2020

Featuring, for the first and probably only time ever, my own running order. Because why not, it’s that kind of year: a 1956/1964 for the modern era.

⁰¹ Ireland

B: “They said you’re almost perfect but you talk too much” is fitting for a set of lyrics that tend to get lost in a jumble in the verses, while “Try to dumb it down a little, make sure that you’re in the middle / Rock it all you want but make it pop enough!” makes me wonder whether the entire undertaking was meant to be ironic given how MOR it ended up.

A: Not the sort of thing you’d expect to come out of Nashville (unless that’s where Katy Perry’s from?) (or lived about 10 years ago?). “We wanted something uptempo and triumphant, which centres around overcoming your difficulties in life and getting back up again” is unintentionally on point given the only live versions we got of it were dogged by strained vocals. Not sure about the “fresh, fun vision that encapsulates a modern Ireland” bit either – the drag and pull on the synths makes it feel like the song’s being dredged up from the past, and the way it ends it’s like three minutes of it struggling to swim up to the light and then being cut off just as it’s about to break the surface. Lesley’s vocals aren’t terrible but I still prefer the instrumental, which has a pleasing drive to it.

⁰² Belarus

B: “Ой, ты мама, ой нашто мне той, каго не выбірала?” makes it sound like this is the belated follow-up to the ham-fisted Belarusian entry from 2006. Needless to say this is poetry by comparison – arguably never more so than in the evocative opening line, “Заплятала восень ясну косамі ды распляла”, which somehow captures both the entire mood of the piece and the late glow of an Indian summer roundabout these parts.

A: Crackle! Echo! Ethereal backing vocals! Great harmonies, too, which get lost in the mix in the normal version. I’d not really thought about it before, but the music does a good job of setting the scene the lyrics then narrate, particularly in the opening verse and chorus. It’s certainly more nuanced than I realised, and displays a mix of [electronic] influences.

⁰³ Russia

B: Little Big tell us that they came up with the idea for this song in February during a vacation with the whole crew, which I can only assume involved a song camp with Aqua somewhere in Spain. The rhythm of “All you have to do is to be ready for some action now” makes for an effective hook, but honestly, the rest – connotations aside – could pass for a children’s song.

A: This isn’t half-bad when it ploughs its faux-Latino furrow musically. There are some cute touches to the composition, like the dinging bell, which only really pop out at you when you strip the thing of its vocals, but they (and everything else) tip it over into territory that’s tongue-in-cheek at best, piss-take at worst. And even as one of the year’s shortest songs it still manages to outstay its welcome by some considerable distance. Judging by the music video, they would have made it fun enough in three-minute doses to wipe the floor with most of the competition in the televote, but I doubt the juries would have fallen for it en masse. Thankfully.

⁰⁴ Slovenia

B: These lyrics are rather impenetrable, suggesting anything from a straightforward ballad about a rocky relationship to an impassioned commentary on the refugee crisis, or possibly climate change. Or both. Or neither. “Ti… dobro veš / Da od besed do dejanj / Najdaljša je pot” covers a multitude of sins.

A: Ana’s jazz vocals are a match for her favourite genre but feel a bit shoehorned into this, which is much more in the soul genre she was trained in. She wants to take people to unexpected places with her music, her bio tells us, but I’m not sure she achieves that here. The strings carry it, giving it the swell and surge it needs to match the story it’s telling in a way that the dripping-tap effect manifestly fails to. It’s at its most stirring in the bridge and final chorus, but on the whole I find it a bit pompous and dull – an impression which the booming heraldry towards the end doesn’t do anything to overturn.

⁰⁵ Sweden

B: Loulou Lamotte sounds like a drag name. “Damn right!” sounds like an affectation. That said, it does serve to momentarily spice up a set of lyrics that’s serviceable but in which everything’s been said before (often verbatim).

A: Echoingly empty in places, just like last year. Oddly structured, too, with the A-chorus slamming the brakes on things before the B-chorus kicks in, particularly in the middle of the song. The house piano works well in combination with the vocals and lyrics, but there isn’t much else to write home about in a piece of music that once again pushes all the right buttons but still ends up feeling sparse and soulless. Which is pretty much par for the course with the Swedish entries of late.

⁰⁶ Lithuania

B: Hats off to Vaidotas for not allowing his dreams to be shat on by the cult of youth, and all power to him in doing what he can to be a better man, but I’m sorry, ‘fire-desire’ just doesn’t cut it.

A: There are some great percussion effects hidden underneath the main music line here which you’ll likely only notice if you listen to the instrumental. It’s really well arranged on the whole, knowing when to layer it on and also when to strip it back. There’s less than a handful of bars towards the beginning where the piano… well, I don’t really know how to put it; harmonises with itself, I suppose. Overall, it’s a much more involved and effective composition than I’ve ever really given it credit for. That said, I prefer it without the vocals, and I still don’t think it would have done as well as most people seem to think.

⁰⁷ Australia

B: In naming (and to some extent modelling) yourself after a 16th-century philosopher you’re all but inviting people to label you as overweening and pretentious, especially when your song opens with a line about texting. And yet it has its share of keen observations and great lines, including “You thought I was elastic / But maybe I’m just made of glass” and “Every time that I try to explain it / You think that your pain is more important / And the hardest thing is that I don’t wanna give you up”.

A: “Montaigne creates music that has a thrilling waywardness, baroque pomp and storm-the-stage energy” – all the hallmarks are there in this song, albeit to varying degrees. It’s another one whose head’s being held under water musically, at least at first. It works much better here because of what the lyrics are saying, and the fact that when it reaches the surface there’s a storm raging is just right, too. The multi-tracked harmonies, each of them different, are brilliant. The song as a whole is less than the sum of its parts though, however impressive they are: the second verse drags, and the chorus doesn’t pop or pull enough at any point to have the impact it needs. Still of a level of quality the juries would undoubtedly have responded to, nevertheless (assuming they weren’t put off by the theatrical interpretation). Anthony Egizii and David Musumeci now account for 66% of Australia’s entries at Eurovision, incidentally. 

⁰⁸ North Macedonia

B: Insert AbFab pun about a Vasil waiting to be filled. I like the nascent passion in these lyrics.

A: Like Australia, the chorus here feels quite flat and mechanical compared to the verses, which in terms of what’s bubbling underneath are more nuanced, more interesting and more in line with the lyrics. The subtle ethnic touches add some sparkle as things proceed, but the percussion-heavy ending has always left me unsatisfied even though it’s both earned and required from the point of view of the narrative. Vasil’s vocals are great throughout, demonstrating both range and subtlety.

⁰⁹ Norway

B: Norwegian pop credentials aplenty here. Ulrikke comes across in her Eurovision.tv profile as work-focussed, which perhaps finds its way into the song and her delivery of it (that knitted brow!). I quite like the irony-free knowingness of how pathetic the situation is that’s painted by the lyrics, especially in lines like “Why do I think it’s okay / Not being me ’cause of you?”

A: Modern, minimalist and unabashedly Scandinavian, in this case in a good way. As impressive as the rest of the composition is – Ulrikke’s favourite bit, the counterintuitive and brilliant middle eight in particular – it’s all about the vocals, whose arrangement is great. Nothing else this year puts the singer’s voice so obviously front and centre, which works anyway, but also because of what the song’s saying.

¹⁰ Ukraine

B: Describing the narrative here as a “story about a strong girl who falls in love and realises that she is no longer taken seriously [but whose] power helps her turn the tables and handle the situation with dignity” builds it up in a way that the lyrics themselves don’t really do justice to, at least as translated into English, since the dilemma it paints is lukewarm at best. Pretty picture though, with a preponderance of plaiting and twining in the Eastern Slavic entries this year (“Назбирала квіточок / Заплітала в віночок”). Such pastoral scenes are notable for their absence in the countries’ English-language entries.

A: OK, yes, Kateryna’s vocals are as much of a focal point here as Ulrikke’s, but they don’t carry the thing to quite the same extent: they’re impossible to ignore, but there’s a lot more going on in the music that vies for your attention at the same time. Strip the song of its main vocals – which I’m happy to do, since the style doesn’t do much for me – and the substrate throws up all sorts that’s worth sifting through. The panpipey-piccolo thing that punctuates the track feels particularly appropriate given that it’s called The Nightingale. (Go_A are said to boast a “rich musical arsenal [that includes] such traditional Ukrainian instruments as the sopilka, frilka, floyara, telynka, trembita and drymba”, and if only I knew what any of them were, or better yet sounded like, I could namedrop rather than just make do with descriptions like the aforementioned “panpipey-piccolo thing”. Alas.)

¹¹ Israel

B: The joy of being able to quote a line that looks like “ፍቅር ልቤ , እወድሃለሁ,ና ወደ እኔ” in a Eurovision entry! Mind you, I’m having Ktheju tokës flashbacks with the awkward-to-English-speaking-ears stress on the schwas in the Amharic title.

A: Like the lyrics, which are unremarkable but relentlessly upbeat, the music here is all about celebration and diversity. From the Doron Medalie stable it hews closer to Golden Boy in tone, but there are hints of Toy in its intent. The drop into the piano-and-synths chorus, which caught me out first time round, is the best bit of the whole thing. It ain’t winning any awards, but it’s not unaccomplished, and is three minutes of unfettered joy.

¹² Malta

B: Quite a string of successes to her name for one so young, although given the way she’s already presenting herself – or more likely being presented – to the public, perhaps it’s made 17-going-on-47 Destiny old before her time.

A: Another example of composing by committee, and you can tell. (The soul and gospel overtones are very much of a piece with Nobody But You, not surprisingly given the song’s pedigree, but the whole thing does feel rather more Cesár Sampson-Austrian than Destiny Chukunyere-Maltese.) Until the happy-clappy choir chorus kicks in, that opening stretch, without the vocals, sounds like a funeral dirge, which is really not what a song like this should start out life sounding like. There’s an almost indecipherable line running through the chorus, tremulous and tentative like someone girding their loins to poke their finger into a fire, which I think is strings. It feels vaguely appropriate for half the lyrics and is the only really interesting thing about the arrangement, which is professional but unexciting. I don’t even think it’s that good a showcase for Destiny’s vocals.

¹³ Belgium

B: I’m all for ditching false modesty, but the clearly self-penned bio of the band on Eurovision.tv is the polar opposite of humblebragging. From claiming that “the golden pipes of Luka Cruysberghs… have elevated Callier’s compositions to aural perfection” to describing Release Me as a “sweeping, majestic ballad” – one offering a treatise on “elegiac acceptance” no less – “that only Hooverphonic seems to be able to craft time and time again”, it’s an ego-stroking tutorial par excellence. And yet to be fair to Callier, he’s not wrong when he says that the band’s oeuvre “[blurs] the lines between symphonic soundscapes and highly infectious pop tunes”, at least where this song is concerned. It’s no Arcade, but its end point is more or less the same.

A: For a piece of music that takes almost a minute to do anything other than drag its heels, this is surprisingly effective overall. The strings are glorious in and of themselves, but also for subverting expectations every now and then, and the final minute is a triumph. Luka’s vocals do indeed complement the whole thing beautifully.

¹⁴ Cyprus

B: If Sandro’s philosophy is that music must be authentic, it’s ironic that he and his American and German roots* were conscripted for Cyprus with a song penned by an Italian-Australian*. That’s the modern music industry for you, I suppose. “Anybody tow me back home” is nice shorthand for the feeling of being cast adrift that’s so often said to accompany depression.

A: I can see why this failed to strike a chord with most people, but it’s because it’s so discordant that I love it, since it feels perfectly attuned to the lyrics. As does the fact that the vocal and musical arrangements exist separately of each for so much of the time. The unexpected intricacy of the strings paired with the driving, incessant bass through which the vocals echo and spiral… What can I say? Works for me.

*among others

¹⁵ Croatia

B: Yet more autumnal intertwining, through a Western Slavic prism this time. Certainly fits the mould. Nice use of metaphor.

A: Solid, if unassuming. The chorus has always felt a bit pedestrian to me, and I’ve never really liked the way it kind of kicks in halfway through itself the first time. The song feels like it could have been written in the mid-’90s and would have sounded exactly the same, which is no doubt why it won Dora. Effortlessly sexy Damir’s vocals are just right for it.

¹⁶ Romania

B: “Roxen’s musical aura is like a spell that creates a whole new world.” Said aura here being a drunken stupor. Still, it does what it claims to – the lyrics go hand-in-glove with the music in an atmospheric depiction of alcohol-assuaged dysfunction. The punning title works surprisingly well in context, but I’m not sure the rest of the words make sense, even within their own logic. But if there’s any song where that’s excusable, it’s this one.

A: There’s something appropriately ethereal about this, a composition in large swathes of which almost nothing happens. And yet it chooses its means and its moments very smartly: as a piece of music it’s fascinating to listen to. Roxen’s affected and imperfect delivery taints it slightly – as I remarked the first time I heard it, she deploys that increasingly prevalent faux accent that sees words like ‘hurt’ become ‘hoyt’ and ‘dark’ become ‘doik’ whilst retaining an inability to produce the long vowel sounds in words like ‘dream’ – but all told it’s a classy entry.

¹⁷ Azerbaijan

B: Every time I’ve seen Efendi ‘out of character’ (which, admittedly, is not many times) I’ve had no idea who she is. Perhaps that attests to the strength of the central concept of the entry – which is the Eurovision equivalent of a Marvel superhero film, after all. It even has an info-dump mid-lyrics, of which the best bit, by some considerable distance, is the bridge.

A: Musically, too. The rest is an exercise in eclecticism that falls flat as often as not, and it doesn’t help that the verses are about three notes on a loop for what feels like forever. That said, it all fits together better than its constituent parts suggest it should, and I get its appeal. I just don’t share in it. I find the ending so annoying that every time I listen to the song I’m glad when it comes to an end. Given that the lyrics blur the lines of sexuality, I wonder whether they would have played to that in the performance. (I’m surprised that bit even made it into an Azeri entry, to be honest.)

¹⁸ Austria

B: The opening line here hints at a level of meaning that the rest of the lyrics fail to deliver, convincingly at least. I think the message is that if you cut yourself off from others you’re also cutting yourself off from who you really are, but the closing “I’m all alone” muddies the waters. Answers on the back of a postcard, please.

A: Bucking the trend as I did with Cyprus, I liked this from the off. I still do. It doesn’t do anything we haven’t heard before, but it captures the feel of what it’s emulating so authentically that it transcends homage. Not that that makes it any more worthy necessarily, but for me at least it makes it one of the year’s most consistent and effective compositions. Vincent’s voice suits it down to the ground as well. All that said, it strikes me as the kind of thing about 95% of whose final points tally would have come from the juries.

¹⁹ Serbia

B: I’m not surprised that nepotism’s responsible for one-third of Hurricane: I’m surprised it’s not responsible for more. It probably explains why the group formed on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, too. Daddy’s money and all that. “Kaži mi hvala što sam te volela” is a great line in what is essentially one big feminist flipping of the finger…

A: …but it’s all rather undermined by the Spearmint Rhino packaging. The wrong-footing of the percussion in the chorus goes with what the lyrics are saying (which is a lot, in the literal sense: it feels like they’re trampling one another underfoot at times in a mad rush to get out) but creates a disconnect where it should anchor the whole thing. Then again, it’s the only genuinely interesting aspect of the song musically, so, you know, take what you can get.

²⁰ Estonia

B: Disingenuously claiming full ownership of this song’s composition can’t hide the fingerprints of Uku’s cack-handed co-conspirators. The bio insists it was inspired by musical theatre, as if it wasn’t awful enough to begin with it. If so, I’ve no idea which maligned and short-lived production it took its cue from. The lyrics show odd flashes of competence (“How can you know how a star looks / If you’ve never looked at the sky / I couldn’t have told you what blue is / Till I looked into your eyes”), but these prove to be from the gun they shoot themselves in the foot with in naff lines like “How wonderful was the awakening”.

A: In any case, the lyrics become so mangled by the music they’re set to that any positive effect they might have had is rendered void. I suppose we should be grateful for the fact that the song reins itself in for almost a full minute before succumbing to its own self-importance. Thereafter it’s bland bombast all the way. There’s a decent melody in there, in the chorus at least, but it’s pretty basic stuff. Which fits the Uku Suviste template, of course – someone whose belief in his own talent has never been shaken by the mediocrity it always results in.

²¹ Poland

B: I would never have picked dusky-eyed Alicja as being just 17 from her national final performance, in which she sounded (and [was] certainly dressed) like someone twice her age, but the crimped hair in her press photos makes her tender years much more obvious. As, indeed, do these lyrics: she didn’t write them, but they tick all the School Strike for Climate Change boxes. A bit flowery in parts, they mean well, and lines like “Used to be a tower so tall / Now we’re holding up crumbling walls” hit the mark more effectively than the ashes-to-ashes and moth-to-flame clichés.

A: You’d be forgiven for thinking the composers here were auditioning for Bond theme duties. If they were, they ought to have upped the oomph at the end, in both the original version – which leaves itself little room for a big finale, struck by the curse of the three-minute rule – and the final version, which simply peters out to nothing, both after a lovely, lilting interlude. The rest of it is quite nice though, measured in the verses (where there’s some fine harp) and more expressive in the chorus. The overall result is classy but unbalanced.

²² San Marino

B: Freaky! is about “the freedom of living thoughtlessly”, apparently. Senhit is said to combine her African roots with Italian style and European electro-pop attitude, and while it’s true that such roots have never been more on display at Eurovision, with Angola, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Eritrea all represented via the Czech, Israeli, Danish and Sammarinese entries this year, the latter has nothing  in the way of true African flavour. Then again, anything as adventurous as that was undoubtedly out of the question if drinks on rooftops, kisses in the dark and dancing round late at night in the park qualify as freaky. Senhit must have lived a sheltered existence.

A: There’s none of the natural ebullience here that you find in Feker libi either. Instead it’s Serhat-brand dated disco (in whose honour I assume Senhit added the ‘h’ to her name) that’s fine for what it is but gets less and less interesting as it goes along. It’s only really the pared-back bits of the verses – or whatever they are – that stand out. When I first heard it, and more importantly saw it, I said it looked like something Tyra Banks would do as a curveball semi-final challenge on America’s Next Top Model just to write off the cost of making a video, and I assume the live performance would have been just as cringeworthy. A long three minutes, all told.

²³ Greece

B: Canny of ERT to go for the Dutch-Greek crossover, and obvious in hindsight why the producers [would have] stuck her on first in the second semi. “There’s no wonder it takes a woman / To be a hero…” gets the nod for its play on words, and the remark about saving humanity on zero hours couldn’t be better timed under the circumstances. The rest is pretty meh.

A: Given the choice of Stefania was no coincidence, you have to wonder whether the song being co-written by someone calling themselves Arcade was either. For his part, Dimίtris Kontόpoulos is capable of at least marginally better, so if they stick with the same team for 2021 I hope he delivers something more super than this. The video nailed the tone of the song more than the song itself, which feels vaguely threatening and is saddled with a B-chorus that sounds like it’s whinging the whole time.

²⁴ Czech Republic

B: This doesn’t say much that hasn’t been said before on overcoming adversity or growing pains, but it certainly feels authentic, and I admire it for its unresentful resilience. “I don’t care if they don’t like me” is a difficult but very healthy attitude to adopt. I love that Benny’s music producers are called The Glowsticks (“led by Osama Verse-Atile”) and that they get namechecked in the song.

A: I have a lot of time for something this ingenuous, but I’ll admit that the instrumental version sounds like it’s from a national tourism campaign video. A very well-produced one, but still. Layer on Benny’s vocals and it becomes much more personable, and super-likeable. In all probability it was doomed at Eurovision, but the mere fact it was down to take part, coming from somewhere as seemingly unlikely as the Czech Republic, is amazing.

²⁵ Moldova

B: The ubiquitous Sharon Vaughn makes her third appearance here in tandem with Dimίtris Kontόpoulos, this time joined once again – *shudder* – by Philip Kirkorov. And since in doing so they’re offering themselves up for comparison, I’d say this is a better proposition than What Love Is. It certainly presents a more interesting take on the same subject. I rather like the twinning of “I don’t wanna be with you / I don’t wanna be without you”.

A: It’s better than Loca, too, but then it would have to work hard not to be. Its echoing qualities set it in the same stable as the Estonian entry, but it’s lifted and set apart by its ethnic touches. The instrumental version is notably more muted and in a lower key than the official studio version, and not as interesting or immediate – so if that’s what they were planning to use on stage in Rotterdam, I think they (or we) dodged a bullet.

²⁶ Iceland

B: The Eurovision.tv bio reads like a twee version of Hatari’s manifesto from last year, and I’m not sure it strikes the right note. It certainly sets out its stall though, and the tweeness chimes with the song itself, which is unironically Eurovision’s 21st-century equivalent of Save Your Kisses for Me. “Though hard to define / As if the stars have started to align / We are bound together / Now and forever / And I will never let you go” straddles the line between charming and cloying but stays on the right side of it.

A: Everything at the push of a button! Certainly makes it stand out in this field. It’s also infectiously positive, in which it’s not alone but has the edge over its rivals. Really interesting tracking and harmonies in the backing vocals, and Daði’s voice remains as smooth as ever.

²⁷ Georgia

B: Oh, I see they’ve stylised the title within the lyrics as a hashtag. I suppose that works, given what they’re saying. Tornike’s other half is clearly looking for schizophrenia in a partner, and if they don’t find it, they’re sure as hell going to engender it. It’s all rather plaintive and pathetic, in a good way.

A: Alas, it’s all but fatally undermined by the execution. While the lyrics work well enough (or at least don’t seem quite as daft) on paper, they’re exaggerated to such an extent when sung that it’s hard to take the message seriously, however loudly it’s being shouted at you. The music underneath it is restrained in comparison, with some interesting flourishes to it that only emerge in isolation. The late introduction of the brass works particularly well. The song as a whole is unorthodox in the way that most Georgian entries have been, but as a composition it shows that Tornike is definitely skilled as a song-writer, so it’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with for next year. Hopefully something that showcases his talents rather than distracting from them.

²⁸ Switzerland

B: Gjon seems very switched-on if his write-up is anything to go by, which is one you read and nod at for actually reflecting what you see and hear in the entry. It mentions joy, sadness and melancholy, and all three are there in Répondez-moi. The influences he cites can also be detected in him and the song, which politically is very much of its time: “Pourquoi je suis / Ici étranger / Là-bas étranger” is a question a lot of émigrés must ask themselves.

A: Take off the vocals here and the whole first minute-and-a-bit sounds like incidental music from some Oscar-nominated film score, existing within a range of a handful of notes and even fewer musical components. It makes for an arresting opening with or without Gjon’s input, but add him into the mix and it’s utterly absorbing. The higher he goes and the more percussive the arrangement turns the less magical it becomes, but only marginally. The Swiss have really upped their game in the last couple of years, and I’m convinced this would have been a successive top-five finish for them.

²⁹ Armenia

B: If Greece picking Stefania for Rotterdam is any indication, I guess they’ll be calling on Ms Manoukian should Armenia ever take the trophy. Unless they baulk at her aggressive post-feminism, if that’s what’s on display here in lines like “And of course / Hurt me”. Or is it meant to be irony? It’s hard to know quite what the lyrics are saying, since they seem simultaneously misogynistic and misandrist, masochistic and vulnerable. Mind you, they’re flawed anyway in aiming for fierce but throwing in banalities like “I think I got a juice”.

A: Ugh, trap. Athena’s not doing much actual singing here, is she. I hadn’t realised from the studio version that the “father’s creamy bone” bit (or whatever it is) was quite so full-on belly dance. It’s the only element of either the instrumental or vocal versions that roused me to comment, although fair dos, as much as I dislike the genre and this example of it, it is at least well produced.

³⁰ Finland

B: As a song about world-weariness and feelings of inadequacy, Looking Back is something of a spiritual successor to Look Away, since it also wallows in a nostalgia for the way things used to be (“Now it’s too late to save / All the seasons have changed”). In its way it’s as woebegone as Take Me As I Am, and yet there’s a wistfulness to it that’s more attractive.

A: Even knowing this was coming up I momentarily forgot what it was, which perhaps says something. Sure, I was listening to the instrumental version, so it was deprived of the vocals that would otherwise have made it obvious, but even so – it is rather self-effacing. That makes it a perfect match for Aksel, but wouldn’t have done much for its chances on the ESC stage. Which is a pity, because for all its diffidence it’s actually pretty good, building nicely throughout to its last few pensive bars. It’s very much a radio song, but I mean that in the nicest possible way.

³¹ Portugal

B: “Mas a vida levou / O melhor que eu tinha em mim… / Eu não era assim / Mas agora tenho medo de sentir” – so young and so jaded! Or possibly scarred. Either way it feels like the song would have been better suited to a singer with more experience under their belt.

A: I can never bring myself to find more favourably of this than I do. In theory it should tick all my boxes, what with the piano and strings and fluttery vocals, but it’s a bit too much like hard work. And not just hard work, but hard work of the annoying kind that never really amounts to anything. It’s like all the parts of it are doing what they should but it never manages to coalesce. There’s a sort of Schrödinger’s lightness of touch to it that’s both there and not there, and as a result it just ends up feeling inconsequential.

³² Latvia

B: “Samanta describes her voice as a God-given talent that needs to be heard on the big stage. Anyone lucky enough to witness her live performances would find it impossible to disagree.” *Raises hand* “Samanta wants to show Europe and the world that Latvia is not a small country to be underestimated.” Yeah, not sure this is the best way to go about it. But “Still Breathing offers a strong message of female empowerment and is an ode to women who are held to unrealistically high standards”, so kudos for that at least, even if they’re not Aminata’s finest moment. “[Samanta’s] love of Eurovision runs deep: in 2019, the singer wrote her graduating paper based on an analysis of the national selections for the Eurovision Song Contest in Latvia and Lithuania.” Such an anorak! Adorable.

A: “I’m still breeding, I’m still breeding!” There’s definitely something about that this feels… intensively farmed. It’s dull and repetitive, and I can’t be doing with it.

³³ Albania

B: There are a lot of dysfunctional relationships being picked apart this year. That it took three people to do so here seems unlikely, but okay. The description on Wikipedia is loltastic: “The song makes lyrically [sic] reference to Arilena’s hopeless desire to overcome deep and perplexing emotions.”

A: She has a great voice, but pairing it with this sort of song feels as unimaginative as the song itself, which lays it on so thick at times it almost physically repels you. (That could be the Macedonian influence, of course.) There are some nice touches to the vocal arrangement which are the only true moments of subtlety in a sledgehammer three minutes I’m always relieved to reach the end of.

³⁴ Bulgaria

B: In today’s edition of Handy Hints, you’ll never go wrong with this ESC life hack: Unsure whether the artist or act whose song you’re listening to is from Eastern Europe? Simply check out their name – if it’s entirely upper-case, they’re almost certainly from a Slavic-speaking country that was once behind the Iron Curtain. In this case it’s VICTORIA, laying bare yet another disastrous relationship. This one’s more nuanced. It’s quietly impressive the way lines like “I’ve got this dirt inside me / I’ve got some space to grow” and “Your lies burn like sugar in my wounds / So I have sweet bruises” go against expectations, both linguistically and narratively.

A: On closer inspection, this is way more Disney than it sounds at first and makes for an odd combination of words and music. But perhaps that’s the point, with the innocence and mellifluousness of the composition (and Victoria’s vocals) serving as a juxtaposition to the far darker story being told in the lyrics. Most people wouldn’t notice the incongruence anyway, and it works regardless, so I guess it’s a moot point. By rights it should test my patience, but the end result is effective enough to offset any misgivings.

³⁵ Denmark

B: Ben & Tan’s bio claims it was simply meant to be that they would join forces as a charismatic duo, but the sentence works just as well without the word ‘charismatic’ in it. Better, arguably, or at least more accurately, since their live outings haven’t showcased much chemistry between them – Tan is sultry but shifty-eyed, and Ben just seems a bit gormless. Still, had they managed to ignite some sort of spark in Rotterdam it surely would have worked for them, and no doubt their dream (“to have everyone at Eurovision shouting ‘yes’ back at us”) would have come true. And helped them on their way to a decent result. “I think my heart is beating me to death” is a great play on words.

A: More than fit for purpose as anthems go, even though it never really does any more than what it says on the tin, and possibly the only song this year that would have benefitted from audience interaction.

³⁶ France

B: My reading of this is that it’s a gay man regretting never telling his straight bestie (q.v. ‘ally’) that he was in love with him, and now it’s too late, possibly because said bestie is dead (“Tout ce qu’on s’est jamais dit / Revient me hanter jour et nuit”). I mean it’s probably not that at all, but hey, it makes an otherwise fairly unexciting set of lyrics more interesting. Plus, it’s Tom Leeb. Allow a man his fantasies.

A: I suppose when you put a song through a mincing machine it’s inevitable you end up with processed sausage. Bland in the way that many Swedish cast-offs are, the original nevertheless still feels more organic in its intent to me than the acoustic, boeuffed-up reimagining they clearly felt would be more representative of their own country on the Eurovision stage. Padding out the French content also undermines the sense of the chorus being Tom speaking the words out loud that he’s monologuing to himself in his head. Not that it matters much, since whichever version they opted for would have been left propping up the lower right-hand side of the scoreboard.**

³⁷ Spain

B: Out of all this year’s entries, the lack of an ESC performance is most keenly felt for Universo, since it’s robbed us of the chance that “Perdóname… / Por apagar mi voz / Para evitar ser el culpable / De lo que soy” might have become embarrassingly appropriate.

A: **Almost certainly alongside this, which serves no purpose whatsoever. The irritating voice, the alienating language and the wall-to-wall beigeness of it all would have made anything other than last place an accomplishment. It’s not the worst song of the year, but then it doesn’t have to be in order to qualify as the most useless.

³⁸ United Kingdom

B: Two divers facing imminent death from drowning seems an unlikely starting point for a love song,  but this one wrings what romance there is to be had out of it. It’s like sucking marrow from a bone. WTF kind of diver lets their oxygen tank get so low anyway? And why don’t they just swim for the surface? Have they both got their legs stuck in a giant clam or something? James and his mates really ought to have thought these things through before so carelessly employing the metaphor.

A: There’s no argument that a Brit Award-winning and Grammy-nominated songwriter is a step in the right direction for the UK, and that this song is a step up from recent efforts, but it’s not that big of a step, and nor is it fronted by a particularly engaging singer. It does come across as genuine though; France feels even more like it’s been forced to be acoustic when you listen to them side by side. Surprisingly catchy chorus for being so straightforward, and the breaks before every ‘breath’ manage not to be completely irritating. Kudos to James as well for simply stopping when he’s said everything he wants to.

³⁹ Italy

B: Never was a song more perfectly poised to become the anthem of a pandemic-imposed lockdown in a land of people who talk a lot. I’ve no doubt it would have spoken to everyone else on the continent as well, and not merely nor solely out of sympathy, but out of solidarity from the shared experience.

A: Ma sai che cosa penso? Che non dovrei pensare. Of all the entries this year, this one needs the least overthinking: it has winner written all over it, with a timeless quality and a universal appeal I’m certain would have crossed borders the same way Italian seems to translate even to those who don’t speak a word of the language. Self-contained and sincere but at the same time all-encompassing and rousing, it hits you in places you never expect it to. Even divorced of context it’s moving – I’m tearing up a little listening to it again now. That’s just the effect it has.

⁴⁰ The Netherlands

B: Arguably, and pleasingly, if presumably unintentionally, it’s the home entry that most clearly manifests the theme of the 2020 contest in a set of lyrics that reads like something from a confessional, even as poetry at times. It says so much in saying so little. Stuff this unalloyed, this unembroidered, comes along very rarely.

A: Mesmerising.

⁴¹ Germany

B: Slovenia’s got talent! Or had it, anyway, what with Ben now being a “Berliner-by-choice”. It’s a talent that’s obviously being overlooked in the club he’s at, since all the indications are that whoever it is he fancies isn’t paying him the blindest bit of attention. Possibly because the pudding-bowl haircut makes him look about 12.

A: Best uptempo entry this year, and for any number of years before that. Everything just slots together so seamlessly, from the house intro and subsequent drop into the chorus to the punch-the-air brass that takes things to the next level at the two-minute mark. The retro-fitted Eurovision ending feels unnecessary but doesn’t make the song as a whole any less compelling. Indeed, the entries from Italy onwards here represent one of my favourite runs of consecutive songs from any competition in the last 65 years. What a note to go out on!

And so to the points...

1 point goes to Israel

2 points go to Bulgaria

3 points go to Cyprus

4 points go to Belgium

5 points go to Iceland

6 points go to Norway

7 points go to Switzerland

8 points go to Germany

10 points go to the Netherlands

and finally...

12 points go to...

Italy!

The perhaps-slightly-biased-this-time wooden spoon is awarded to Estonia.