.

#5: France - Barbara Pravi: Voilà

What stood out in this song was that the insanely slick stage graphics and visuals on show all night were completely absent. Just the singer belting out her beautiful words before a floodlight, “Voilà, voilà, voilà, voilà qui je suis!” (“Here it is, here it is, this is who I am!”).

#4: Albania - Anxhela Peristeri: Karma

The biggest showing of choreographed cleavage in my list, this Albanian-language song is simply amazing.

#3: Iceland: Daði og Gagnamagnið: 10 Years

Relationship goals achieved. A bit of white cultural appropriation of 80s R&B, but you can’t quite avoid loving this song. The band had to roll with rehearsal footage the night of the show as one member caught COVID, but they still managed to score #4. I thought they were even better than that.

#2: Switzerland - Gjon’s Tears: Tout l’univers

This was probably the greatest vocal performance of the night. This man has an amazing range and the emotions belted out with every note bring it front and centre. The problem was that whomever dressed him and designed his performance created a spectacle in the English rather than the French sense. It was so distracting that I didn’t realize how much I liked the song until listening to it audio-only later. Definitely deserving of the #1 judges spot enjoyed for a few sweet moments.

#1: Ukraine - Go_A: Шум

My goddess come to earth. The expert building of tension and force with every beat, the combination of dance and traditional sounds, the Ukrainian lyrics virtually screamed out by the singer without breaking a sweat, swirling to a maddening crescendo, calling us all to dance, dance, dance in a northern forest in praise of the old gods and unite against our oppressors. Can a pop song start a revolution? If so, this one is probably a good candidate.

Honourable mentions: Some great 90s-pop sounding songs made it through that make me just want to chill by the pool at a gay resort and relive my 20s, like Stefania’s “Last Dance,” (Greece) and Elena Tsagrinou’s “El diablo” (Cyprus). Fyr og Flamme’s “Øve os på hinanden” (Denmark) didn’t make it to the finals, but was a super fun pop tune. Britain’s entry “Embers” by James Newman got zero judge votes and zero citizen votes, but I thought it was actually not too bad; definitely not the worst song of the night. Germany had a totally absurd tune and stage show in Jendrick’s “I Don’t Feel Hate” where one of the dancers wore a hand-shaped costume that switched back and forth between a peace sign and a fuck-you sign. I was quite pleased at the showing of black performers, and hopefully all of Europe’s Nazis were seething from it.

All in all, a fun night had by all, and the world needs more levity and joy like Eurovision brings.