2016

Like the Danes before them, the Swedes make up for their lacklustre turn as hosts the last time round by producing one of the slickest, warmest and funniest contests of the modern era – one in which the final is chock-a-block with solid entries and performances.

⁰¹ Finland

B: A fairly run-of-the-mill set of lyrics for an anthem of this kind, but they hang together well enough and get the message across. “If you’re focussed, you can make it” is a mantra Sandhja ought to have adopted ahead of the semi.

A: There’s a pleasing consistency right there at the start of this with the slightly murky, downbeat opening giving way to the unfettered brass and percussion. The post-chorus oh-oh-ohs make for a decent hook, and the piano doing its own thing throughout is pleasing, but I think the issue with the song is that once you’ve heard the first minute of it you’ve heard all you’re ever going to – which means that however well it may hang together as a whole, and however interesting the timbre of Sandhja’s voice might be, there’s not a lot to hold your interest. (Having said that, it’s the only song this year that gets me dancing like no one’s watching.)

V: She holds it together in the verses here, but cue the first chorus and she starts taking the title just a little bit too literally. The result isn’t as painful as it might be, but it does mean the whole thing comes across as hen night karaoke rather than something they’ve been working on for months. The angry lesbian look doesn’t help much either.

⁰² Greece

B: There’s a massive disconnect here between the banality of the English refrain and the more meaningful bits in Greek, which in its way is quite fitting. Some lines even verge on the poetic (“Ada nichton ki aki pou pame ksimeron”), although my favourite is the one that’s translated as “I got the pickles and my friend has got the drinks”, which makes it sound like the lads are getting ready for the most provincial Eurovision party in existence.

A: The first 30 seconds of this promises a lot more than the rest of the song delivers, with the chorus being the albatross hanging noose-like around its neck. (The instrumental break rivals it in terms of lacking punch, which is ironic, since musical punches is all it consists of.) Fair dos though: the production on the whole is better than I gave it credit for originally. Well, slightly better. And rap still sounds rubbish in any language other than English.

V: They’ve learnt how to pronounce ‘land’, but that’s about the only thing that seems an improvement on the studio version. By Greek standards this barely even qualifies as half-arsed.

⁰³ Moldova

B: For a song with Swedish input, this is very Moldovan in its mistakes – from garbled participles to the very title itself. Not that it matters much, since it still manages to produce some effective imagery. “I let the sunlight comfort me when all that’s left are memories” is nice, as is the analogy at the heart of the chorus, with the eponymous falling shooting stars being the ephemeral remains of a relationship.

A: That intro really needs to be about half as long as it is, because the song takes the better part of a minute to get to the point, and said point is pretty underwhelming as it is – even when I reach it I still find myself occasionally caught out by it, wondering what it is. All things are relative, of course: mediocre Swedish pop still makes for a pretty decent, if faceless, Moldovan entry, and it’s not something I’ll ever skip past on the CD. But the fact that the only compliments I can think to give it are backhanded ones says it all.

V: It’s also saying something when this is the vocal highlight of the semi so far. Lidia acquits herself well enough, but you could measure the distance between her and the strongest voice in the contest in light years. The spaceman comes across as one of those quintessentially Eurovision things that is utterly ineffectual and yet makes the performance at the same time. I’m glad he didn’t take his eye out with his accreditation flapping around on the end of his lanyard like that.

⁰⁴ Hungary

B: It’s nice to actually read these lyrics, since half of them are unintelligible the way they’re enunciated. I’m more forgiving of their shortcomings than I am of Moldova’s, probably because they’re striving for anthem status, but they’re not all that less twee than their last entry to be honest.

A: Just masked more effectively by the vehicle they’re delivered in. Gravel-voiced Freddie puts his own stamp on this the minute he opens his mouth. (Perhaps appropriately, his accent never sounds more affected than on the word ‘fake’.) He’s an acquired taste, but the voice is well-matched to the music which – surprising use of floaty, almost feminine backing vocals and plinky-plonk xylophone aside – batters you to death/into submission.

V: This renders the first three entries useless within a couple of bars of the first chorus. Those jeans do nothing for Freddie’s crotch, but everything else about him works so well you have to wonder how many people voted for the song just for the chance of spending another three minutes drooling at the sight. The oh-oh’ing backing vocalists are hilarious, like they’ve been dragged in straight from a works do.

⁰⁵ Croatia

B: The metaphor employed here is unsophisticated but functional, which is true of the lyrics as a whole. I guess it’s not something non-native speakers would necessarily recognise, but the rhyming onslaught of ‘near’, ‘fear’, ‘disappear’, ‘steer’, ‘pier’ and ‘tear’ is taking an unattractive diphthong far too far when its pronunciation is bound to be exaggerated.

A: You discover all sorts of fascinating things in this composition when you pare it of its vocals and just immerse yourself in the music, several of them seemingly drafted in from much further east than the Balkans. (One or two of the elements are bordering on Mongolian.) There’s a wonderful descending flutter of strings into the first chorus that you just don’t hear with Nina singing over the top. Not that I’m necessarily suggesting the song’s better without her input, but having heard her perform other stuff I maintain this isn’t the best showcase of her vocal talents.

V: Considering how structural both of Nina’s outfits are, you have to wonder why they don’t make more of them. In any case there’s a clear concept behind them, and if they distract at all it’s not enough for you to miss the fact that on the whole the performance in the semi is pretty good. (In the final there’s a sense of: we’re here, that was the point, this is the 837th time I’ve sung this song this week, near enough is good enough.) The key change works well both times, and the backing vocals are great throughout.

⁰⁶ The Netherlands

B: “I’m going nowhere and I’m going fast” is a brave line to open on in a Eurovision entry in a still largely untested genre. The lyrics suit it though, with a sort of country languor and drawl all their own. My only problem is with the clunky “I used to be without concern”, but even that feels right enough in context.

A: This is one of those arrangements that does exactly what you expect it to at every turn but never leaves you feeling short-changed. I think that’s because there’s a tendency to assume a song of its kind will be derivative by default; the musical equivalent of flat-pack furniture. But it’s an accomplished piece of song-writing: easy and familiar, yet layered and rewarding. And Douwe’s voice was made for country music.

V: So was his sleepy-eyed demeanour, like k.d. lang had a secret lovechild. And didn’t he turn out to be a chip off the old block. Terrific vocals, delivered so easily. The camera takes an age to find him at the beginning while it showcases the stage, and I still wish they’d cut away between him sitting down and taking to the mic stand for the first bridge. The interlude makes perfect sense in a country’n’western kind of way but just feels like a non-sequitur on a Eurovision stage where the only person who knows him is the fan waving the Dutch flag in the front row.

⁰⁷ Armenia

B: “Caught in a downward spiral” pretty much sums up the quality of the lyrics this year. As with Hungary, it’s refreshing to see these ones in print and actually understand them, since Iveta outdoes even Freddie with her wayward diction.

A: I’ll admit I’ve never truly understood this, and probably never will. It somehow feels… half-formed. I won’t argue it’s not effective, and I suppose I should applaud it for being unexpectedly restrained – the sense of suppressed power waiting to explode works well with what the song is saying. Hmmm. Maybe I do understand it after all and am just being hard to get along with because that huge build-up at the beginning doesn’t do what I want it to.

V: Every shot in this is calculated and controlled, and the result is amazing, producing visually the most consistent and arresting performance of the contest. Iveta looks stunning – Charlie’s Angels meets Victoria’s Secret – and matches it vocally, even if she sounds a little more like the end of her tether’s in sight in the final.

⁰⁸ San Marino

B: I know I’m bringing my work home here, and I know that in the scheme of things this bothers just about no one, but really, this makes LoveWave look like a masterclass in English lyric-writing.

A: I’ve got to say that although I’m not exactly addicted, this is a far more authentic and enjoyable slice of disco than I ever expected it to be. It feels more like an original track from the ’70s that’s been given a digital spring clean than a modern take on the genre. Even Serhat’s semi-spoken delivery fits, with its broken English and overly insistent backing vocals.

V: That said, they missed a trick in the authenticity stakes not having all five of them gathered around the one available microphone. Amazingly, this must be in contention for the title of Most Together Sammarinese Performance to date. It’s not quite as genuinely disco as it probably needed to be, but its result shows that it still did enough to win more people over than anyone really expected. Its biggest victory is arguably the fact that Serhat manages to come across as endearing rather than sleazy.

⁰⁹ Russia

B: John Ballard and Ralph Charlie should hang their heads in shame for “Thunder ’n’ lightning it’s gettin’ excitin’”. On this evidence I’m not sure they’re real people though, so…

A: From the moment this was unveiled the only thing I heard about it was that it sounded like it was 10 years too late and would have been every bit at home in a mid-noughties ESC. Which, to be fair, it would have, but I still say that even then it would have been a decade out of its time: it’s the closest we’ve ever got to Modern Talking in the contest. It does what it says on the tin, and in its own way does it very efficiently, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing a proposition for being so bland and processed. I suspect even the strings are synthesised :(

V: It’s all the more disappointing a vehicle given who they’re forcing to drive it. Sure, some – not all – of the visuals are amazing, and sure, Sergei sounds and looks great, and certainly does himself and his country proud, but I can’t help but feel he’d have looked more like he was enjoying it and less like he was constantly two steps ahead of himself trying to remember all the moves if they’d just stuck to the kind of choreography we get in the first B-chorus. He’s got the voice and the charisma: he doesn’t need the gimmickry. (That said, the lower key here is even more of a cheat than it was last year when Måns used it.)

¹⁰ Czech Republic

B: There’s a proliferation of entries so far which claim to be [at least co-]written by people whose names suggest they’re native speakers in a way the lyrics singularly fail to. Based on what we get here I’m surprised they’re not credited to Rhymezone.

A: In all the excitement of the Czechs coming up with an entry that might actually qualify I think most people overlooked the fact that this is not entirely dissimilar to their last effort, in terms of being vaguely arduous and not having much mainstream appeal. Which is not to take away from its better qualities – the sweep and swell of the strings, for example, is glorious. But as much as it probably did deserve to qualify on merit, it need only look to itself to explain why it failed to make any impact come the final.

V: The stage looks very pretty here, which is nice, but it means we basically never get to see Gabriela: almost everything’s in mid- and long-shot. When the camera does actually focus on her, she looks surprisingly tired; and that’s how the performance feels to me, too. She’s a competent vocalist, but this is the kind of song that should send shivers down your spine, and not a single moment comes close. I’m trying to construe something from the fact that she lets her hair down twice and we never see it.

¹¹ Cyprus

B: “You know, I’m still inside” is not something you want to have to tell the other person, frankly.

A: Would it be unfair to hang the combination of bland lyrics and bland production here solely on G:Son? There’s nothing wrong with pop rock in and of itself, but despite the affectations this is a very tame example. My immediate reaction to it when I first heard it was “too much bluster, not enough lustre” and my position hasn’t changed.

V: Francois is sporting some serious guyliner in the semi. This is a very good performance for underscoring the point I made above about affectations not really disguising how soft the rock is. Vocally it always feels a few seconds away from disaster to me, even if it’s better in the final.

¹² Austria

B: It’s no surprise this was such a fan favourite when you get to “On chante et on danse et on rit, on s’élance, réuni, enivré, dans l’imprudence” and realise Zoë was basically singing about the OGAyers in the front row.

A: I do like the shifting clarity of tone in this, and the timeless quality of the strings, and the tolling of the bells. And the vocals suit it perfectly. But I still think the rest of it sounds like it’s been blackmailed into being uptempo. It’s one of those songs as well where discretion is (or ought to have been) the better part of valour: two-and-a-half minutes would have been more than sufficient.

V: Simple presentation, strong vocals. Works a treat. Zoë’s girly enthusiasm and Alice in Wonderland-meets-Sound of Music mien are delightful. I do like it when something I didn’t previously rate has me completely sold on the night. (It’s still too long though.)

¹³ Estonia

B: At least one entry each year tends to throw up an English word or phrase you never expected to hear in a Eurovision entry, mostly because you’ve never heard it in everyday life this side of 1965. Last year Ireland gave us the rather marvellous ‘unbeknownst’; this year Stig and friends give us “Be that as it may” – the first of several subjunctives in the one contest. (Honestly, you wait half an hour for a bus and then three come along at once.) It suits the mood of the song, and the poster-boy look Jüri was originally going for, although the story the lyrics tell reminds me of something that would come along much later: the Pet Shop Boys’ It Must Be Obvious. For reasons that, ahem, are indeed rather obvious.

A: Serendipity though it probably is, the trembling strings this opens with, followed by the more robust and confident arrangement leading into the chorus, mirrors the situation the narrator finds himself in exactly. The composition as a whole, including the way the lead and backing vocals are balanced against the music, is one of the most impressive of the contest.

V: Which makes it such a shame that in taking their cue from the one fairly subtle Bond moment in the arrangement for the performance it leads to such a disconnect between song and singer. Jüri makes every pose and gesture look like a nervous twitch. The matinee idol persona from the national final has morphed into ‘socially awkward serial rapist’. His vocals aren’t there. The suit – which was made to measure about two weeks earlier – looks terrible because of his strange movements. The stage is too dark. The card trick feels random and desperate. And so on, and so on. Gah. At least the backing vocals are good.

¹⁴ Azerbaijan

B: It’s rather clever, in a fate-tempting sort of way, opening a song with the line “You got in my head… like a song”, but all too soon this stops to try very hard. Depending on your views of Samra and her talents, there’s fun to be had with the likes of “I made a mistake”, “We have hit the point of no return / We crash and we burn” and “Gonna take a miracle to save us now”.

A: The Azeris have certainly become adept at panning for gold among Melodifestivalen rejects: as cast-offs go, this is top-drawer stuff. It’s one of the few things this year that impressed me for sounding like a complete package from the word go. Whatever its stylings, it’s a thoroughly modern production of a song that knows exactly what it’s setting out to do and does it well.

V: Samra’s not winning the Vocalist of the Contest title any more than, say, Lidia Isac is, but she’s good enough not to sink the song. Which is lucky, since the costumes are awful and the performance neither one thing nor the other. Like the Greek entry, it really feels like the Azeris couldn’t be arsed this year.

¹⁵ Montenegro

B: If, as purported, this is basically about shagging, I’m not sure what the wonderfully named Srđan Sekulović Skansi is telling us about the Highway boys by including the line “I see you inside me”.

A: Considering it was Miracle that got slapped with all the ’80s labels ahead of the contest, it surprised me how much the verses here sounded like something Heaven 17 or someone might have come up with back in the day – until it emerged that the song had been gestating for the better part of 30 years and had its roots in that era of music after all. Its combination of sounds and approaches has never jarred with me: the whole thing feels genuine in a way that Alter Ego never does. I’m always slightly disappointed there’s no pay-off to the promise of the verses, which suggest the Montenegrins are about to give us the clubbiest thing we’ve ever heard at Eurovision, but it doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the entry overall. There are even touches in the synths that harken back to Igranka, which can only be a good thing.

V: It’s basically 2013 all over again – it looks great, it sounds great, no one was ever going to vote for it, and I love it. My only criticism of the performance is that it doesn’t give us enough close-ups of the lads.

¹⁶ Iceland

B: I seem to recall Ms Salóme explaining at some point that this song was about battling demons (?). I must say, having just read the lyrics, that the voices in my head are none the wiser. At best the ideas seem underdeveloped.

A: This has the same cartoon western feel that Heroes had, and is striving for the same reach that Heroes achieved with half the effort. It has a number of elements that are theoretically attractive, but in practice I find it boring and repetitive.

V: The threads of the narrative are there, but all that’s strung out along them are set pieces. Which is to say moments of this work really well; it’s the bits in between of random wandering around and strange stuff on screen that don’t work, and there are too many of them. And it’s too dark, however fitting that may be.

¹⁷ Bosnia and Herzegovina

B: Deen addressing Dalal, or indeed any woman, with “Trebaće mi tvoje tijelo” when Jala’s “’mjesto kapetan da budem, bir’o sam da budem pirat” is so much more appropriate is tittersome.

A: Like Utopian Land, the chorus here is what does for Bosnia. For the first minute the song lulls you into a false sense of security, promising at least some of the Balkan greatness these things usually deliver. And that’s despite Deen’s vocals. Dalal’s are much more palatable, with the sort of colour to them that marks out many a female singer from this part of the world. In a minor victory, the rap manages to sound not as bad as the Greek one, although still comes across as an afterthought, and the song as a whole is too flat and alienating to achieve any sort of connection.

V: The staging would be WTF enough on its own without it having fuck all to do with the lyrics. It’s like they figured no one would understand it anyway, so they might as well make the visuals on-trend. Deen’s Gestapo Ken look is wrong on so many levels. Everyone except Dalal is overacting.

¹⁸ Malta

B: There’s a whiff of Vertigo about the colours being namechecked here. Apart from that, there’s not much to say about the lyrics; there’s not much of a lyric to say anything about. “I’ve been trying hard to hear what my heart wants to say” is nice, if inconsistent with what the rest of the song is telling us.

A: You can say what you want about how contemporary or otherwise this might be (although surely the gospel sound of the bridges and chorus is ‘timeless’ rather than ‘today’?): the whole thing just feels over-produced to me. Aspects of it are certainly appealing – the aforementioned white man’s praise-Jeebuz bits among them – but at times it comes across as mechanical, and more of a mission statement than a song.

V: There’s a call for you, Ms Losco – Mariah Carey wants her dress back. And her hair. And her tits. Very perfunctory, this performance. The dancer is pretty useless, as they tend to be in most of these things, but especially so when they merge into the background. And whether it’s her bump or the high notes holding her in check, Ira just stands and sings this, well enough but without ever convincing me she’s not stretching herself to the limit. Neither she nor the song give you many reasons to pick up the phone and vote for it, which indeed the vast majority of people didn’t.

¹⁹ Latvia

B: Misheard lyrics 2016 #1: I could have sworn young Master Sirmais was singing “That’s what I need / Feeling again that you’re breeding with me”. That aside, Ms Savadogo’s come on a bit with her English since the gobbledygook of Love Injected.

A: Mesmerising. Alright, not quite as mesmerising as her last one, but they’re not fighting each other for the crown. You won’t hear any complaints from me if Aminata becomes the Latvian Siegel. Justs can come back too if he wants. He’s the only singer this year to rival Freddie in the growling vocal stakes.

V: Strong opening to the semi. Context is everything though, and for some intangible reason part of the impact is lost in the final, despite the performance being every bit as good. I love the technological look of the stage, like Justs has been dropped into some disused machine factory where the electricity’s still on. His face is intriguing – the short-form stubble on that feminine bone structure, set off by the floppy fringe, lends him a quasi-Conchita air.

²⁰ Poland

B: Blimey, what a bummer-fest. I’m assuming lines like “When you feel that everything is lost / You need to know there’s no life without fear” are meant to be saying ‘How you are feeling is perfectly normal and things will get better’, but they tend to have the opposite effect, piling on reasons to feel even more depressed. The no-smoke-without-fire bit is a lazy choice when about a million other more meaningful things would have rhymed just as well.

A: The melodrama! Brewing since the early ’90s. If anything this year, or in any year for that matter, comes close to qualifying as a guilty pleasure for me, this is it: from the get-go I found myself taken in by it far more than I felt was right and normal. But then it came third in the televote and voila, vindication. I love how unabashed it is in its ordinariness. And multiple key changes.

V: [Semi] Mr Szpak is just a little bit off there at the start, but quickly finds the rails again. The straightforward performance sells this well, especially when we get that many close-ups of his stunning eyes. He pronounces ‘black’ as if he’s from Sarth Ifrica. [Final] On song from the off.

²¹ Switzerland

B: “Here we are now, with nothing to lose” but the semi-final.

A: LOL @ Rykka’s official ESC blurb describing this as a “triumphant mega-ballad”, for both its cluelessness and its bald-faced temerity. Musically it has a fuck-it-that’ll-do quality that permeates the entire entry. It really annoys me the way the stabbing strings stop halfway through the bridge into the second chorus as though whoever cobbled the song together forget to switch them off earlier and just hit mute at some random point. [Waits for it to end] Ugh, the whole thing’s just so unattractive. I can’t be doing with it.

V: Until the first chorus, this fools you into thinking it’s not going to be the car crash you’re hoping and expecting it to be – and that’s in spite of the blue hair and the smoking armpits. Then Rykka starts doing her weak bladder dance and yep, it’s back on track to being a disaster. On the whole it sounds (and, impossibly, looks) better than it deserves to, but it’s still a very long three minutes.

²² Israel

B: Fnaar at “You fill me”. Points off for “Don’t escape”. The rest is rather lovely. The middle eight in particular works well.

A: No one who’s familiar with my reviews will be surprised to find that this deceptively simple piano-driven ballad pushes all of my buttons, especially when the strings are layered on top. By the time the backing vocals and percussion kick in at the two-minute mark it’s all making perfect Israeli sense, but not in any way that threatens to derail it. For the sake of balance I should reiterate the one criticism I levelled at it when I first heard it – that it doesn’t provide a great deal of variety or progression – but when the foundations are as solid as they are here that’s a pretty churlish complaint to make.

V: There’s a terrifying moment there at the start in the semi where the backing vocalists threaten to be as awful as only Israeli backing vocalists know how to be at times at Eurovision, but thankfully the moment passes. The remaining two-and-a-half minutes are glorious. (All three are in the final.) Mr Star is just that, putting in a flawless and surprisingly moving performance.

²³ Belarus

B: I get that the title and overall theme here are a metaphor, but it still makes the whole wolf thing weird. He should have used a flightless bird, like the emu. Missed opportunity for televoting points from Australia right there.

A: This is an achievement of sorts in being one of the most plodding and uninspired entries of the year and yet also one of the most representative of its country at the contest.

V: Kudos to Ivan: he’s better than the song. The CGI wolves are fantastically bad, but then the graphics as a whole are one WTF moment after another.

²⁴ Serbia

B: There aren’t many sets of lyrics this year that really mean something, but Ivana Peters’ certainly do. “I thought that it was supposed to hurt me / I thought that it was love” are two simple but striking lines in an accomplished sketch of a relationship that isn’t even lucky enough to be able to call itself dysfunctional. Its impact is diluted somewhat by Hungary having beaten them to the punch two years ago in Copenhagen, but that doesn’t undermine the importance of the message. And yes, I just realised I’ve punned several times, very inappropriately, for which I can only apologise.

A: Even in English this remains identifiably Serbian, thanks mostly to the backing vocals, although elements of the arrangement help pinpoint it as well. Otherwise it could come from just about anywhere. It’s easy to overlook how difficult a balance that is to achieve. But then this isn’t an entry to blow its own trumpet, pleasingly. I’d like to like it a little bit more than I actually do, but I still have a lot of admiration for it.

V: The one time the cage-bar lighting makes sense. Up there among the vocals of the contest for me, this, even with that one little overexcited bit in the final. There’s some subtle stuff happening in the choreography, which is all about suppressed power and the fight for dominance. The backing vocals are marvellously Serbian. The whole thing works so well as a whole for me that I’m astounded it came so close to not even qualifying.

²⁵ Ireland

B: I’m not sure “touch who you wanna” is the best advice to follow, unless you want to spend the next 20 years on the nonces’ wing.

A: This really does feel like the kind of thing you’d find in a Teach Yourself Guitar book. Easy listening has never been more insipid.

V: Just about nothing’s been invested in this performance, which is decent simply for not being totally awful. Nicky Byrne’s pretty, but it’s obvious why he’s remembered – if he’s remembered at all – as the fifth one from Westlife. And turn the lights on, people! The clue’s in the title.

²⁶ FYR Macedonia

B: If it’s true that Kaliopi got this as part of her divorce settlement, there’s a delicious irony to the lines “Za sé što ti si mi dala / Od srce ti fala” on any number of levels.

A: This is another arrangement where the truly interesting things, few and far between though they may be, are lost beneath the vocals. All we’re left with is something that would have sounded dated even in ’94, when by rights it should have been Macedonia’s debut entry, complete with loud, badly dressed backing vocalists. A wasted opportunity, given Kaliopi’s ability to sell a song.

V: Black-and-white dress – check; shrieky backings standing in a line – check; completely static performance – check. It really is 1990-never. And Kaliopi doesn’t even sound that good.

²⁷ Lithuania

B: This is no less insistent in its way than the song that follows it, but I do like the fact that lyrically it comes full circle.

A: It’s interesting to listen to this without the vocals (not that they change things much), as it really hammers home that they’ve managed to construct an entire three-minute song out of precisely two parts. Perhaps it’s that insistence that won people over in the end. Personally, as per Armenia, I still find myself shouting “Do something more!” when I listen to it: to me it’s 90 seconds of edging without the obvious pay-off.

V: That hair! That jacket! That trampoline flip you can barely see in the final because of the dry ice! Sounds great though, and the turquoise and green makes for a nice change.

²⁸ Australia

B: “It never makes sense” is kind of true now that I sit and peruse these lyrics. The opening verse in particular makes you wonder whether you (or they) really know what they were trying to say. In any case, David Musumeci and Anthony Egizii – better known as DNA, otherwise known as the songwriters here – seem far too cheery a pair to be penning something this self-absorbed: they look like they should be running a chip shop.

A: Well, this is stark. It has the same echoing quality as Walk on Water but feels less contrived, and far less desperate to please. It serves very effectively to showcase Ms Im’s voice.

V: I love the way Dami just sits there and sings as if to say “Look at me, I can do this on my arse with my legs crossed”, but without it seeming for a moment like she’s showing off. Which is what it tips over into a bit when she goes all vocal-exercisathon in the last half a minute or so; the rest sounds huge and is all the more impressive for being comparatively restrained. Also, hats off to Sahlene and whoever the only other backing singer is for filling the song out the way they do.

²⁹ Slovenia

B: They’ve come in for some ridicule, but I rather like the lines “You are not a composer, I am not your song / Strange chords, different worlds”. I also like the fact that the answer to the slightly daft-sounding question the title raises is never proffered, but is a perfect match for the bruises the lyrics hint at – and that with “Now the colour doesn’t matter / You feel blue and I am better” the tables really have turned. If Serbia was the before, this is definitely the after.

A: The similarities continue in the music, with both this and the Serbian entry employing certain techniques I can only think to describe as filmic. There’s lots to like about this, especially the instrumental version; the vocals somehow make it less consequential. ManuElla has one of the very few obvious accents of the contest, too, which always catches me out and feels wrong somehow, as if being from Slovenia she should be immune to such things.

V: Boy that stage looks empty. Which is presumably why they decided to fill it up with the pointless pole dancer. ManuElla is actually pretty good, but the whole thing comes across as an audition for a part in Nashville you know she’s never going to get.

⁰⁰ Romania

This couldn’t have had a more appropriate title if it tried. The lyrics are quite poignant as well, given the way the EBU handled the situation. My main reason for not being sorry we didn’t see it in the final – which it would undoubtedly have reached – is not its poor man’s musical bombast, but the fact it may well have qualified in Serbia’s place. I feel for Ovidiu, but yeah. No.

³⁰ Bulgaria

B: Again, the metaphor mightn’t be terribly nuanced, but it does the job. Nothing else comes close this year in bridging the gap between traditional pop balladry and rousing anthem.

A: Even in its quieter moments this is effortlessly upbeat – something that’s in surprisingly short supply this year. Sure, it might be more calculated for it, but Poli clearly realised that if you’re gonna bother coming back at all you might as well do everything you can to improve on your last result. And that she does, well before the scores roll in, with an accomplished and encompassing composition that doesn’t ignore its roots, but incorporates its ethnic elements in an unobtrusive way. Result: a song that’s very much of the country it comes from but which speaks to a much wider audience. Eurovision gold.

V: There’s something very warm and inviting about Poli’s voice which helps offset her very dark staging and peculiar choice of costume. Everything comes together in the last minute though, when the excellent backing vocalists get their 15 seconds of fame. There’s an enormous amount of love for her in the hall, and quite right too.

³¹ Denmark

B: I refuse to believe these lyrics were the collective effort of six people.

A: Ditto re: the music. Talk about the law of diminishing returns.

V: It’s fun trying to work out which one is the homosexual.

³² Ukraine

B: Who would have thought we’d ever get a Eurovision winner featuring the ironically immortal line “Everyone dies”. I admire the transition from “Where is your mind? / Humanity cries” to “Where is your heart? / Humanity rise”.

A: Instantly and utterly absorbing. What might under other circumstances be labelled the ‘instrumental break’ features basically no instruments and yet remains totally captivating. It’s interesting that the top two songs this year both paired minimalist productions with huge vocals.

V: What an unlikely but worthy winner this makes. Jamala forces the emotion a bit too much for my liking given how strongly woven throughout the narrative it is anyway, but it doesn’t undermine the impact of the performance.

³³ Norway

B: These lyrics, and indeed the shift in timing, are all the more poignant when you consider the issues Agnete herself is fighting to overcome. They could easily form an internal dialogue. I’ve always been strangely taken with the emphasis given to the final word in “I’ll be your partner / And liberate you from your prison”.

A: Wait – this was co-everythinged by Ian Curnow? As in ‘Phil Harding and…’? I knew there was a reason it appealed to me immediately. Euphoria meets I Feed You My Love might be a reductionist way of looking at it, but it would only be to the song’s detriment if it resulted in it being less than the sum of its parts. And while most of Europe might disagree with me, I don’t think it is: to me it takes the best of both to create something all its own. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the shift in tempo that put people off, but from where I stand it fits seamlessly.

V: As appropriate as it may be, the somewhat sluggish movement here (and lack of variation, ironically) doesn’t do a lot for the song’s chances. Given this is the case, it’s also strange that the camera seems caught out by the fact there’s a dancer in the background. I’m rooting for Agnete throughout, but it’s fair to say her performance is solid rather than exciting.

³⁴ Georgia

B: Well, this is easily the sexiest set of lyrics this year. I love the fact they eschew any kind of standard structure and just present a series of universal moments. I hope for their sake it doesn’t depict the cost of working with a certain Swedish producer :S

A: For there’s more than one pie G:Son’s fingers are to be found in. If it’s a straight-up fight between this and Alter Ego, however, there’s no contest. Perhaps the whole Indie-cum-Britpop thing has only just found its way to Georgia, but in any case I’m glad it has. The music here charts its own course, just like the lyrics, and is all the better for being so unorthodox. The disco explosion has shades of mid-’90s Blur.

V: All power to them for trying something a bit different visually, but I’m not sure the mirror effect’s the most cutting-edge thing they could have gone for. As expected, Nika and his Lolitaz just waltz on, do their thing and wander off again, albeit with slightly more sense of occasion in the final.

³⁵ Albania

B: I honestly can’t think of anything to say about this.

A: As suspected, I much prefer the instrumental version here, since it allows you to roll around in the music and see what you find. (I particularly like the Bond-theme pretensions and the echoes of Unfinished Sympathy in the tinkle of the bells.) But this is basically the fourth year in a row the Albanians have given us an entry without a readily identifiable chorus, and there’s only so much you can do to make up for that. Besides, they had about 15 years to play with it, and although to this day I’ve never heard the FiK version I suspect most fans are right and that they would have been better off retaining more of the original. What we got has the hallmarks of a pudding that’s not merely overegged but also underbaked.

V: Eneda has a great voice, but an odd mouth, and the gold’s fooling no one: her wicked stepmother look is the one truly fairytale element of the whole thing.

³⁶ Belgium

B: Misheard lyrics 2016 #2: “I see massive balls weighing down the people all around.” I think you’ve wandered into the wrong club, Laura.

A: I’m not sure where the disdain for this stemmed from originally; perhaps the fact that it wore its inspiration, like its heart, on its sleeve. But it was that charm that attracted me to it from the moment I heard it. While it might not be doing anything groundbreaking, what it is doing it does well, and without any hint of parody.

V: I was also surprised when recently watching the national final performance for the first time to find that Laura wasn’t the hopeless case everyone had made her out to be – true, strides were made between then and Stockholm, but the potential was there all along for it to achieve the kind of result it ultimately did. Thanks largely to the fact that they turn a performance which could very easily be irritating into three minutes of fun where it doesn’t matter a jot that Laura’s not the best singer in the world, because you’re too busy cheering her on to notice. All of which is doubly true come the final, where it makes the perfect opener. The Belgian colour scheme’s a cute touch.

³⁷ Italy

B: Effortlessly effective lyrics from the Italians, as ever. I can certainly identify with “Guardavo il mondo da una porta / Mai completamente aperta e non da vicino”. The inclusion of the English interlude caused an unnecessarily hostile reaction given it conveys the essence of the original so commendably and still manages to produce lines as lovely in their own right as “We are stars aligned together / Dancing through the sky”.

A: Perhaps the slowest burner of the year, this has gone up in my estimations with every listening. At first I was frustrated by its seeming determination not to go that extra step and be the truly wonderful thing it should be, but over time I’ve realised that it’s wonderful as is. Francesca’s vocals evolve from fluttering, almost hesitant, to a fullness that’s full of conviction, and have a warmth to them that radiates throughout. The modest orchestration matches this perfectly.

V: A strange three minutes, this, with Francesca appearing to become less rather than more sure of herself as she goes along. I think it’s the enormity of the situation; right at the very end there she’s on the verge of bursting into tears. Which is endearing. Doesn’t change the fact that the performance fails to connect the way it should though, compounded by the lovely but perplexing staging and props.

³⁸ Sweden

B: Robbing “a post office too” seems so British somehow.

A: Make that three minimalist productions out of five taking the top spots this year. With Frans of course it’s the complete opposite of Ukraine and Australia, with his vocals being all about understatement. And yet that simplicity works just as well as anything more technically complex. The song itself still doesn’t do a great deal for me, as much as I’m happy to listen to it whenever it comes on, but that doesn’t stop me seeing how effective (or well-produced) it is. The only thing that bothers me about it is that the three-minute rule means the punchline is delivered without sufficient build-up: the whole “But I’m not sorry, no” coda would have a lot more impact if there was a bigger gap between it and the final chorus.

V: Yep, it just works.

³⁹ Germany

B: The fact that a narrative this mature is being told by a schoolgirl with a Manga obsession should annoy me every bit as much as the precocious Irish entry in Vienna did, but it doesn’t, because I actually believe this. It’s real, and clever, in a way that Molly’s essay competition entry wasn’t. I’m not now where lyricist Anna Leyne was (or at least had at some point been) when she wrote this, but I recognise it all.

A: Another credible and creditable entry from the Germans. It might not be ‘right for Eurovision’, but who cares when it’s this good. It doesn’t have quite the sustained appeal of their 2010-2012 entries, or even Black Smoke, but that’s no indictment of its merit given the company it’s keeping.

V: “This fascinating, independent and exceptional artist… doesn’t take herself too seriously.” She wouldn’t want to, having delivered Germany its second straight last place. Not that she deserved it any more than Ann Sophie; it’s just the kind of song and performance that has 26th written all over it. Looks fantastic though, and sounds good as well.

⁴⁰ France

B: It would be doing this an injustice to reduce it to a metaphor for France trying to find their way in Eurovision, but you can certainly read it that way. It’s also as upbeat a ballad as any you’ll find. In an echo of L’amore è femmina, I love the way the French bits are essentially Amir’s inner monologue to the English bits he’s saying to the person who’s saved him. In and of themselves, lines like “Comme une erreur de l’univers / J’ai jeté tellement de bouteilles à la mer / J’ai bu tant de liqueurs amères / Que j’en ai les lèvres de pierre” are just as demoralising as their Polish counterparts, but it’s all about pairing them with the likes of “C’est quand on n’y croit plus du tout / Qu’on trouve un paradis perdu en nous”.

A: There’s also a huge difference in how you couch these things: compare this and Color of Your Life with no reference to their subject matter and you’d swear the songs had nothing in common. This just has so much… joie de vivre. Amir sounds like he’s smiling the whole time he’s singing, and sounds like he means it. To be fair, once both he and the song find their level that’s pretty much all you’re going to get out of them, but I’m happy to surrender complexity when modesty’s this charming.

V: Amir’s lovely, but this lacks focus. The last note isn’t even close to being what it’s meant to be. Still, 6th overall feels right.

⁴¹ Spain

B: A Spanish entry entirely in English is an attractive concept in theory; in practice – not so much. Still, crash and burn, live and learn. Hurray!

A: This sounds like the original was remixed by someone whose formative years were spent listening to everything Brothers in Rhythm ever touched but who doesn’t have the same innate ability to improve these things. That said, it’s a brilliant ’90s throwback that ticks quite a few ‘sounds like’ boxes. The best BIR remixes were all at least twice this length though; the production here’s a little too kitchen sink for something three minutes long.

V: While this comes across well – and Barei shows Douwe Bob how to make a sudden halt to proceedings actually work for you – it also tells you immediately that it’s not going to make much of a dent on the scoreboard. The sound mix is a bit off in parts, and the four backing vocalists together aren’t half as good as Barei herself.

⁴² United Kingdom

B: Anthemic though this may be as an overall package, you’ve got to question whether the lads were oblivious to the undertones when they agreed to sing it. Let’s face it, they’re barely even that: the likes of “I feel I’m dancing in the sky / I come alive when I’m with you” can just about be extended to the audience, but the rest of it – the first verse in particular – doesn’t leave much (if any) room for interpretation. Either way, it’s nice to see they were completely unfazed by the prospect of both themselves and the song being slapped with the ‘gay duet’ label. (Woolford & Shakeshaft would have made a far more interesting name for them, incidentally. And poor Jake: with a surname like that he must have come in for a fair bit of stick at school. As it were.)

A: Bit of an understated gem, this. OK, it needs another polish or two to truly shine, but there’s lots of interesting stuff going on in the arrangement, and the fact it’s a bit backwards in coming forwards is rather sweet. Jake’s vocals are a little reedy in isolation, but the two of them together sound great. Which is fitting.

V: Best UK entry in years. It does fall a bit flat, through no fault of its own: the lads turn in a very self-assured performance. Again, it’s just that fickle finger of Eurovision fate. 24th might seem unnecessarily harsh, but it’s no slouch in a year of generally solid songs and performances.

And so to the points...

1 point goes to Montenegro

2 points go to Sweden

3 points go to Georgia

4 points go to Serbia

5 points go to the Netherlands

6 points go to Bulgaria

7 points go to Australia

8 points go to Israel

10 points go to Latvia

and finally...

12 points go to...

Ukraine!!!

The last wooden spoon of its kind is awarded to Switzerland.