2025

Not a stellar year song-wise, and one soured by EBU diktats like the muting of the audience and the fake applause, but an outstanding contest both technically and aesthetically – and one which showed the Swiss can be just as wry in their love of the contest as the Swedes.

 

⁰¹ Iceland

B: I wonder which half of Hálfdán is Danish. I’m happy to throw myself into the orthographic brambles of lines like “Því að veðrið það er erfitt”, and “Ég er einn á bát að leita af betri stað / Ég er ekki ennþá búin að missa allt” proved prophetic when, having earned no love from the juries, they scraped together enough points in the televote to avoid coming last overall. (It’s intriguing to note the coincidence that arguably this year’s most folk-infused pop song posted almost the exact same result as last year’s, i.e. the Estonian entry: ending 6th in its semi, then last in the jury vote in the final before getting 33 points from the public.)

A: ‘Electro-pop sea shanty’ sums this up perfectly. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it as a composition, but the post-chorus fiddling is the only notable thing in it. You can understand why the juries overlooked it so completely in the final, especially when you add in the autotuned vocals. That’s on the surface, anyway: I do like the dark bass synths underpinning it all, and there are some mayfly flourishes in the second verse that add colour.

V: Spawn of TikTok, the first of several this year. They won’t be winning any awards for their vocal prowess any time soon, but they’re by no means bad. They throw themselves into this performance (staged by Selma!), which is fun and colourful from the word go. I love the Minecraftian animations, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit where the backing dancer swims across that stunning stage always raises a smile. The carousel routine in the boat works a treat as well. An energetic and entertaining opener to the semi, but it was always going to get swamped in the final.

 

⁰² Poland

B: Served up straight after Iceland, the lines “Siłą / Moją matką miłość / Kiedy płaczę / To we łzach tonie świat” send me into the most blissful of diacritic comas. The translation we get of the latter two – “The world drowns as it watches me cry” – is the best of the English parts of the song.

A: Not that you’d know they were in English from Justyna’s diction, like she’s sucking on a mouthful of ice cubes. Sama means ‘the same’ in Estonian, and while at first glance Gaja couldn’t be more different from her 1995 entry, there are certain similarities, never more so than in the bridge. The A-chorus is the chorus proper here, since the B-chorus – even though it’s the real focus – comprises just two words and two notes. The vocals in the studio version are rather neutered compared to the live version. It all sounds strangely threatening, but then I suppose the lyrics are more about retribution than anything else. The listing of the names at the end (if that’s what they are) sounds like the protagonists from some epic Polish fantasy are being invoked. In musical terms, this makes two songs in a row where the fiddle comes into its own, here well before the solo. It’s wonderfully disconcerting in the verses, slithering its way through the long grass of the composition as if preparing to strike.

V: Girl can hold a note. Take that, Natalia Gordienko! (Justyna, and all of her dancers, can also run and pull off an entire performance in six-inch heels. Take that, Safura!) The borderline ADHD camerawork is arguably better suited to a music video than to a live performance, since the chopping and changing fragments the visual narrative and means that bits of it get lost. On top of that, the moments which are held for longer are often wide shots that make it hard in their own way to register detail, such as when the ‘shaman of the Polish music scene’ dangles in front of the Westeros-from-Wish dragon and you barely even notice that it’s her providing the high notes. Apart from those caveats, and Justyna being tested by the lower register in the verses, it’s a very well executed performance.

 

⁰³ Slovenia

B: Klemen is clearly a sweet, well-meaning guy if the lengths he went to [in the wake of the blackface controversy that erupted after his otherwise amazingly accurate impersonations of past ESC winners] to make amends with a not-offended-in-the-first-place Dave Benton is anything to go by. This is reflected in these lyrics, which are touching, if perhaps a little misleading, since “you never gave up / Until you grew wings / And you learned how to fly / Made a loop in the sky / You landed right into my arms” is a rug-pull that feels like a bit of a cheat. This being a true story, it goes without saying that I’m glad his wife made a complete recovery, but in purely narrative terms it somewhat undermines the build-up. Then again, it took Klemen nine years to write about it, so I guess he’s still discombobulated by the unexpected ending himself. Either way, the question he asks in the title is answered, and the point still stands.

A: This has a quiet but powerful build, the intensity slowly rising, but also dissipating into something more ethereal, even mystical in the bridge, and then lighter, brighter and more hopeful. I like the different approaches to the vocals in the choruses, which reflect this as well, showcasing both fragility and strength. Klemen’s vocals generally are nicely measured without being calculating. The acoustic & string combo, as it so often does, works a treat. The echoing outro is thematically on point, too.

V: There are plenty of reasons this could be mawkish, but they pitch it just right: the home videos help to tell the story without bashing the audience over the head, and Mrs Klemen popping up on stage at the end is genuinely heart-warming. If anything is overdone, and even then only slightly, it’s the eye-emoting Klemen himself does at times. Otherwise he’s very reliable, and sounds better and vocally stronger than in any previous performance of the song. And singing while suspended upside-down is nothing to sneeze at. A sweet and dignified performance, albeit one that didn’t earn enough interest (or sympathy) for a Saturday night repeat.

 

⁰⁴ Estonia

B: “Life is like spaghetti / It’s hard until you make it” is one of the best lines of the year. There’s been a lot of wilful, po-faced misinterpretation of what this song is about, but while the mix of Spanglish and Broccolino Italian (a new one on me) is disconcerting at first, it ultimately underscores the playfulness of it all – which is about poking fun at stereotypes rather than reinforcing them. Considering the song’s wider reception within Italy itself, and the points they showered on it, I guess they got the memo.

A: This is something of a departure from Tommy’s usual music style, but that was to be expected: he tweaked it to fit the Eurovision mould without abandoning his artistic or aesthetic principles. The arresting opening is made all the more so once the beat drops in. Almost the entire first minute is variations on the chorus, which immediately lodges itself in your head. In fact the chorus, in all its iterations, makes up about two-thirds of the song. There are just enough changes throughout though to keep the attention-deficient listening. The jazz throwback in the verses stands in effective contrast to the synth-driven remainder of the song, while there’s some neat matching between the two in the bounciness of the bassline synths and the actual bass. Very smartly put together.

V: There’s no question the “visual artist known for absurdist imagery and an edgy sense of humour… consuming and repackaging global trends through his own gaze” knows what he’s doing here. There are all sorts of nifty touches, some of them genuinely funny, like the wet-spaghetti dance and the jet flapping around in the background. Others are just very cleverly realised, like the stage invader, her joining in on the choreography and then immediately being dragged off, that whole sequence being perfectly filmed. The visuals, then, are on point; Tommy himself is the weak link, inasmuch as his vocals are, were or ever would be an obstacle to the song doing well for itself. He’s about a quarter of a note off throughout the semi, not that most people would have noticed (and clearly even fewer, if any, cared). He’s better in the final in any case. Either way, while he mightn’t be much of a singer, he definitely gets that this is the Eurovision Song Contest.

 

⁰⁵ Spain

B: “No es la fama tu grandeza / La igualdad es mi bandera” is a nice sentiment, even if it feels a bit I’m-still-Jenny-from-the-block. And I feel like Melody from the barrio fundamentally fails to recognise her target audience in “Una diva no pisa / A nadie para brillar”, given the type of diva they’ll be most familiar with.

A: You know immediately what you’re in for here when you get Spanish guitar, castanets and synths in the first five seconds. The song feels about 15 years out of time, which isn’t quite enough to make it retro, just dated – an impression that’s compounded the longer it goes on. The chorus, alas, is the worst offender, for its farty, murky, all too prominent synths, but the diva-diva-diva-diva break is almost as bad. Happily, Melody’s voice has real power to it, and gives us some mesmerising rolled Rs.

V: She’s the best thing about this performance, bringing stage savvy in spades and a sensational vocal without coming across as the diva of the title for a moment. But said performance is essentially a series of set pieces with very little to connect them. There are some wonderful directorial touches (like the fleeting shot of her foot as she steps down from the podium at the start, and the overhead shot pulling back from her against the cascading floor graphics), but she never once manages to pop through the curtain on cue, and the curtain itself somehow manages to look worse as a physical prop than Tommy Cash’s computer-generated one did. Overall, it’s an energetic three minutes, but visually at least very little of it hangs together: if you took snapshots of it every 20 seconds or so you’d swear they were from different songs and stagings.

 

⁰⁶ Ukraine

B: A play on words like the one in this title is asking for trouble when you come from a non-English-speaking background: I’m sure a lot of people just assumed it was a typo. The Ukrainian lyrics are, needless to say, a million times more impactful than the English ones, with pretty much the entire first verse (“Моя Пташка / Крилами пісня злітає важка / … / Не турбуйся / Доля довірила світ останнім із нас”) standing out. The translation of another line also caught my eye for being the quirky sort of lyric you’d never get west of the Iron Curtain: ‘The song of migrating birds will awaken the spring’.

A: Those floaty opening vocalisations are an instant hook, and it’s neat that they bookend the song, which returns to them in its closing bars. That they then morph into an identifiably Eastern European vocal technique backed by a ’60s/’70s Western pop/prog-rock sound is unexpected but not ineffective. The song arguably feels weaker in its overall intent than most Ukrainian entries, but it’s no less well put together, even if its elements seem superficially more disparate. The strings – and the arrangement generally – really come together post-key change for a rousing finale.

V: Lead singer Daniel, who gives a weirdly intense stare at the end of the qualifiers reveal, must have thought that in order to distinguish himself from his twin brother Valentyn he needed to dress up as one of the real housewives of the 1980s. (As Graham “But where’s Celine?” Norton put it on the night, “I’m not trying to imagine what Thatcher would look like at the prom, but here’s Ukraine’s entry.”) I get an OCD twitch that in neither performance does he manage to quite align with the wing-shaped lighting rig at the end, and his vocals are surprisingly hesitant in the semi, with him chickening out of the big notes to some extent, particularly at the end. The staging is also pretty low-fi by Ukrainian standards, with the oversaturated Vaseline-on-the-lens look and colour palette leaning into the retro vibe of the piece but ultimately leaving it all looking a bit bland. The girls on backing vocals are great though, and the bits of business with the lights are nice.

 

⁰⁷ Sweden

B: I love that the first Swedish entry in Swedish in 27 years comes peppered with Finnish. It’s a saucy set of lyrics, this, what with “heittää på så sveittin bara yr” and the entirety of “Tick tick tack hur läng orkar du / 90 grader vi e nästan där / Perkele, e va på värman jär” (“Ja jyst ja!”). And then there’s “Bastubröder e je vi som glöder”, which is incredibly camp. (The colour palette of KAJ’s outfits, and their general look, does lend this something of a Carry On Up the Bothnia feel.)

A: Another opening which hooks you straight away. Music for the masses, this works for being basic in a good way: it’s toe-tapping, it’s catchy – the tune glueing itself to your brain without even trying – and there’s absolutely nothing in it that’s designed to trip you up. It does what it says on the tin. That said, its mileage depends on how much you like the accordion, for which this is a showcase and no mistake.

V: Petra Mede’s “grab your towels, it’s time to come together” was made for this routine, which is great fun. I love the bit towards the end where they play up to the fact that certain people think of the sauna as hell and make out as though it’s some demonic ritual. I also love that the performance as a whole is a bit unpolished by Swedish standards: the guys are wonderfully ordinary-looking, and the choreography is refreshingly ‘near enough is good enough’ at times. Of course, it’s all still highly regimented in terms of its staging elements and camerawork, but it never feels sterile or mechanical in the way that many recent Swedish entries have. It’s just such a welcome change to see the Swedes not taking themselves so seriously. Is it telling that they had to import an act from outside of Scandinavia for that to happen?

 

⁰⁸ Portugal

B: The saudade is strong with this one! Redundantly, they even namecheck it. I’ve never felt the attachment to place so feverishly embodied in “Se eu te explicar palavra a palavra / Nunca vais entender a dor que me cala / A solidão que assombra a hora da partida”, but I like to think I can imagine it, and it’s prettily put in any event.

A: Easy listening with an underlying pull: the sense of melancholy is undeniable, if dressed up warmly for the most part. The instrumental outro reinforces this feeling, ending things on a light but uncertain note. The song is somewhat unconventional in the sense that it doesn’t have a clearly defined chorus, but that’s in keeping with what the lyrics are saying – the displacement at the heart of things – and suits it perfectly. The arrangement reflects this as well, with the individual instruments often doing quite different things while tying it all together. It’s a very thoughtful composition, thematically appropriate for how plaintive it can sound.

V: Salvador Sobral’s much vaunted ‘real music’, for want of a less inflammatory term. This is a breath of fresh Atlantic air sandwiched between Sweden and Norway in the semi, a little sea of tranquillity that holds its own despite offering very little in the way of visual spectacle or vocal fireworks. That said, the colours and lighting are warm and comforting, offset by the cooler blues, and there’s nothing wrong with the way it sounds. Understated and effective for it, even if there’s an element of “we qualified, the pressure’s off” in the final. I love the gigging band feel of it, especially the little bows they take at the end.

 

⁰⁹ Norway

B: “Kyle,” we’re told, “started writing his Eurovision entry when his mum was battling cancer, and wanted to sing about finding strength.” Which makes this quite a different take from Slovenia, since the result doesn’t reflect the inspiration at all that I can see – surely it’s just about being burnt by an ex. “I feel a spark inside me / I don’t need saving” is the only couplet that stands out in an otherwise uninspiring set of lyrics.

A: This feels like it’s playing with matches rather than being any kind of torchbearer or trailblazer, the tinny percussion throughout lacking any kind of oomph. Where’s the fire? It’s Pop 101, and arguably less ‘medieval-pop bop’ and more ‘sponsored by Bic pop’, given the emphasis on the title. The moment of stillness following the dance break bit is the only mildly interesting thing about it, featuring what I initially took to be a harp but which is probably something more obscure. A zither?

V: While he never disgraces himself, Kyle is definitely among the weakest of the bunch this year. Which might explain why the choreography feels so half-hearted: he clearly didn’t want to overstretch himself when his vocals were already on a precipice. The breakdancer who rolls into view at the end is a last visual throw of the dice when all the chips are down, and it doesn’t really pay off. There are some nice visual moments though, particularly that final tableau with the impressive geometry of the lighting rig and stage prop.

 

¹⁰ Belgium

B: Tapping into rave culture, “Step into the mirror to bright new dimensions / … / Come down through the looking glass” certainly sounds like a trip, which makes the closing line (“That’s where I wanna stay”) mean what, that he wants to be permanently off his tits? After all, references abound to Alice in Wonderland, which many view as an allegory on drug use, among the many other things considered countercultural by the Victorians. And he does seem at home down the rabbit hole. Then again, it could all just boil down to ‘I like clubbing’.

A: There’s something suitably discomfiting about this composition: you feel like you’re being lured into a trap, or at least somewhere you should think twice about stepping into. It doesn’t leave itself anywhere to go though, and lacks progression, or at least variety. Young Mr Herreman’s vocal range would be more impressive if he didn’t sound so bland and insubstantial in the lower register. He was inspired by Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid, apparently, so let’s be thankful he didn’t copy the Jamaican accent.

V: I’m sure they could have made this more red if they’d really tried. This is a fatally – and, in places, literally – self-aggrandising performance, and very uninvolving. The only thing that really works is the bit with the clone Sebastians on the catwalk. The rest is little more than wandering around to the accompaniment of some vocals which aren’t particularly attractive even when they’re not painfully thin. The Red Narcissus bit where he kneels above his reflection seems particularly ill-judged; was he meant to be holding his microphone in the other hand? At least then we would have been able to see the digital version. It wouldn’t have done anything to boost the song’s chances, but it would have left the performance feeling a tiny bit cleaner.

 

¹¹ Italy

B: “Invece che una stella uno starnuto” is a great turn of phrase. The message here is that “in fondo è inutile fuggire / Dalle tue paure”, which makes the final “Non sono altro che Lucio” a believably double-edged sword: is it an affirmation, or a resigned shrug of the shoulders?

A: Even more identifiably inspired by the 1970s than Ukraine. (“Ma non ho mai perso tempo / È lui che mi ha lasciato indietro” indeed.) Once the electric guitar kicks it, it reminds me of Space Man. The orchestration is gorgeous, making the backing track every bit as attractive as the song proper. The jury love it got caught quite a few people off-guard, and yet is entirely understandable when you listen to it. The brass – never generally my favourite section – really comes to the fore in the bridge when you strip the song of its vocals.

V: Lucio Corsi, who is surely the lovechild of David Bowie and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, is somehow even thinner than Red Sebastian’s vocals. His performance works despite what’s happening on the stage rather than because of it: the weirdly elongated piano, the oversized speaker props, the random backing vocalist-slash-guitarist making it seem like the whole thing’s suddenly a duet, the camerawork contriving not to show us Lucio’s face for most of the first half, etc. The singer himself is a little gawky, but I can forgive him that when he’s pouring his heart out the way he is, and also because his vocals are flawless. The inclusion of the live harmonica-playing lends it all some much-needed authenticity. I’ve never managed to catch what’s written on the sole of his shoe – the only word(s) on screen I actually do want to read, though I’m not bothered at all by the subtitles, which are a climbdown on the part of the EBU that’s been a long time in coming.

 

¹² Azerbaijan

B: Nice inversion (and irony) in “Play wrong till it’s right”.

A: Asef’s vocals come out of left-field here, but definitely add to the song. It’s oddly structured, however, taking two minutes to get to the second verse and dedicating a lot of time it doesn’t have to instrumental breaks. In that sense, it’s the first of this year’s bunch to feel like a four-minute song that’s been forced to cut itself short. I do like what we get though, and liked it from the off: it’s an atmospheric composition whose depths are only revealed when you peel back the vocals. There’s a surprise waka-waka guitar in the background, as well as some interesting vocal effects, and strings you don’t really appreciate when they’re being sung over. Great drive to it as well. Overall the electronic pop sound does it for me, and the saz is nicely incorporated, adding local texture in an unobtrusive way.

V: “Eurovision is a marathon, not a sprint, and trio Mamagama have got the right training.” Not based on this performance they don’t. It’s one of those sad, slightly perplexing instances of nothing working without anything being disastrously wrong. Everything’s just slightly mediocre – costumes, lighting, choreography, vocals – and all that mediocrity together means that not a single element feels convincing. Asef seems aware of this before he even starts singing, and it’s downhill from there. They at least deserve credit for the backing vocalists singing live, even if they ultimately do nothing to lift the performance either.

 

¹³ San Marino

B: “I baci vietati nelle stradine nere” is an unexpected throwback to Senhit’s Freaky!, while “Ma sicuro finisco in qualche letto… / Siamo tutti dei bravi ragazzi” raises an eyebrow, especially coupled with the later “Domani poi ci pentiamo, a dirci ti amo”. The fact that these lines are addressed to his Mamma says more about Italian men than anything else in the song.

A: I noted in the official bio that Gabry was a songwriter on Halo and I thought: aah, now it all starts to make sense. He might be “a huge deal in dance music” and a superstar DJ, but his lone contribution to the vocals here – showing us he can count from one to four in English – make it clear why he stands behind the decks rather than in front of them (and sticks to Italian). The song is our second shanty of the semi, this one paired with a football chant. There’s very little subtlety or finesse on display in the choruses and instrumental breaks, but they’re an earworm. The verses offer slightly more interest, with their underlying Metal Mickey backing vocals, acoustics and quivering balalaika.

V: Weirdly static and low energy, perhaps because of the lack of [audible] audience interaction, this nevertheless stands in stark and immediate contrast to Azerbaijan. The vocals are fine from the masked singers, who clearly take styling tips from Sheldon Riley. I can live with the jigging about by Gabry and the accordionist, but the lanky-haired guy prancing about with his colander is entirely unnecessary. There’s some great use of the screen: I chuckled again at David chewing his bubble gum, which pokes fun at Italy’s sacred cows in the same way the lyrics do, but then we also get the grand marble edifice of the Trevi Fountain in respectful and glorious wide-shot.

 

¹⁴ Albania

B: I suspect the translation given for “Këtu flen deti, rana e hana / E yjet s’i shohim se yjet na i shkel Kamba / Kur ecim n’jerm” isn’t quite an exact one, but all the same, “Here the sea, sand and moon sleep / And the stars we do not see, trampled underfoot / Sleepwalking to be free” is very poetic. It certainly contributes to the song’s darker edge, given the rest of the lyrics are surprisingly upbeat.

A: This is one of the richest compositions Albania has brought to the contest, and one of its strongest offerings overall. The spoken-word interlude by Kolë (I hesitate to call it a rap) is one of its defining features but also its most divisive. Interesting vocal effects and backing hidden away there at the beginning, which is almost 30 seconds of just two instruments accompanied by Beatriçe’s vocals. The arrival of the orchestra in the first bridge and chorus reveals what a lush and layered piece of music this is, and one that’s willing to parcel itself out for the benefit of what it’s trying to say. The ever-ascending strings give the chorus and closing bars an irresistible drive, while the more brooding synths add depth and nuance. (I guess that’s the ‘shoegaze’ element coming into it.) The whole thing’s gloriously complex.

V: See, Belgium, that’s how you make red work for you! The graphics here create one of the contest’s most distinct and visually appealing stagings, all dividing lines and geometric patterns that look gorgeous on screen. The performance plays with contrast in ways that really work, too: Beatriçe’s look, movement and effortless vocals are set against Kolë’s rigidity, quasi-military get-up and spoken delivery. The ‘ad libs’ down the catwalk that now round out the song lend it further weight. This is unquestionably Albania’s most intricate and effective performance in the contest to date. It’s hugely disappointing that the juries snubbed it the way they did.

 

Addendum: I’ve only just noticed that Beatriçe has gone all out for the final and even has red contact lenses in. That’s true dedication for you, Sebastian!

 

¹⁵ Netherlands

B: “C’est comme ci, c’est comme ça / C’est en haute et en bas / It goes up, it goes down / And around and around / Que sera, oui sera / Me voici, me voilà / Chantez un, deux, trois /
C’est la… la la la la la vie” is trite, but serviceable.

A: At first I was afraid, I was petrified… The chorus here owes something of a debt to a certain disco classic, which makes it very easy to latch onto (the lyrical repetition helping with that, too). Until the first one kicks in, a whole quarter of the song comprises nothing more than a piano line and some nascent strings, shining the spotlight on Claude’s warm vocals. The synth-house treatment the song gets after that works well with the orchestral arrangement that ultimately underpins it. As with the Ukrainian and Portuguese entries, the music here makes a virtue of returning to its starting point.

V: “I will sing until it’s over” – except he cuts the final note short both times. The easy confidence and charisma he displayed in performances of the song prior to the contest are nowhere to be seen here. He’s quite pitchy in places in the semi, and the overemoting on the last line comes across as just that (the added fake cry in the final being even worse). But it’s not the only misguided aspect of this performance, which is beautifully lit but aiming for a classiness it doesn’t need to pretend it has when what it should have got all along was a staging reminiscent of the music video. As it stands, the last-minute inclusion of his younger self on the screen comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really chime with the rest of it even if you have been paying attention to the lyrics. The dancers seem largely redundant as well, but I always LOL at the way the pair of them shoot through the back of the scene giving jazz hands the moment the violinists are activated. And while Claude is a man who suits pearls, his twin-set silk pyjamas look is a bit odd, too.

 

¹⁶ Croatia

B: “It’s not my fault, I got carried away,” said the composer.

A: This is never better than in its opening bars, when not coincidentally the song sounds most like the sort of stuff we’d heard from Marko before. The bubblegum bridge is instantly irritating, but eclipsed in its insipidness by the subsequent chorus. This is ten songs in one, very few of them any good: only the samba bit that pops up in the last minute goes any way to redeeming the rest. It’s like a multiple personality disorder in musical form. “I know you’re gonna like this” – famous last words.

V: Green! I think they’d forgotten it existed up to this point. Marko’s vocals go ever so slightly off-piste in the oh-oh-oh bits at the end but are nicely controlled elsewhere. Sadly, they’re the least of his problems when the rest of this performance is… what it is. The less said about it the better.

 

¹⁷ Switzerland

B: “Laisse-moi t’aimer même si tu m’aimes pas / Je vais me noyer dans tes larmes” is lovely, though on the whole I can’t tell whether these lyrics are sweet and well-meaning or naïve and slightly presumptuous.

A: Lovely fluttery vocals, like the song is just taking flight. It builds like that musically as well, each chorus swelling and lifting off. The injection of urgency in the middle eight is offset nicely by the calmness of the outro, which feels like it introduces its key change much later than 30 seconds before the song ends. The instrumental provides an engrossing soundscape that’s so unadulterated it feels like you’re there in the studio as they’re recording it. And in a composition which is already stunning, the strings are unsurpassed in this year’s line-up for their beauty and intricacy.

V: I can see what they were going for here, in that it’s meant to showcase Zoë as a vocalist, and that it does very well, as does she. But visually it never quite works, and that’s not even counting the moment it all crashes in the semi (which, to be fair, it takes you a couple of seconds to realise is actually a technical issue). There’s artistry to be had in the hand-held approach, and in the effects they apply during the middle eight, but a lot of it just ends up looking unintentional or under-rehearsed. Even the sea of lights in the audience feels hackneyed. Mind you, I don’t know how else they might have staged it, since I doubt it was the performance alone that earned it that unjust but understandable zero in the televote in the final – where it hangs together much better, for what it’s worth.

 

¹⁸ Cyprus

B: You don’t often get lines like “I’m decay and I’m revival… / Robbed by jealousy and cheated by my enemy / From tears and blood to flowers…” in a Eurovision song. They’re more intriguing in and of themselves than the riddle at the heart of the lyrics, which I like as much as the next man – if the next man has almost zero patience for riddles, especially ones which are never answered.*

A: Though fishing in the same inky waters as Belgium, this is far more straightforward a club track. The synths in the chorus are very Encore-une-fois Sash! The discordant bleepy bits underneath the bridge into the chorus are a nice find in what is less a composition and more an assembling of parts. Given that the whole thing’s vaguely threatening, the vocal-free bit before the last chorus that slams the brakes on everything is very effective in underpinning that threat by doing very little.

V: But on stage, that instrumental break is utterly wasted. It’s symptomatic of a performance that refuses to gel. It has more strobe lights than Belgium, but to just as little effect. Theo copes with the routine well enough until the climbing frame comes into play, after which he retains a far more tenuous grasp on his vocals than he does on the scaffolding. His high notes are consistently unpleasant. In hindsight, Belgium and Cyprus were scuppered for the same reason: both their songs and their stagings were much better ideas on paper than they turned out to be in practice. *And no, “It was the Vitruvian Man all along!” isn’t the answer, whatever the Cypriot delegation might have put about in what was presumably an effort on the part of the artistic director to retrofit the performance. Wasn’t there initially some suggestion that it was about Adonis or someone from Greek mythology? Which would make much more sense. As is, the nod to Leonardo da Vinci is a ham-fisted and unconvincing attempt to tie the visuals in with the lyrics.

 

¹⁹ Australia

B: “It’s good to know someone will be keeping the class of Eurovision 2025 vitamin-enriched.” Not to mention protein. If ever there was an ESC entry that was the definitive single entendre, this is it. ‘Sweet sweet, yum yum’ just has the edge on Croatia’s ‘tasty, tasty, yum yum, tasty’, but they’ve both been scraped off the bottom of the lyrical barrel.

A: I love the ice cream van intro. Despite the overtly sexual message here, the composition has elements to it – the brow-beating synth line that underpins it all, the strident electric guitar, the muffled sound – that make it feel much more likely that you’ll be abducted in said van. Maybe that slightly sinister edge is what did for it? Assuming people weren’t put off by the whole swallow-my-load thing in the first place. I do like it overall; it’s solid and consistent. But it’s definitely a bit creepy.

V: This is camp and colourful, but rewatching it now I can see quite clearly that it’s not very good. In an unlikely comparison with Switzerland, the ideas are there but never really coalesce. The weakest link is Marty himself. Aside from some ripped-Miss-Sally-from-Worzel Gummidge eye candy, and a caramel banana we all very much got to see, he doesn’t bring much to this performance, in which it feels at times like he’s parodying himself. The most distracting thing of all is the way he keeps throwing his arms around: he has absolutely no idea what to do with them.

 

²⁰ Montenegro

B: It’s no coincidence that most of the words that best describe these lyrics – hard-hitting, impactful, etc. – are slightly tasteless, or at least tactless, when it comes to the subject matter. It makes the recursiveness of the pre-chorus all the more fitting. It’s interesting that in the self-same verse asking why people stand by and let such abuse happen, “a ko mi je kriv” (“Still, nobody’s fault but my own”) is an all too credible lashing out at others for their passivity while ultimately blaming yourself, even with the cold sliver of awareness in “Dobrodošli meni vi / U hotel mojih slabosti”.

A: So much here, in the first half of the song anyway, relies on Nina’s vocals to lend it some colour and texture. The orchestration eventually does its share of the heavier lifting in this laborious piece of music, which while chiming with the lyrics feels barely one step up from workmanlike most of the time. The sound is very murky as well, as though it was never properly recorded.

V: I could point out how dull the backdrops are, but what does it matter when your entire performance is torpedoed by a costume that’s so cumbersome it restricts your movements and looks shit into the bargain? It’s like ESC25 mascot Lumo brought to life in a stage outfit: ill-conceived and not even particularly well made, it’s for all the wrong reasons that you can’t take your eyes off it. Poor Nina is emoting for all she’s worth – which in these circumstances isn’t much, let’s be honest – and everyone is just staring at her wondering WTF that thing on her back is. It’s unfortunate that her voice cracks in a performance that already has so little going for it, but she’s also far too concerned with finding her marks and the cameras for it to work anyway. It’s no surprise at all that she would have ended with nul points if the Serbian televoters hadn’t parachuted in to rescue her.

 

²¹ Ireland

B: I suppose there’s a childlike innocence to these lyrics, but honestly, what were they thinking? “Through the comets and the stones / She is howling for her bones” is harrowing in ways they presumably never imagined and a far more realistic picture of a dead dog whose incinerated remains have been floating around in space for the better part of 70 years.

A: Sounds like something that would have won a UK national final a couple of years before Scooch. Utterly banal.

V: Like if Aqua was a children’s music group. It certainly has the feel of a school talent show performance, albeit one that’s had a wad of money thrown at it. Emmy is as good here as she was ever going to get, so at least it doesn’t sound terrible, but she seems nailed to the spot for most of it. But then not even the dancers move much. Laika the constellation is pretty, as is the colour scheme, so all told it could have been a lot worse.

 

²² Latvia

B: Given that this is all oak trees and rusty bridges, the inclusion of “Laimi savu nezināju / Līdz satiku nelaimīt” or, as translated, “I didn’t know my own happiness / Until I met my misery”, seems like an odd bit of psychoanalysis to throw into the mix. Maybe it’s all just a convoluted way of exhorting the listener to go green.

A: Mesmerising harmonies from the off. The shifting feel of the timing in the verses (if that’s what we’re calling them) wrong-foots you at first, but soon becomes part of the organic feel that the whole thing has. It really does feel like you’ve stumbled across something in an enchanted forest. The percussion throughout is fascinating. The combination of the whispered and gently soaring backing vocals is very effective as well. The only thing I think it has going against it is that it’s rather repetitive.

V: If there’s one lesson to take away from this performance, it’s that you should never mix cheese-string curtains with spun-sugar headwear that’s all but designed to snag them. The costumes are amazingly intricate, although they look better in mid-shot than they do in close-up, when the lighting renders everything that much flatter. Overall, there’s something cabbalistic about this that really pulls you in. The moment the tails (or are they tapeworms?) emerge is the icing on the cake of something that’s already intensely watchable. The vocals in the semi aren’t as flawless as I remember them being – partly down to the mixing, partly because the one doing the high notes doesn’t quite hit all of them – but still managed to snag them second place in a field with some much more fancied entries. In any case, they’re uniformly good in the final. I’m still not sure what that amoeba floating up the wall towards the end is all about though.

 

²³ Armenia

B: Oh dear, he’s a conspiracy theorist. (“Guess you can see / I don’t believe / Anything they told me.”) The “I’m aliver” bit has been rightly mocked, but it’s one of many egregious moments in these lyrics, which desperately want to be punchy but never connect.

A: No one: “How many songwriters do you want?” Armenia: “Yes.” You’d never know three of them were behind the past two winners, given the song that resulted here, which has another godawful football chant of a chorus. Parg’s vocals are solid without being in the slightest bit attractive, which is how I feel about the ‘Look how tough I am!’ composition as well. The ethno middle eight is shoehorned in, but is the only bit of the song I have any time for. I truly hate the laugh at the end of the second verse.

V: Almost all of the lead vocals are doubled on the backing track here, which is handy considering the performance quite literally puts Parg through his paces. Crucially though, it never does so in a very strenuous way: everything is minimised, down to the speed of the treadmill, which sadly allows no possibility for a Fail Army moment that sees him flying off into the audience. He sounds most ragged when he delivers the newly installed Armenian couplet in the bridge. Everything else, vocally and visually, is an improvement on the national final original; not a marked one where the former’s concerned, but enough to get the job done.

 

²⁴ Austria

B: “I’m an ocean of love / And you’re scared of water” is the metaphor of the year, and a great pair of opening lines. They’re more nuanced than the rest of the lyrics, too, which as a whole get the unrequited point across effectively enough.

A: Intelligibility goes out the porthole the minute the opera vocals are introduced here, meaning that however impressive they are, you haven’t got a clue what JJ’s singing about. They’re backed by some seriously good orchestration though, pitched to just the right level of [melo]drama. The EDMouement is the culmination of the song in every respect, clawing back any thoughts in the listener that may have gone a-wandering and sealing the deal on a strong composition which nevertheless feels like it has no business being a Eurovision winner.

V: Obvious jury bait is obvious, but thank god it worked. Outstanding vocals. Weird staging though, like a kid playing in his room and building himself a raft out of books and boxes. The paper boat is rubbish, and I can’t tell whether it’s meant to be like that or they just never got it right. JJ’s acting goes a bit overboard given the wind machine’s not exactly at maximum, too. And I don’t really get the black-and-white either. I don’t get much of it, to be honest, since to me there’s a disconnect between the visuals and the narrative. The analogy is clear, yes, but not the choices in getting it across. Still, I don’t suppose it matters now: it won. The whole thing’s better lit in the final, when the bonus grunt adds a different dimension to it. I still feel like the ‘dance-break’ vocals being on the backing track is a cop-out.

 

²⁵ United Kingdom

B: “Clutch my pearls” is the first indication of where this is going. Nothing quite sums it up like “Not the best idea” and “I know that I’m a wreck / What did you expect?” though.

A: There’s a characteristically British sound to this, albeit with transatlantic touches; if you were being generous, you might suggest the changes in style and tempo were an homage to the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody. But it’s not a tenth as effective as that, because that’s exactly the way it comes across: like it’s trying and failing to emulate something which is obviously much better. It doesn’t help that it’s got such a musical theatre feel to it, either (or that it sounds like the Danish entry in Turin). The synths buried in the backing track that recall sound effects from ’80s computer games are an unlikely find. All told, I hope production and songwriting duo Billen Ted had an excellent adventure in Basel, regardless of the end result it brought them.

V: I like the flock wallpaper and moulded cornice screensaver look here, but the harmonies that were meant to be the selling point of the song, and the vocals generally, are rough around the edges in the semi. They’re not the only thing out of synch in this performance though, literally at a couple of points: the whole thing is very Strictly results show, BBC Light Entertainment to the nth degree, with a misjudged nod to Eurovision thrown in when they whip off their skirts. The whole thing ends up feeling fake and twee, and, again, in the semi at least, not even very good. (They’re much more assured in the final, thankfully.) Two televote zeroes in consecutive years is harsh, but by no means undeserved in this case. Hopefully it will light a fire under whoever selects their songs and decides how to stage them and we’ll get something before too long that shows Sam Ryder wasn’t just serendipity.

 

²⁶ Greece

B: The official translation is a little rhyming delight. “Τα χελιδόνια της φωτιάς / Θάλασσες κι αν περνούνε / Του ριζωμού τα χώματα / Ποτέ δε λησμονούνε”, rendered as “The swallows born of fire’s embrace / No matter how far they roam / Shall never forget the sacred earth / That once they called their home”, is particularly lovely.

A: Another striking acapella opening. This is a song without a chorus, as far as I can discern. Not a clearly defined one, anyway: I assume that what comes across as the bridge is actually the A-chorus, with the bit after that being the B-chorus. Either way, it refused to stick in my head for the longest time; I could never reproduce any of the tune. But it’s an interesting fusion of traditional sounds with pop elements that I’ve come to appreciate a lot more over time. Like quite a few songs this year, it wisely circles back to the beginning to close itself out.

V: Some people might suggest these backdrops are chucked into the mix one after the other at random, but even if they are, each and every one of them is gorgeous. No less attractive is Klavdia herself – a younger Michelle Visage cosplaying as Nana Mouskouri – who provides one of the most solid vocals of the contest. The song’s still hard to properly latch onto, but they get around this by changing things up visually and pulling off some nifty tricks, even in basic TV production terms, like the magically disappearing pier and Klavdia’s quick-change outfit moment at the very end. The whole thing’s a delight to both watch and listen to.

 

²⁷ Lithuania

B: Lyrical brevity to rival anything out of the Balkans! By the standards of European languages, Lithuanian really does come across as alien and unfathomable at times: a real outlier. Which, to be fair, it is. Even that the title, Tavo akys, should mean ‘your eyes’ seems weird. And the line “Tu nebijok, tavo sapnuose verkiu” (“Don’t be afraid, I cry in your dreams”) being proffered as some sort of reassurance only serves to make it sound even more ominous.

A: The angst! There’s something almost dreamlike about this song, especially towards the end, where it verges on recurring nightmare. It feels at home coming from Lithuania, as backhanded as that sounds as a compliment. The instrumental version reveals why it was largely overlooked by the juries in the final: apart from being moody and awkward, like the musical equivalent of a teenage boy, the composition displays little variation or progression. It’s solidly put together, and fully inhabits the indie niche it carves out for itself, but doesn’t give you a lot to work with.

V: Back to back in the semi, Greece and Lithuania are very different songs and performances, but visually and vocally they’re both as close to perfect as you can get. This has more of a filmic sweep to it and looks amazing whatever angle it’s filmed from. Lukas simultaneously resembles both Kristen Stewart and Kurt Cobain. They all look like they’ve escaped from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

 

²⁸ Malta

B: That’s two secrets in one Eurovision we never get an explicit answer to – certainly not here, where all the obfuscation and blather around the kant meant that neutering the song’s original selling point was inevitable. “Watch the words coming out your mouth” indeed.

A: Miriana knows how to use her voice, but it’s another one I don’t find particularly enjoyable to listen to. She and her songwriters get a bonus point for the little Middle Eastern flourish in the pre-bridge, as clichéd as it is. The bridge proper adds some much needed gravitas to the song, which otherwise feels quite empty and/or one-note in places. (My brother savagely dismissed it as “just a RPDR queen’s talent show song”.) The last 30 seconds come together nicely though.

V: Miriana’s loving herself sick on that stage, and fair dos to her, she gives it her not inconsiderable all. That includes the stall she sets out from the moment she opens shop, emerging from a mirror-ball ball-gag lodged in a pair of plump, parted lips: it looks for all the world like she’s launching her own brand of sex toys. I love the backing dancers’ leggyography, and it’s nice to see Adonxs doing double-duty on the backdrop. The performance as a whole is unashamedly erotic and queer-coded, as the song always was. In hindsight, it’s not exactly a surprise it didn’t speak to a wider audience.

 

²⁹ Georgia

B: From Miriana to Mariam, where warnings about what you’re saying seem just as apposite, albeit for very different reasons. The English lyrics are a throwback to the garbled Georgian efforts of yore (“Freedom is the human wealth to care”) but the Georgian ones border on the jingoistic given the political background to delivering such a message on a European platform. Sure, it’s all blandly “my homeland is beautiful” stuff so as to pass muster, but there’s propaganda written into every line. Incidentally, what I said about Lithuanian out-weirding every other language in Europe? I take it back. In the Georgian script, “ეს მზე ათბობს და ანათებს დღეს / სამშბოლოს მთებსა და ზვრებს / იმედით მივყვებით გზებს / ეს ცა ლურჯი და უღრუბლო ცა / მშვიდი და მღელვარე ზღვა / არ მინდა სიმდიდრე სხვა” looks perfectly delightful; transliterated, “Es mtze at’bobs da anatebs dghes / Samshoblos mtebsa da zvrebs / Imedith mivq’vebit gzebs / Tsa lurji da ugrublo tsa /
Mshvidi da mghelvare zgva / Ar minda simdidre skhva” just looks like someone’s made it up, or is talking in code. Which, in a way, they are.

A: Discordant first half a minute or so, which is the only time it’s every truly interesting. The chanting is like Pokušaj through a glass darkly. The chorus comes crashing in from 40+ years ago and fatally undermines the whole thing, which the dreadful English bits then blow up again, just to be sure. LOL at the karaoke version having little beeps all the way through where the lead vocals would be, to help you keep the tune and timing, I assume. Mariam can sing, but even she can’t save this from being one of the worst things Georgia has ever produced. For Eurovision or otherwise.

V: Appropriately, she could be a supermodel who just stepped off the set of George Michael’s Freedom! ’90 music video. Not in either of those outfits, admittedly; I’m glad she eventually extricates herself from the structured one she first appears in, cos it’s fugly as. She sings her heart out, to absolutely no effect. Nationalistic overtones aside, the Georgian dancers twirling about on stage have nothing to do with the song and just form a dark blur of movement below and behind her. There’s no evidence of a concept proper at any point in the performance.

 

³⁰ France

B: Maman is “a touching tribute to [Louane’s] late mother”, and is certainly personal and heartfelt. But if she was singing it about her father and said “Quand il me tient la main / J’ai plus peur de rien / Et ça m’fait comme avant / Quand toi tu m’tenais la main” you’d be justified in thinking she had daddy issues. My favourite line, for its assonance and circularity, is “Je vais mieux, je sais où je vais”, although the entire chorus is cleverly constructed along similar lines.

A: Dripping in pathos, but wrapped in a musical poncho that means it avoids ending up soppy. Not that the composition is in any way flimsy or plastic, mind you: it too is beautifully arranged and orchestrated, and like the lyrics, it features some clever recursive motifs. But there’s no denying the strings that are being plucked here, and the song is at its weakest (which is relative considering the quality of the field it’s up against) when it entertains those impulses – i.e. in the chorus. Louane’s sympathetic vocals, however, do much to convince you that you’re not being emotionally manipulated… any more than you’d reasonably expect to be by such a song.

V: I’ve no idea how they arrived at ‘attack of explosive diarrhoea while trapped in a rapidly filling silo’ as the artistic direction to take with this performance, but Louane copes with everything they throw at her like a trooper. How she maintains those vocals – and indeed doesn’t choke – when being showered in granola is beyond me. I hope it didn’t all turn to ashes in her mouth when the televoters by and large said non to it. The spiral effect is the only bit that lands visually: everything else is just a bit weird and wretched.

 

³¹ Denmark

B: The second connection to the Faroes in this year’s edition (after the mention in the Icelandic entry) and the second Faroese singer to represent Denmark in the space of three contests. Sissal’s lyrics are certainly hallucinatory in that they don’t make a whole heap of sense. The best I can get out of them is that “I see colours / I never saw before” is a reference to her support for the queer community.

A: It is what it is, and I quite like it. It’s more Tattoo than Euphoria, if the comparison has to be drawn. Apart from that, I can’t think of anything to say about it.

V: This is one of the lowest-budget stagings of the contest, but it has its moments. There are some nice visual effects timed to the music, and the dancers doing their sedate tube-man routine at the end works pretty well. Prior to that, and particularly at the start when they scuttle in and then press themselves up against the curtains, it looks like Katarsis have come to take Sissal back to the asylum. And fair enough – her vocals are (ahem) crazy good. I love her for the fact that on that march down the catwalk she looks like she’s just popped in to sing her song before doing the school run. Working mums for the wonning!

 

³² Czechia

B: The way these lyrics are pitched feels much more like a romance that’s gone wrong than the absent-father story it’s supposed to be. It’s all rather confusing. Adonxs gets an extra point for listing Mahmood’s Tuta Gold as one of his favourite songs.

A: Our Adam’s vocals bestride an impressive scale, at one end of which he feels slightly more comfortable than the other. Works for me though: his voice, like his song, remains one of my favourites of the year. There’s a blurring of the lines between sacrosanct and sanctimonious in the music and backing vocals that cleverly reflects what the lyrics are hinting at. It’s characteristic of a layered composition with a lot of interesting touches to it. I’m still not sure the dance break makes narrative sense, given that the change in tempo isn’t sustained to the end, but it’s clearly the done thing these days.

V: And he was obviously determined to work it into the staging regardless. To be fair, it’s the most successful part of the performance, throughout the rest of which the poor lad looks and, even less helpfully, sounds hugely uncomfortable. He’s clearly having in-ear issues, but comes across as nerves having got the better of him before he even opened his mouth. His thank-yous at the end are delivered with a shaky voice and eyes that look close to tears. Maybe he’d realised after half-a-dozen rehearsals that nothing much was working and that he was setting himself up for a fall? Still, he didn’t help himself with his costume choice, nor does the stark backdrop do the song any favours. Other than the change in tempo, the only thing to pique your interest in the whole three minutes is the neat bit where the dancer suddenly unfurls from behind him in a how-did-they-do-that moment. All in all, it’s Mustii² for squandered potential.

 

³³ Luxembourg

B: I like the message in “M’en veux pas… / Un nouveau monde m’appelle / Si tu comptais m’exposer dans ta vitrine / Avec toute ta collection de figurines / Désolée pour toi mais moi seule détermine / Où mon cœur va… / Oui, je tire les ficelles.” The otherwise brainless ‘na na na-na na-nas’ take on a very different slant in the context of the rest of the lyrics.

A: For a contemporary reimagining of their 1965 winner, this gets strangely bogged down in the ’80s, the musical equivalent of colour blocking, exaggerated shoulder pads and too much rouge. It’s not bad, but it does feel very Luxembourg. Laura has the kind of voice that allows her to hit and sustain all the notes she needs to without ever sounding genuinely convincing. Which I suppose you could view as another nod to France Gall if you wanted to.

V: There are so many great visuals here. The overall design itself is a treat: a pinch of steampunk, a dash of ’60s futurism, a hint of art deco. The doll’s-house opening is possibly the best visual hook of the entire contest, and then sits resplendent on the LED wall for the remaining two and a half minutes. The song is what it is, in the way that Laura’s vocals are what they are; the staging eclipses both, quite considerably, whilst visually representing what’s happening in the lyrics. I love the one-eighty with Laura starting off as the marionette before regaining her agency and pulling the dancers’ strings instead. The whole thing’s really cleverly devised, and is brought to life brilliantly. Not that it did them much good in the end – but if it was all about how the entry looked, they would have been up there vying for victory.

 

³⁴ Israel

B: Yuval cites Netta as a role model, for being “unapologetically herself, which is the end goal in life – to always be the authentic you.” It’s ironic and unfortunate then that circumstances mean Yuval herself can’t be: not only do the Eurovision.tv bio and blurbs make no mention of her otherwise compelling story of survival, but given the situation that’s since unfolded, that story has been ruthlessly co-opted to serve an agenda. The language pedant in me is always annoyed by the fact that this isn’t called A New Day Will Rise, and that they only get it right in the second to last line and dispense with the article elsewhere. The Hebrew middle eight (for want of a better term; translated as “Many waters cannot quench love / Neither can the floods drown it”) offers the most interest among the lyrics, which are otherwise appropriate but hardly inspired. The fact that the French verse is an almost word-word-word rendering of the preceding English one is just lazy.

A: Divorced entirely from context, this is an overegged but otherwise decent enough bit of balladry. And yet, while I don’t want to linger on the politics of it, it’s nigh on impossible not to feel like you’re being backed into a corner by the song. It’s all just so… fit for purpose: bombastic but doleful, delicate but unyielding, and brooking no argument. Which no doubt reflects the reality that brought it into being, but also means it’s subsumed by it. In purely musical terms it’s an uncomfortable compromise between its lighter and more insistent elements – a divide which Yuval’s vocals are also forced to straddle. Entered in any year prior to 2024, it would have done well to finish in the top 10.

V: The string curtains strike again, ruffling Yuval’s metaphorical feathers (twice), but she doesn’t let it faze her as she powers through the song. Ascending a glittering tower is a brow-furrowingly literal approach to take to the staging, but at least it brings some flashes of colour into an otherwise black-and-white performance.

 

³⁵ Germany

B: This is a surprising set of lyrics for its clever wordplay and just for being so clever. I love the addition of “I shoot for the stars” in English and its double meaning given what the German lyrics are saying. There are some great lines throughout, especially the middle stanza in its entirety (“Ich she’ die Sternensplitter, auf meiner Haut wie Glitzer / Hab’ gelernt was mich nicht killt, macht mich nur schicker / Würdest du für mich immer noch ’ne Kugel fangen? / Weil deine Waffe, ist jetzt in meiner Hand”) and the way “Du setzt ein’ Punkt nach dem Satz / Als hättest du mich nie gekannt” becomes “Ich setz’ ein Punkt nach dem Satz / Als hätt’ ich dich nie gekannt”.

A: For better or worse – and it’s almost always for the better – this definitely sounds like something that wasn’t written for Eurovision. In fact the only concession to it being in the contest would appear to be the introduction they added to it, presumably to lend it a little more weight with the juries. (It worked!) The song makes judicious use of the cello throughout, which you won’t necessarily appreciate unless you listen to the instrumental version in full. It reveals this to be one of the best backing tracks of the contest. As a whole, it feels like the first properly contemporary, and properly German**, entry from Germany in a long time.

V: Tynna’s… vocal insouciance, shall we say, is mitigated in the choruses here by the double-tracking (or is there a backing vocalist hidden away somewhere singing along?), but the verses remain largely unpolished. This is the kind of song though in which, combined with her attitude, she can get away with being a bit ‘whatever’ about how she sounds. The oversized prop – a feature the Big Five once again went to town on this year – is more impactful than any of the others so far, and they just about get away with recreating a club atmosphere with only four people on the dance floor. The performance is a bit odd, however, in that the structure of the song means it peaks quite early on, with long stretches in the second half of the song that drag before pulling it back together for the final chorus.

 

**Well, Austrian, but still

 

³⁶ Serbia

B: Kudos for actually coming up with different lyrics at the halfway mark rather than reverting to Balkan type and just repeating the song from that point. “Nek te poljubi / Ko bolje slaže te” is a distinctly cynical way of looking at the situation, but then Mila’s hardly the cheeriest of ditties. (Google Translate suggests that “Ti si platila što volim te ja” should be “You paid for me to love you”, which puts rather a different spin on things!)

A: This feels like something North Macedonia would bring to the contest on the assumption that emulating Serbia would definitely get them into the final. Alas… A grab-bag of past glories that fails to reach the heights of any of them, Mila is nevertheless not without its charms: the gossamer piano melds beautifully with the strings and acoustics in that moment of stillness towards the end, and you’ve got to give the song credit for going the musical equivalent of commando and letting Princ’s vocals do all the work in parts. He’s got a great voice, so it’s a pity he saddled himself with this song. Pleasant but forgettable.

V: Modern dance! No idea what’s going on when it’s an all-male affair. Why does the dancer Princ addresses as Mila maintain such a phallic hold on that microphone? Who’s the Hulk-like figure on the floor***? Why do they drag him down the catwalk at the end? It’s all so very queer: if you stuck the ‘vocal miracle from Vranje’ in a frock, he’d look like a Serbian Conchita. He can definitely sing, and has mighty eyebrows. He sounds like he has an Australian accent when he speaks English there at the end.

***None of the ‘reflective’ moments in this year’s contests work on screen.

 

³⁷ Finland

B: We have another contender in the single entendre stakes. “Mun portit aukeaa” or “My gates open” – positively orgasmic! It’s like a verbatim transcription of a hook-up. (This is another one that’s worth running through Google Translate, since it seems to think the lyrics are truly filthy.) Bonus bravery points for opening with the line “On yö, sydän lyö”, which hardly does much to showcase the beauty of Finnish.

A: The musical successor to Cha Cha Cha and Rim Tim Tagi Dim if ever there was one. Great mix of styles from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, from disco and electronica to trance and pop-rock. This ‘squelchy banger’ (© Pink News) warns off time-wasters, setting out its intent very early on and not deviating for a moment in its determination to achieve it. The music beneath the verses is very Confessions on a Dance Floor-era Madonna.

V: Erika has the crowd wrapped round her middle finger, which is metaphorically raised to all the haters. She gives a strong showing; not quite as in her element as at UMK, but still confident of her inalienable right to be and do whatever the fuck she wants. The microphone getting overexcited in the semi is the only moment that dents her cool exterior, but you can hardly blame her for that when there are exploding pyrotechnics shooting sparks up her arse and she’s suspended 30 feet in the air. The camera panning away to the crowd while she mounts her mic works much better in the final for actually finding fans with Finnish flags.

 

And so to the points...

 

1 point goes to Sweden

 

2 points go to Finland

 

3 points go to Estonia

 

4 points go to Portugal

 

5 points go to Austria

 

6 points go to Italy

 

7 points go to Greece

 

8 points go to Switzerland

 

10 points go to Latvia

 

and finally...

 

12 points go to...

 

 

Albania!

 

 

The wooden spoon is awarded to Croatia. (Georgia can count themselves very lucky.)