2019

A love letter to Eurovision blighted by our lady of Madonna and the EBU’s inability to count votes. (Now with added Famous Last Words from my initial impressions. Embrace fallibility! Perhaps that should have been the slogan for this year’s contest.)

⁰¹ Cyprus

B: “Baby I’m all in tonight.” That’s deep. Literally, if not figuratively.

A: The opening minute of this production definitely has a tossing and turning quality to it that the lyrics recognise, meaning they’re well matched. The whole thing’s cleverly… plotted, if I can put it that way, with certain tropes being repeated where appropriate. Tamta’s vocals sit amidst the resounding brass and percussion comfortably enough, but the studio version doesn’t even need close inspection to realise how processed they are. Terrible diction.

V: “The press usually refers to Tamta as a fashion icon.” Not on this occasion. She’s hanging on by a thread in the semi, but sounds and looks much more comfortable in the final. The choreography though is strangely muted and lethargic, like they’re doing a run-through at half speed. Nice geometric graphics, but the ‘replay-replay-replay’ camera effect never works.

⁰² Montenegro

B: Surely they’re all far too young to be with anyone experiencing the sort of problems typified by “I was ready / To give up but / Now you came”. Unless their fledgling musical careers are being sponsored by sugar daddies.

A: The original was bland, but this is a textbook example of ethnoing something up to zero effect. It’s a lot cleaner, but it’s no better, and feels as cheap and listless as ever. The voices blend nicely enough, but the subject matter alone renders at least four of them redundant.

V: Lots of ambling around the stage in search of some proper choreography, but it sounds as good as it was ever going to. The outfits look like the result of a 24-hour collection challenge on Project Runway. One of the blondes takes a totter on the line “Falling”, appropriately. I wonder if it’s the same one who’s the only one who doesn’t sing the final note but is instead relegated to ensuring the rest of them don’t fall arse over tit off the front of the stage.

⁰³ Finland

B: “There’s something you should know / That I can’t sing…” is perhaps the most appropriate opening to any Eurovision entry, as it turns out. What with that and the title, it doesn’t do much to win your confidence.

A: “Darude’s résumé of accolades” does not include this. Festive filler at best, it’s hard to imagine he expended much time or creative energy either devising or honing it. The chorus is the musical and lyrical nadir of a song that doesn’t have a zenith to begin with.

V: For the type of song this is it has zero energy – they can’t even get the überfans to clap along. “The charismatic [Sebastian] Rejman will bring a fresh vitality and admirable live element” to the performance that bears an uncanny resemblance to being off his glassy-eyed face. His vocals are flat and, ironically, detached. There’s an amusing shot where he has his back to camera and is adjusting his mike box thing and it looks like he’s scratching his arse, which pretty much sums this up.

⁰⁴ Poland

B: “Love me now! Love me now! / Harder and harder” probably accounts for the “Fire of love! / Burns in you, burns in me” bit. Accompanied by the slightly creepy, misogynistic overtones of the video it does a good job of distorting what is in essence a rather romantic set of lyrics. But then the official bio bigs up their cover of Enjoy the Silence like it’s the second coming of music, so maybe misrepresentation is the running theme.

A: Far more personality and far more competent than I initially gave it credit for. Strings are used throughout to great effect, crackling away in the first verse as a perfect metaphor. The xylophone in the last chorus is a fantastically subtle inclusion as well. The śpiewokrzyk (“which means ‘white voice’ or ‘screaming sing’,” we’re told) is an acquired taste though, and I still don’t understand why they all follow the same line rather than harmonising. Despite being superficially so different, the result still puts me in mind of early-to-mid-’80s Bananarama. The English bits are largely unintelligible.

V: Polish folk Carmen Miranda cosplay. The girls sound good, if not great, in what is a rather hands-off performance: not only do they themselves keep things pretty static, but any hint of movement and the cameras switch to ponderous shots of the audience and the hall, only cutting back once Tulia are firmly in place at their next mark. The colours work well, but the performance otherwise lacks the warmth and passion it needs to make a significant impact.

⁰⁵ Slovenia

B: “Is it necessary for everything to have a meaning?” the English version of the song asks. Well, no, but it’s nice that these lyrics have more than their fair share. “Vedno se ne vidi zvezd / Sam ostani sebi zvest / Ne govori mi oprosti” is sound advice in any language, with “You can’t always see the stars / Just stay true to who you are / Stop apologising to me” being just as good.

A: Veritable soundscape, this. The instrumental version’s a joy to behold, with the arrangement unfurling like a flower. (I had no idea a Spanish guitar was briefly thrown into the mix in the second verse.) Elements of it, dare I say, have echoes of the Pet Shop Boys, while the opening, as a friend of mine pointed out, mimics Bowie’s This is Not America. The ethereal vocals suit the feel of the piece, but I almost wish they weren’t there so I could just cocoon myself in the music. That there’s so little to distinguish between the verses and the chorus remains problematic in pop terms, but it again feels right within the bubble universe of the song itself.

V: The interdependent nature of the lyrics is reflected in the performance, which, however, verges at times on co-dependent. The few moments where either of them smile, or come as close to it as they’re ever going to, are the only ones that reassure you she isn’t in some sort of Stockholm-syndromesque thrall to the man who abducted her from her bedroom as a child. The performance, like the song, is self-contained; the only concession to context is Zala’s little wave at the end. Apart from that we’re given very little access to their world, despite the CATS-like camerawork. The vocals are noticeably flatter in the final.
FLW: “My guess is it’ll do extremely well or bomb.”

⁰⁶ Czech Republic

B: Love the nudge-nudge quality of “There’s not much between us now / D’you know what I mean?” Respect too for unashamedly stretching “weren’t” out into two syllables and getting away with it.

A: Another solid production you only really appreciate the intricacies of when you strip away the vocals to reveal the music underneath. It very comfortably sits on a fence with contemporary on one side and throwback on the other. Lead singer and 30-something teenager Albert Černý’s voice is very easy-fit.

V: And exactly the same live as in studio (albeit a semitone or whatever lower, and a tad slower – the first of a number of entries this year to pull the same trick). He’s as easy on the eye as his voice is on the ear. For the second year running the Czechs make simple but in Eurovision terms innovative use of the cameras and stage, with split screens and solid colours standing out in an engaging performance.
FLW: “I do wonder if it’s the sort of thing the juries will turn their collective nose up at.”

⁰⁷ Hungary

B: It’s so sweet that gyönyörű napok is translated as ‘jolly lovely days’ in the English imagining of the Hungarian on the official site. Very true to the milieu.

A: I could slide up and down those guitar strings all day. They produce an echoing resonance in the verses whose crispness is offset by the fug of the bass, and they’re my favourite element of the arrangement. The chorus remains problematic, primarily for not really being one, but also because the strings are pitched so high that it feels stringent and intrudes on the intimacy. Joci’s vocals are as expertly measured but at the same time as impassioned and full of emotion as ever.

V: The speckled gold backdrop suits this down to the ground in a way that the passing parade of guillotined heads really doesn’t. Joci puts in a fine turn, as you’d expect, but perhaps because he’s on stage alone he can’t weave quite the same magic as he did with Origo and things fall a little flat. Having said that, he can still walk away from the performance with his head attached high.

⁰⁸ Belarus

B: I worked on Eurovision in Tallinn BEFORE ZENA WAS EVEN BORN. There’s something endearingly ironic about the line “I should let go mistakes of me”.

A: More squeaky acoustics! They’re indicative of a composition that’s better than you expect it to be – the flute or piccolo or whatever it is that floats by in the second verse and the almost imperceptible twangly thing (a domra?) on the outer edge of the music in parts being other highlights – but the more straightforward and therefore far less interesting chorus undermines things somewhat. The fact that even in the studio version Zena’s vocal limits are exposed tends to have that effect as well, especially towards the end, where they become most obvious (and by which point the song is well and truly starting to outstay its welcome). One of Belarus’ better entries on the whole though.

V: Visually a bit of a hodge-podge – perhaps accounting for why I didn’t even notice the dancers the first time round, and largely ignored them again here – and the elastic band of Zena’s vocals is stretched to breaking point before two minutes is up. She more or less holds it together, though it frays at the edges. I was surprised it qualified, if for no other reason than it had ‘place-holder’ stamped all over it from the very beginning. It’s a lot more fingernails-on-the-blackboard come Saturday night. Nobody gonna like that, no.

FLW: “In that field of generally much more interesting stuff I can’t see it getting enough support from any quarter to make the final.”

⁰⁹ Serbia

B: Does the “Kruna je tvoja” bit make this the before to Srbuk’s after? I’m still not sure what those two lines in English are doing there.

A: Yet more glistening guitar. Makes me happy. In a straightforward head-to-head with Hungary this wins hands down, which I’ll admit is not something I could (or wanted to) see at first, because I felt Kruna was more of an exercise in ticking boxes and resting on your laurels. Which, to be fair, I’d still say is what it does – it just does it very effectively. So much so that not even the inevitable explosion of electric guitar manages to annoy me. If there’s anything about it that underwhelms me in context it’s that Nevena’s voice, while powerful, doesn’t have much colour to it. The whole thing just feels a bit too content to be unremarkable when there’s potential there for it to have been lifted at least a little bit above that.

V: She’s got a tight set to her mouth, hasn’t she? It makes her look faintly annoyed most of the time. Perhaps it’s the weight of her silver jewellery dragging her forward and giving her that awkward posture that’s annoying her. In any case, she’s a vocal powerhouse. I just wish the performance radiated a bit of warmth, since the staging is more ice queen than anything else.

¹⁰ Belgium

B: The message of this song, like its English, is rather unclear – I had no idea it was a rallying cry to the kiddies to get political about the state of the world, assuming it was a more run-of-the-vassamillet ballad about some girl. “I came to fight over you” (rather than ‘for you’) conjures up unlikely images of fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked Eliot squaring off against the captain of his school’s football team in the yard at lunchtime. Then again, given what the bio says about Eliot’s relationship with the composer (“Pierre invited me to his home… [He] made me… and I loved it straight away”) maybe it’s not the school jock he’s fighting over.

A: It’s not hard to pinpoint this as coming from the same stable as City Lights, but it’s not as good as its forerunner. The verses promise more than can ever be delivered by the Bastille Lite chorus they’re saddled with, which feels like it should have a tent erected around it and be euthanased as soon as it stumbles across the finishing line.

V: He really does look about 12. While on the whole this isn’t as underwhelming as I remembered it being, nothing much about the performance actually works, with the drums and half-hearted choreography being the most egregious choices. But then there’s no getting round the fact that Eliot just has no power to his voice, so it’s all a bit academic. Maybe in a few years he’ll have grown into it. If nothing else, the Eurovision experience gave him a sweet, occasionally Taron-Egerton-gazing-at-Hugh-Jackman bromance with Miki, so that’s something.

¹¹ Georgia

B: Who knew a song with lines like “Wounds! Barbed wire!” would be about the healing power of music? The inherent what-fucking-language-is-thatness only adds to the discombobulation.

A: Rather like Belgium, this starts with a promise that fizzles out as soon as we’re dragged backwards through that hedge of a chorus – if it can be called that, since the song eschews typical structure in favour of build and atmosphere. Which does make it more interesting (than Belgium, anyway) and imbues it with more character than many a Eurovision entry, but it’s still a musical journey I’m taken on grudgingly, like a teenager on a Sunday drive. It feels like something that would play over harrowing scenes in a Georgian film about the 2008 conflict with Russia. Oto’s bone-crushing vocals suit it perfectly, but are no easier to take for that, and when the chanting monks come in at the end it loses me completely.

V: The stage is sort of Switzerland 09 via Ireland 17 on the way to a prison camp, isn’t it. Quite striking visually, and indeed vocally, with Oto risking an aneurysm as he gets carried away towards the climax. It’s not the most pitch-perfect performance, and everyone is ever so slightly off-tempo in parts, not that improving either would have made much of a difference – it’s still a song and presentation it’s very hard to know what to make of.

¹² Australia

B: For a song with so few words, it neatly encapsulates a relationship with depression and how inescapable it must feel.

A: The interesting marriage of dark synths and twinkling strings here, paired with those floating vocals and the rousing finale, tell the story just as effectively as the lyrics do. The sense though, somewhat like the Ukrainian Gravity back in 2013 (perhaps it’s in the name?), is of something that forms part of a bigger narrative we don’t get to experience. A number from a contemporary opera, maybe. It doesn’t feel incomplete, just removed from context. Unorthodox, anyway, but no less successful for it.

V: Quite [the] spectacular. Kate is a star and no mistake. (Her backing vocalists deserve a lot of credit as well.) There are a few moments here and there where she tips into theatrics, but that suits the ‘this is from a musical’ feel of the piece I suppose, and in any event her vocals are astounding for someone bobbing about like a bladder on a stick. The ending is the only true goose-bump moment of the year. The team get extra points from me, someone who hates the pretence of magic, for not being afraid to reveal the secret behind their trick and indeed making a virtue of it.

¹³ Iceland

B: Best artist profile ever! So many quotable quotes. “Dance, basically, or die!” The lyrics are equally entertaining, perversely, with the entire second verse being a joy to behold in the Eurovision context both in Icelandic (“Alhliða blekkingar / Einhliða refsingar / Auðtrúa aumingjar / Flóttinn tekur enda / Tómið heimtir alla”) and the wonderfully rendered English version (“Universal obfuscation / Unilateral execration / From gullible delusion / Escape will be curtailed / The void will swallow all”).

A: There’s more of a straightforward pop sensibility here than in the Australian entry – it’s got a shamelessly signposted key change, for goodness’ sake – but again there’s some interesting back-to-backs while on the surface seeming so unalike. Here the high-voltage feel of the synths is as well matched to Matthias’ eye-popping vocals in the verses as it is to the falsetto trappings of the chorus. The whole thing is very clever for feeling simultaneously so subversive and yet so mainstream, making it the perfect showcase for Hatari’s manifesto.

V: Talk about performance artists! Arresting visuals; perhaps a little too dark at times, and not exactly the “nihilistic journey to the centre of the earth” we were promised, but well-balanced in the end with the giant head on the backdrop. Though painfully exacerbated in the final, Matthías struggles to keep time even in the semi-final, but it’s Klemens’ falsetto that is (and always was) the problem live – it really doesn’t sound good in the semi, and only just passes muster in the final.

¹⁴ Estonia

B: Plenty of cod philosophy to chew over here. “I’ve hit highs and I’ve hit lows” could be a one-line summary of virtually every performance of this song.

A: The acoustics strumming throughout this are very Stig Rästa, but I’d wager the Avician sensibilities are Victor’s influence. For something that wears its musical heart on its sleeve so unashamedly it invites less derision than it arguably deserves, since as derivative as it is it’s still very solidly put together. But then it’s not really the music that’s the issue: it’s Victor himself. As cute and affable as he is, and however enthusiastic his embracing of Eurovision and Estonia, his voice just isn’t one you want to hear singing a song like this on repeat. Three minutes is quite enough.

V: Victor’s right to give that “uff!” at the end of the performance in the semi – it could have been a lot worse. Does that mean it was good? No, not really. I’m frequently astonished by the choices that are made by performers and delegations in that overthinking period between national selections and the contest itself; here it’s the decision to pitch up that first chorus and later give Victor (who, let’s be honest, has a pretty reedy voice at the best of times) a strangulating long note. They’re clearly meant to pep up what is a bog-standard performance, particularly in the context of the second half of its semi, and yet against all the odds they worked. Unlike the green-screen moment, which looked only slightly less cheap than it did in Eesti Laul. The performance in the final is a step up, but the camera fail feels like a reminder that even when it’s better it’s still not brilliant.

¹⁵ Portugal

B: I suppose “Eu sei que a saudade tá morta / Quem mandou a flecha fui eu” is appropriate in a no-one-to-blame-but-himself kind of way.

A: This is what happens when the Portuguese truly embrace out-of-the-box thinking. It’s discordant from the off, which is of course why I love it. I can completely understand people not taking to it, but there’s so much going on in the music that’s so worthy that I’m still dismayed the juries snubbed it even more than the televoters. It’s one of the most fascinating things the contest has given us in a long time, not least because, as I noted early on, the vocal arrangement isn’t actually all that far removed from fado: you could uproot it and transplant it into a much more traditional arrangement and voila, textbook Portuguese entry. (I’m glad Conan didn’t.)

V: It’s bizarre and disappointing how well this came across in Festival da Canção and how poorly executed it feels from start to finish here. It’s too dark; it’s too red; the costumes are distracting; the dancing looks improvised; and the am-dram is ramped up to a million, especially at the end, which is completely misjudged. On the plus side, the vocals are probably the best they’ve ever been. That’s some small consolation.

¹⁶ Greece

B: I always thought that second line was “Make me feel itchless”. The ‘carelessness’ has always seemed wrong as well, but then the opening swathe of lyrics is one big question mark in terms of what it’s trying to say.

A: Bit of a reverberation chamber this, with predictably diffuse results. Although I was initially impressed with it – arguably because it was Greece doing something different for a change – I soon came to feel it was overproduced and trying too hard. Not that I dislike it, but it’s always more of a chore to sit through than I hope it will be. Katerine’s voice, with its “dark sonic timbres” and “trademark soulful rasp”, is interesting without being entirely appealing.

V: Not quite as misjudged as Portugal, but it gives it a run for its money. There’s so much happening here it’s no surprise it defeated the audience, with the fencing and the beach ball and the rhythmic gymnastics all getting lost in a mix that’s clearly meant to mean something, but god knows what that might be. Visually things only come together when the centrepiece stops looking like the tip of a condom and the petals on the screens unfurl around it, while vocally the only memorable moment is the high note Katerine sustains for what feels like forever. The backings sound good or terrible depending on what function they’re serving at any given point.

¹⁷ San Marino

B: Considering how things turned out in Tel Aviv, that opening stanza really ought to end with the line “Who cares that I’m out of tune when I’m prepared to pay”. And not that we were labouring under any delusions otherwise, but the inclusion of the Turkish numbers (as opposed to Italian) cements the fact the Sammarinese have sold themselves to the highest bidder without even a pretence of a connection to the place itself.

A: Although this is terrible in many, many ways, it’s also a whole lot better than it has any right to be. My feelings towards it are very much of a piece with those I harbour for Hungary’s equally cheesy Dance with Me from 2009. Serhat is rapidly assuming an Austin Powers-like status in my head as a character rather than an actual person.

V: As feel-good as this is, there’s no denying it’s the single worst vocal performance in perhaps the entire history of Eurovision. Serhat’s not even pulling a Jemini and singing the right notes in the wrong key – he’s simply, or rather astoundingly, out of tune. The fact hardly anyone seemed to care is depressing, since apart from anything else the performance in general is underwhelming. Maybe the millions thrown at the music video made me expect too much of the Tel Aviv staging, but where’s the colour? Where’s the spectacle? Throw in some weak backing vocalists and voi-la-la: appalling. It’s less of an assault on the ears in the final, but it was dead to me before it had even qualified.

FLW: “Not the kind of thing that’s likely to score well.”

¹⁸ Armenia

B: Releasing a single shortly before Eurovision entitled Half a Goddess seems like underselling yourself, but perhaps she was just being honest. “Are you from those who swallow?” is an interesting question. Garik Papoyan’s somewhat garbled (and Srbuk’s generally indecipherable) lyrics nevertheless do the subject matter justice, hitting home with lines like “You’re no more a king / Cos I was your crown” and the entire second verse. “You knew that my heart wasn’t small / But somehow you came and filled it all” represents a pleasing blurring of the lines of emotional culpability.

A: This composition feels like a musical tug-of-war, which is appropriate in context but doesn’t do much to earn my affection. Admiration, yes, to some extent – the arrangement is surprisingly layered and effectively punctuated by the brass and balalaika and fragile, tinkling piano. Srbuk’s vocals match them for both subtlety and power, too; the latter especially when she lets rip after the key change, which musically feels shoehorned in even if the lyrics justify it. The result is less than the sum of its parts somehow and leaves me feeling unsatisfied every time I listen to it.

V: White-girl dreadlock alert. Srbuk’s voice cracks right when she doesn’t want it to, sadly. Otherwise she’s pretty good, if all alone on a very empty-looking stage that only expresses any individual character when the lights shine in from the back and give it an industrial, Cell Block H kind of feel. Have we had any explanation yet as to why the footage for the middle eight is lifted in its entirety from one of the rehearsals, with an obviously empty arena? Or was it an artistic choice – something to do with isolation or loneliness? Not that many of the artistic choices here actually work; not even the now standard complex Armenian camerawork (which isn’t nearly as complex as in 2016 or 2017, of course) can do much to engage you as the viewer.

FLW: “I expect it to be staged well, especially following last year’s non-qualification.”

¹⁹ Ireland

B: Lucky girl if she associates the number 22 with him. It’s refreshing that the artist profile on Eurovision.tv doesn’t even try to hide the fact that to all intents and purposes Sarah was plucked from shop-girl obscurity. In a way it complements the entry far better than if they’d spent endless paragraphs pretending she’s someone she’s not.

A: Given the feel of the piece overall, and the amount of ambient noise accompanying the bass there at the beginning in particular, the only thing that’s missing from the arrangement is the hiss and crackle of vinyl. Still, that opening is the most engaging bit of the song: you know it’s peaked (for want of a better word) and has nothing else to offer as soon as that pedestrian chorus kicks in. It’s competent enough, but lacks any sort of drive or ambition. Third-single B-side material, at a push. Sarah’s voice has a dusky quality to it that’s rather nice, but again, this is hardly material that’s going to showcase it to much effect.

V: This staging is all about distracting the audience from the shortcomings of the song itself, and does a very good job of it – its pop-art stylings are among the most striking of the contest. Sarah, who is fractionally ahead of the backing track for pretty much the entire song, doesn’t have the wherewithal to convince me she’s enjoying herself while performing, even though she clearly found the Eurovision experience as a whole a right craic. She’s a little bit too mechanical and her eyes dart about too much to convince me she’s doing anything more than putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to swallow too many of the words. All that said, it’s as good as it was ever going to get, so kudos for the whole silk purse thing.

²⁰ Moldova

B: Nothing beats an opening line that laughs in the face of flatulence.

A: Quick, someone open the portal to whatever Transnistrian timewarp this escaped from and send it back to the 1980s! An echoing void of musical mediocrity.

V: This staging is all about distracting the audience from the shortcomings of the song itself, and doesn’t work. I mean, it might if we hadn’t seen it all before. No disrespect to artist Kseniya Simonova, whose talent is evident, but once was enough, and I’m still shaking my head in disbelief that the Moldovans thought it was a good idea to so shamelessly copy what the Ukrainians did back in 2011. It’s also unfortunate, if in a serves-you-right kind of way, that the focus on the sand means the magic moment where Anna vanishes from stage goes almost entirely unnoticed. But then she might as well be absent the whole time, however decent her vocals. I only have one question: what’s with her diphthongs? She overeggs all her /eɪ/s.

²¹ Switzerland

B: That bio makes him sound like a nice chap. The grammar Nazi in me twitches, then spasms as I read through the lyrics, but I imagine it’s how the kids talk these days. Or at least someone 10 years older trying to emulate them. Dreadful.

A: And yet they work well enough in context. This ploughs much the same furrow as Cyprus, but while it isn’t as nuanced a composition – nothing, including Luca, tries any harder than it needs to, and the point’s being laboured both musically and lyrically well before the three minutes are up – it’s arguably more effective on the whole.

V: At least Herr Hänni’s consistent: he’s not really any better than he has to be, but that’s more than enough here. This is the most successful overall visual of the contest in my book, with everything coming together perfectly on screen. The letterboxing’s a nice touch that helps set it apart as well. It’s far and away the most competent package the Swiss have brought to the contest in decades.

²² Latvia

B: Repetitive, but evocative.

A: “Vintage, stripped back, romantic.” A gorgeous landscape of music to wrap yourself up in. Things perhaps get a little twee with the glockenspiel, and despite doing what I criticised their last entry for failing to do – ramping things up in the home straight, albeit in a low-key kind of way – it still feels too long. The sameness of the lyrics doesn’t help. Sabīne pronounces every single ‘love’ as ‘low’.

V: Beautifully understated. Sabīne has never looked prettier or more personable. I wish they’d taken her hat as a cue and injected some green into the colour scheme, or for that matter given it a colour scheme, since it sounds lovely but looks unnecessarily muted. You can sense the audience losing interest without even seeing them, and you can’t exactly blame their minds for wandering.

²³ Romania

B: According to the bio, the message of the song is that “love becomes dangerous when it is given to the wrong person”. In this case I think it’s the protagonist, who’s whiny and obsessed and clearly not good at dealing with break-ups. “Loving you is a hard price to pay” is nevertheless a great line and a great hook.

A: Suitably brooding, and surprisingly successful for a song that doesn’t have an obvious chorus. It doesn’t do much that’s all that different from Armenia, which I guess explains the fate they shared, but to me this is the better proposition of the two. Ester feels more… invested in it. Without doing much that’s worthy of individual mention the song leaves me with the impression of being one of the classier entries Romania’s given us.

V: The visuals – and the entire concept of the thing – are otherwise so impressive that the flaming backdrop feels out of place for being so obvious and, frankly, cheap-looking. Ester puts in a good turn (as do her backing vocalists) in what is quite an artistic and considered performance. If I were them I’d feel pretty hard done by missing out on the final, but that’s the luck of the draw.

²⁴ Denmark

B: Leonora clearly has no time for politics because she’s obsessed with hooking up with her ex. That is if “Come over my long-lost friend / And work on a happy end” is anything to go by.

A: It’s all hay bales and farmyard innocence this, isn’t it. Wholesome in a way that flirts with proselytising but ultimately preserves its charming modesty.

V: Possibly a compound rather than a farm, where the cult leader has a dozen wives. This one wearing no bra. It’s all very sweet though, and makes you want to sway from side to side with them. Leonora’s toothy grin at the end is the icing on the pretty much all-sugar cake. After Romania’s BDSM Victoriana the backing singers’ deconstructed maid outfits look a bit frumpy.

²⁵ Sweden

B: I’m still not buying that explanation for the use of ‘lit’.

A: “John Lundvik is an incredibly authentic singer who, with intimacy and great musicality [but clearly no modesty – Ed.], raises the level of the Swedish music scene.” That’s pushing it when this song comes in an envelope that’s very obviously not being pushed or prodded in any direction. It’s as slick a production as you’d expect from the Swedes, but again rather a soulless one, which is both ironic and a shame considering the gospel overtones. This might be more surmountable if the arrangement itself wasn’t so stop-start. I maintain the key change is one of the clunkiest we’ve heard in Eurovision in a long time.

V: Put some lights on! There’s no room for spontaneity in this performance, and as a result it keeps you at arm’s length, as so many recent Swedish entries have. They won’t learn that over-directing these things alienates the audience rather than drawing them in. Even the vocals, as good as they are, struggle to be as uplifting as they should be until the final chorus. And it’s only latterly in the final performance that the sheen of sterility is perforated by some real warmth and connection.

²⁶ Austria

B: PÆNDA, we are told, passionately plays with stylistic restrictions and narrowing genres in her music, which avoids pretentiousness or cliché while still leaving room for vulnerability. The latter of which at least Limits has in spades – so to learn that it’s a soul-searching treatise on artistic burnout is rather odd, particularly when the second verse (which is the best, and indeed most correct, bit of the whole song) points to something far more interpersonal. In fact it’s a disappointment. Why are we meant to care about the creative strait-jacket she’s overdramatising?

A: See, Ireland, there’s your crackle. This is another absorbing soundscape that’s got the same sort of ideas as Slovenia, but not quite the same ease or finesse. Pænda’s fragile, on-edge vocals complement it well, producing a song that’s more nuanced than you initially give it credit for. It took me a good few listens before I really appreciated it.

V: But it was always going to be a hard sell. It’s a bold move to give such a minimalist song a staging in which at times there’s almost nothing to see, but it doesn’t work – not when the artist herself fails to convince you there’s any emotion left behind the words.

FLW: “This could be one of the surprises of the year.”

²⁷ Croatia

B: One of Roko’s greatest achievements is coming second, apparently. Jacques Houdek mentoring him feels like grooming in light of these lyrics, which inevitably sound better in Croatian.

A: Not quite as triggering as Stay, but still a composition I want to burn with fire. The heavy-handed Casio keyboardness of it all, especially in the instrumental break, irritates me no end. It just sounds so cut-price and dated (which made it perfect for this year’s Dora, alas).

V: My, what a big mouth our singing Ferrero Rocher has. You can see what Jacques saw in him. Gaydar just exploded. This mightn’t be My Friend-level camp, but it’s the cheesiest performance of the year by some way. The thrill of discovering the song’s been remixed lasts only as long as it takes to realise it’s even more boring than it was to start with.

²⁸ Malta

B: I quite like the colours as metaphor here, although when you think about it the song paints an unexpected picture of a relationship in freefall and the narrator’s desperation to cling onto it.

A: “Her voice is described by many as memorable and powerful, with a breathtaking breaking point.” By which I assume they mean the squeaky glide Michela produces on certain words. It does add character to her voice, which at times betrays its youth. This is an interesting composition, with the middle eight pinpointing that the tropics we’re in are definitely more Central American than the odd twang of Hawaiian guitar buried elsewhere in the mix might suggest. It all slinks along pleasingly but somewhat pedestrianly until the last half a minute, when it finally coalesces and produces one of the best endings to any of this year’s entries.

V: Michela sings well [enough] but her naïveté gets the better of her whenever she’s required to embrace the staging. Which is fun, and obviously colourful, if not entirely successful, with shadows occasionally obscuring things and certain shots (like the overhead one of them on the cloud) just not working. With a savvier performer at the helm and more tautly choreographed, in every sense, it feels like it could have gone places.

FLW: “Doing well for itself in the final.”

²⁹ Lithuania

B: The lyrics as a whole are at odds with the music here – leading into and in the chorus itself, lines like “We got a love that can’t be caged / Come on, let your feelings out… / Run wild” presuppose an energy and drive that they and indeed any other parts of the song singularly fail to deliver. At least there’s fnaar value in “Open your mouth / Don’t worry… / Just try it (oohh)”. I’m sure many a typical Eurovision fan would be happy to oblige if it’s Jurij doing the offering.

A: Adult contemporary has never sounded so bland.

V: Fuckable face, zero budget. I wonder what he used the pocket on his T-shirt for.

³⁰ Russia

B: The word ‘hyperbole’ might have been invented for Sergey’s official bio, but that’s Russia for you. (That whole paragraph about Poodle-Strudel is dripping in the queerest sort of bathos imaginable. Sehr gay, natch. Maybe that explains all the swallowing hard and why his throat is on fire.) Whereas the Czechs get away with making “weren’t” two syllables, “Tears aren’t quiet things” is one of the worst lines in any song this year. The lyrics as a whole are terrible, really, with only the bridge providing respite.

A: Not quite as triggering as The Dream, but still a composition whose self-importance I long to puncture. As you’d expect of the offspring of Philip Kirkorov and Dimitris Kontopoulos, the melodrama’s ramped up to 11, with stabbing strings and a cavernous production that does nothing to flatter the listener’s intelligence, signposting at every point what the lyrics are already telling us and corralling us into pens labelled with the appropriate responses. It just sounds so vulgar and overblown.

V: Sergey is once again the best thing about his entry, and is in fact better singing it live than he is in the studio. The staging’s a bit too been-there-done-that to have much impact, and the plexiglas shower cubicle never looks any good.

³¹ Albania

B: It’s like an exercise in name-checking their previous entries: mall, identitet, zemrën le peng… The line “Sa mall, pak shpresë” seemed to sum up the song’s chances to me when I first heard it – so much yearning, so little hope. I’m still irrationally peeved that the tokës of the title’s pronounced with a schwa rather than a short ‘e’. Don’t ask me why.

A: What an oddity the instrumental version is – it’s pitched so that when the woodwind comes in it sounds like it’s being played in completely the wrong key. There’s no time to give this much thought, however, as other elements keep popping into existence that vie for your attention, like the unexpected acoustic line and the vocal synths, and indeed the embedded vocals. All of which make for an arresting three minutes it’s something of a shame to smother with Jonida’s vocals, as cracking as they are.

V: The stage has never looked so barren or Portuguese, and the song feels huge but inconsequential. Jonida, our socialist flamenco dancer with the luminous teeth, surprises for losing it a bit towards the end of the semi. It’s not as awkwardly awry as I recall it being though, and in any case she’s more measured in the final. Until she bottles the last note. The backing vocalists are phenomenal.

³² Norway

B: “I am dancing with the fairies now” – it’s like it was made for Eurovision! Uncanny.

A: And unnatural. The moment our Fred starts on the joiking is the moment this loses me every time. Apart from that, it’s a well-produced if not particularly imaginative piece of eurotrash.

V: Mr Buljo both looks and sounds like he’s squirrelling away nuts for the winter, but Tom and Alexandra are perfect from start to finish. It’s one of those little moments of Eurovision magic where something works despite itself. I’ll never love it as a song, but credit where it’s due, they nail it as a performance.

³³ The Netherlands

B: While thematically Arcade sits on the same shelf as On a Sunday, lines like “Loving you is a losing game” cut to the bone and make the Romanian entry seem rather petulant in comparison. There’s a real sense of an experience having been lived through; a rawness to it. For a song with relatively few words, it says a lot.

A: I love how almost everything in the composition at first feels designed to serve Duncan’s voice, providing a backdrop in which the individual elements often do their own thing, eschewing the musical line taken by the vocals. The distance and discord are maintained for much of the song, and it’s only when the strings are introduced that you can feel all the parts being pulled together towards that climax. Clever stuff, very modestly done.

V: A boy, a piano, a song – it’s as simple as that. Still not sure what the point of the light is though. Is it a literal light-bulb moment? His nerves see him tense up a little in the semi, but something clicks in the final and it all just works the little bit better it needs to.

³⁴ North Macedonia

B: “All the rules are made for you to lose” is keenly observed in the context of a feminist anthem, while also serving to side-eye the system that some might argue was introduced solely to keep the likes of the former Former Yugoslav Republic out of the final at Eurovision. Win-win!

A: Not, I would have thought, the obvious contender for jury favourite, as accomplished as it is. It goes without saying I’m sold as soon as that almost melancholy cello comes in, and up until the not-exactly-subtle last minute or so the whole thing has a timeless, quasi-soundtrack quality where string is very much the thing. Which is lucky, because Tamara’s voice sounds like an extension of the music in places. I do like the brief bit towards the end where the bass drum’s allowed to keep time for a full bar or two.

V: Glorious vocals, hideous dress. (It’s a nicer shade of green in the reflections, actually.) The floating heads aren’t especially more effective here than they were for Hungary, but I suppose they had to plug the gap with something. Cute to see Tamara still hasn’t mastered /θ/ in the 10 years she’s been away. Tank you!

³⁵ Azerbaijan

B: He doesn’t deal well with being dumped, does he. Lyrically this is the exact opposite of Belgium. One of endless alumni of The Voice Ukraine, which seems to be a breeding ground for Eurovision entrants from the CIS countries, “Chingiz loves the company of his dog”, which sounds very much like a ’60s euphemism. And “he always enjoys getting a breath of fresh air while backpacking” is surely shorthand for ‘gets his tits out on Instagram at every opportunity’.

A: The muffled, underwater synthiness here is neatly offset by the whiff of the souk, as Terry Wogan was wont to label anything vaguely Turkish-sounding. Great composition overall, albeit one that could do with injecting a bit more urgency into things – tempo-wise it always feels like it’s dragging its feet a bit to me. And no one outside of fandom will have noticed, but that awkward edit at the start still bothers me. I love that one of the composers is known only as Hostess.

V: Which might explain the sex robots. (You just know the rest of the time they have silicon hand attachments.) The mugham ably proves that Chingiz is no slouch as a vocalist, so the fact he’s shadowed throughout the rest of the song is presumably just for double-tracking effect. The lighting often makes him look really tired and is too dark for most of the performance. The final stretch is great though; up to that point the (again) lower key and slightly slower tempo make it feel sluggish.

³⁶ Germany

B: I hope whoever thought of calling two women singing a song called Sister S!sters was summarily shot. Given lyrics like “I tried to hold you under / But honey you kept breathing”, perhaps Soror!c!de would have been more fitting. I’m not convinced by the act of contrition, either – the whole “I see flames in your eyes” thing sounds like Plan B rather than repentance to me.

A: The mercifully but suspiciously curtailed music box moments that bookend these three minutes make it sound as though the song’s from a horror film of the same name, probably involving an evil doll that murders everyone in the little girl’s family (starting, presumably, with her sister). Even if it doesn’t conjure up that sort of association, it’s a vaguely creepy inclusion in a song that’s already got you going ‘huh?’ in terms of what it’s saying. Nice harmonies at least between Carlotta and Laurita – who are utterly different and yet both super-Deutsch at the same time – which, again, considering the subject matter, is ironic. The swelling strings give the song some much-needed lift, but while they and a few other elements of the music cheer me, I can never muster much enthusiasm for the song as a whole.

V: It says a lot that I’m more interested in the Welsh flag and slightly embarrassed-looking Spanish fans behind the girls than I am in their performance – which is perfect in terms of their vocals, but lacks any real concept. Odd choice to stick them on the catwalk.

³⁷ Israel

B: I’m aware this is about Kobi’s personal struggles, but beyond that I couldn’t tell you what sort in particular. (Maybe that’s the point?) In one breath it veers from Celine Dion Because You Loved Me territory to the insinuation of a far less healthy relationship. Perhaps because it’s all so unclear, I can’t determine whether ‘hugging the water when it snows’ is a surprisingly philosophical moment of poetry or something that got lost in translation.

A: Quite nice to listen to without the vocals, but even that only lasts for a minute in the ‘karaoke’ version. (The very idea!) The limp percussion, introduced late into the piece as if it’s actually meant to add something to it, is so dated it’s soul-sapping. “Someone…! Someone…!” is both the best bit of the song and the one that most obviously places it in an off-Broadway production whose all too brief run was swiftly forgotten about 25 years ago.

V: Aww, they’re all singing along. Strange remix, which sounds like someone made it at home on their laptop. Israeli backing vocalist line-up! Fake tears! Such a shame we were deprived of seeing this score zero in the jury vote.

³⁸ United Kingdom

B: He keeps telling us it’s bigger, but I see no evidence of it.

A: The gospel organ is kept very low in the mix here, which is perhaps for the best – it helps prevent the whole thing from tipping over into happy-clappy praise-Jesus territory. Not that bog-standard reality-TV big ballad is much better, but even so. It aims for worthy and uplifting but never really gets beyond tired and uninvolving. You can see why John Lundvik had no qualms about offloading it.

V: “Growing up he worked at McDonalds, but always dreamt of being a singer.” Bless. His worst vocal to date. A performance in which basically nothing happens for the better part of two-and-a-half minutes, this manages to out-bore Lithuania. Sahlene and friends give it some desperately needed wellie, but it’s dead in the water by that point.
FLW: “The song’s two-a-penny but decent enough to deliver the UK a [slightly] better-than-usual result…”

³⁹ France

B: The combination of the French and English here is perhaps the most successful of any of the linguistic melanges Eurovision’s given us, feeling organic and speaking to the duality at the heart of Bilal’s story. His choosing roi over reine might be the only concession to subtlety in the whole thing.

A: Nice rolling piano throughout, but this stops being interesting – or stops you thinking it might prove to be – the moment the verse transitions to the chorus. Perhaps Madame Monsieur realised this themselves, which would explain the hip-hoppy bit that rounds each chorus out. (Not that it renders the thing any more appealing, mind you.) Strange that this ends in exactly the same way as the British entry, with the music simply stopping once the three minutes are up and one word adding the coda, but here it works and there it doesn’t.

V: MESSAGE! KEYWORD! VIRTUE! All very worthy, but all so very blatant. The Marvel superhero film set backdrop is tasteful, appropriately refined and towering, and gives court to the performance that unfolds. It’s all rather nice but doesn’t make me care about any of it in particular. The new version of the song brings it within a more comfortable range for Bilal, which is a good move, but also makes it sound less hopeful and more mired down in the issues rather than overcoming them.

⁴⁰ Italy

B: Amazing lyrics, as ever. I love everything about “Ciò che devi dire non l’hai detto / Tradire è una pallottola nel petto / Prendi tutta la tua carità / Menti a casa ma lo sai che lo sa / Su una sedia lei mi chiederà / Mi chiede come va, come va, come va”, plus the way “Penso più veloce per capire se domani tu mi fregherai” fits the music so well. As it all does, really.

A: Probably the most multi-faceted composition this year, and one of few that’s truly absorbing. The tremulous piano leading into the chorus, paired with the strings that then slide away as if reflecting Mahmood’s resignation and disappointment with his father; the tangent the middle eight strikes out on as it accompanies the lines in Arabic; the stretched and juddering synths as we head into the home straight: there’s so much to like. The only traditional element of the whole thing is Mahmood himself, who has that peculiar (or, to be more charitable, ‘distinctive’) kind of voice you hear a lot singing in Italian.

V: Striking backdrop. Sexy dancers, too, who were in unusually short supply this year. They appear slightly under-rehearsed, or at least not particularly well coordinated, but equally like they’d just flick you off if you mentioned it to them. Mahmood, for his part, does look a bit like he’s just popped in after his shift at the Chinese round the corner, but it doesn’t derail things. He’s as intense as expected, but that smile he cracks at the end when it looks like he’s not even going to give us that is a moment of pure delight.

FLW: “It may prove to be a little too categorical for its own good when it comes to the televoters.”

⁴¹ Spain

B: I love the notion of giving a reality TV winner a song that opens with the lines “Te compran porque te vendes / Te vendes porque te sobras” before adding “Te digo: hay otras cosas” – yes, Eurovision! I doubt only joy remained when that particular blindfold fell.

A: The death this died among the juries of Europe was entirely predictable. The bar-and-a-half of Spanish guitar goodness we get is the only real highlight of what is otherwise perfect (= terrible) Operación Triunfo-winning fare.

V: Almost literally throwing the kitchen sink in here. At the very least they should have dropped the wicker man, since it takes the focus off the flat-pack house prop, which is actually really good. Still, you can’t accuse them of not having ideas. Miki’s charming and on top of the vocals, and doing a great job as captain in urging the whole team on. The audience lap it up, as you might expect, and it makes for a stirring finale.

And so to the points...

1 point goes to Albania

2 points go to Slovenia

3 points go to Azerbaijan

4 points go to Serbia

5 points go to Romania

6 points go to Hungary

7 points go to Australia

8 points go to the Czech Republic

10 points go to Italy

and finally...

12 points go to...

The Netherlands!!!

The wooden spoon is awarded to Finland.