2024

Marred by scandals, this was a contest that was never less and yet never more united by music: in spite of the elephant in the room, SVT did themselves proud, giving us a warm and whimsical, celebratory and at times delightfully silly contest with outstanding production values – and one which produced a winner for the ages.

⁰¹ Cyprus

B: You can take the girl out of the eastern suburbs, but you can’t take the eastern suburbs out of the girl: perky Silia (whose surname is perilously close to the Estonian for ‘cabbage’, matching the predominant colour scheme of the performance) rocked up to every one of her pre-ESC gigs like a 17-year-old on a schoolies gap-year trip around Europe funded by the Bank of Dad. There’s something of that school’s-behind-me-I’m-an-adult-now precociousness to the message here, which is all attitude on the strut to an empowerment you’d have to think, or at least hope, she can’t have that much call to champion at so young an age. Even if it’s nullified by the lines that follow, there’s a nice half-buried admission in “I can see it in your eyes that you don’t like to be this way”, but other than that it’s the ooh-la-las that set the bar in these lyrics – and that bar is low. I mean, they’re only one ‘desire’ short of a higher/fire hat-trick.

A: The bombastic brass, punchy bass and heavy-handed synths chime with the accusatory nature of the lyrics but don’t do much for the song itself as a piece of music, which leaves you feeling battered and bruised. The respite of the bridge leading into the chorus is welcome, and equally well attuned to what Silia is saying at that point. The guitar plugging away underneath it all is a nice find in the instrumental version, plangent in one meaning of the word and not at all in the other.

V: Aah, the true Ocker comes out in Silia at the end there; she makes a much more convincing one, or at least prompts far less of a double-take as one, than Sheldon Riley did. Prior to that, she puts in a strong and incredibly confident performance for someone who’s barely turned 17. She’s vocally on point and catches every camera, on which she always looks great. Her comparatively understated outfit works well for both her age and the choreography – which in the dance break wisely avoids aping e.g. Chanel and just does its own thing. Even if that looks a bit like a random series of convulsions. The hunky dancers tossing [their shirts] off into the Golden Circle earns crowd-pleasing brownie points.

 

⁰² Serbia

B: Maybe I’ve just been living in a bubble, but it strikes me as peculiarly non-Anglophone to anchor an entire song around a flower – which, since this is in Serbian, then OK. All the more odd though because of its historical significance, which is something many parts of the Anglo world obsess about. And yet I could never for a second imagine a British entry called Poppy co-opting First World War symbolism as a metaphor for the state of the world, or at least one person’s place in it. Certainly not one that repeats the title ad infinitum and calls it a chorus, anyway. What else there is of it does offer some poetry though, with “I nema ko da vodi me / jer zvezde sve su zaspale” being a splash of lilac among the ashes.

A: Poignant for being so measured, this – the first half-minute is filled with just a single instrument and Teya’s voice. Her vocals at times sound like she needed to give her nose a good blow, but they work well with the music, which for the most part feels like it’s in service to her rather than the other way round. Cranking things up with only 30 seconds to go gives the song the extra pow it needs but still comes a little too late. Not surprisingly, given the orchestration, the instrumental version is a delight.

V: Clever, sparing use of the lights and backdrop here to accentuate the atmosphere. Teya, cosplaying Arwen from Lord of the Rings, seems invested in not looking too enthusiastic about the performance, which is an understandable choice, but one which tends to keep her at arm’s length. She fades a little in the quieter moments in the final as well. The smile she cracks at the end is welcome relief.

 

⁰³ Lithuania

B: The second verse here – “Ar aš vis dar gyvas? / Ar tebepažįsti mane / Saulė nepakyla / Pasakyk ar liksi šalia” – encapsulates the dysphoria that inspired the lyrics, which in the singer’s own words describe what it’s like to be stuck in limbo between two stages of barely existing.

A: Surprisingly uplifting, considering. Like Serbia, the opening is stripped back; unlike Serbia, it gets to the point a lot sooner, even if that leaves it with little to add thereafter. The echo-chamber vocals are a good match for the lyrics, as are the stabby synths in the verses, which wrong-foot you and make you think they’re in 5/8 timing or something. There’s not much progression in the song all told, but that reflects what it’s about, and it’s still effective. Great harmonies in, and treatment on, the complex backing vocals.

V: Perfectly good in that way he has of never giving more vocally than he absolutely has to. His deflated Sam-Smith-at-the-Brits silhouette creates an arresting opening image, while the surgical blues and dark-room reds lend the performance as a whole a very distinct look.

 

⁰⁴ Ireland

B: A self-confessed ode to the queer community, and yet these lyrics go beyond sexuality and can be read as anyone – a pretty angry anyone, to be fair – in an unfulfilling relationship with a person who fails to appreciate what they have in their partner. “I see the scars in your eyes” is both a keen observation and a clever inversion of the more common ‘stars’ variant.

A: “Cork-born alt disruptor Bambie Thug is smashing through gender and socio-political stereotypes to create an era-defining sound that borders on–” the unlistenable. Well, no; it is what it is. It’s hard to say that without it sounding like a back-handed compliment at best, and yet I’m struggling to come up with anything that captures my feelings towards the song more succinctly. I don’t dislike it, and I applaud it for doing its own thing so competently: there are some great touches to the arrangement, and the acoustic chorus stands in perfect contrast to the gothic electro and screamcore. But it’s not something I’m ever likely to choose to listen to again outside of the context of the contest.

V: And the gold star for most improved in class goes to…! This is an absolute triumph of staging by Irish standards, which shows what can be achieved when you wrest creative control out of the hands of RTE – ironically more detrimental than anything in this song or performance – and give it to the artist. The Harry Potter reference (take that, JK Rowling!) is the only vestige of the excruciating national final performance, which was equal parts school play and Z-list pantomime. Here Bambie produces something you just can’t take your eyes off, transcending the limitations of the song itself and rightfully earning every one of the points that took them to 6th place. Their vocal is a little shaky at times, where the pre-recorded backing vocals help but are also too low in the mix. We see way too little of the hot dancer, alas. Still too much for the small-‘c’ conservatives on the south-eastern fringes of the continent, whom this kind of ‘Ouija-pop’ still scares, apparently. I hope its justified success inspires Ireland to continue down the path of authentic – if not necessarily always left-field – entries.

 

⁰⁵ United Kingdom

B: I like the notion of “a circle redefined”. The non-chorus bits here are generally more impressive than the chorus itself, which nevertheless nails the moment Olly’s having. Quite a decent set of lyrics, all told.

A: Well produced, if a tad complacent, this offers quite a bit to like without much standing out in its own right. Kudos for the complex synth lines though, and the bells are a nice touch. The nod to the Pet Shop Boys’ It’s a Sin in the opening chords can hardly be a coincidence when a) he’s worked with them, b) the spoken-word bridge sounds exactly like something Neil Tennant would come up with and c) Olly starred in an award-winning show with that very name.

V: Nor is it a surprise, therefore, that he decided to make this so unashamedly queer – and, this being the British entry, to pepper it with moments of tongue-in-cheek levity. What is a surprise is that people still think he was off-key throughout: that’s just how he sounds. It’s the same sound that scored him two number-one albums and 10 top-forty singles with Years & Years. He acquits himself more than well enough in the showcase performance in the semi, and slightly better again in the final, albeit without warranting his moody “Beat that, bitches!” look either time at the end. (That’s despite the rejigged ending to the song itself, which works well.) Vocals aside, this is an excellent performance technically: even if you can’t, or won’t, suspend your disbelief, there’s some extraordinary athleticism on display. Even if some of the choreography is a bit Human Centipede.

 

⁰⁶ Ukraine

B: As the E.tv bio has it, “Teresa & Maria was written to remind people that… it is our actions that define us.” Weird then to venerate a woman whose righteous iniquity makes the nastiest Irish Catholic nun look like a girl scout in comparison. It also makes a mockery of the line “в твоїй руці твоє власне щастя”; “I’m not holy” is far more on the money. By contrast, the rap delivered by alyona alyona – so good they named her twice, albeit in lower case – has much more to say that’s both laudable and meaningful, even if some of that meaning gets lost in [the official] translation.

A: That ethereal opening immediately draws you into (and neatly bookends) the song, but it’s not until the chorus comes around that it’s as arresting again. Fair dos though, it’s to the songwriters’ credit that they produce something that ethereal at all with an electric guitar. The rap both does and doesn’t feel out of place, since the composition is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster anyway, and the song in toto feels less than the sum of its parts as a result. Individual elements of it work brilliantly, but to me they don’t always cohere.

V: Still, this is Ukraine: the country in Eurovision arguably most adept at getting the highest price for what they’re selling, whatever its intrinsic worth. Striking visuals is their thing, and this performance has plenty of them. The Lion King moment as Jerry scales the heights while shells rain down around her is a proper goosebumps moment, and the tableau that closes things out is just as stunning in its own way. The shadowed introduction of Alyona is memorable, too. Other choices are less successful: the juddering effect during the rap just looks like a fault in the picture rather than anything deliberate, and certainly not like something that’s meant to enhance the images, while projecting Jerry as some kind of singing angel when she’s there on the stage anyway feels a bit on the nose. The paired choreography is also a bit awkward, and it’s a shame the camerawork never manages to conceal the fact that the slope up which Jerry toils is a prop on wheels. Alyona’s rap comes across impeccably but her vocals when twinned with Jerry’s are noticeably weaker. They do get a bonus point though for what very much sounds like actual live backing vocals.

 

⁰⁷ Poland

B: “Only I can find my future / Reading in between the lines / I draw my own” is the only highlight in a set of lyrics that ought to be far more interesting than it is, given it’s about an unrepentant despot who nevertheless retains enough self-awareness to mourn the loss of their innocence.

A: The tinny percussion here does the song no favours, since in combination with the synths and the airy vocals it makes it sound like you’re hearing it down an unreliable landline at points (which in turn makes the heavy breathing effects revealed in the instrumental version an interesting choice). It’s repetitive as well, and at least half a minute too long. The strings introduced late in the piece are a highlight, but taken as a whole the song remains too one-note for its own good.

V: For someone who’s sung on the National Opera stage in Warsaw, this performance betrays none of the vocal prowess you’d expect to come with that. Visually it owes more to Luna’s musical theatre background, and is clearly from the school of ‘more is less’: the chess motif has potential, even if it is a bit hackneyed, but there’s simply too much going on without enough thought having gone into making it work on stage. Basic things irk: the unnecessary and largely overlooked costume-stripping; placing the dancer in black in front of the black tower (which is in front of a largely black screen) and the one in white in front of the white one; and both so obviously distracting the audience while Luna scurries off to hit her next mark. There’s nothing smooth about the transitions between any of these beats in the performance either. I hope she walked away from her ESC experience with the same girly enthusiasm she displayed during the qualifiers reveal, because failing to make it through must have burnt despite all the signs pointing towards it.

 

⁰⁸ Croatia

B: For all the banality on display here, these lyrics do have something to say that chimes with young Mr Lasagna’s mission to, and I paraphrase, entertain while drawing attention to the challenges of modern life. The credible FOMO of the trepid country lad who’s drawn to the bright lights he fears is neatly reflected in the lines “I hope I find peace in the noise / Wanna become one of the city boys / They’re all so pretty and so advanced”.

A: Props to Marko for being the only act this year to single-handedly write their entire entry*, even if it doesn’t do anything particularly innovative or challenging. The build to the chorus is very effective, and the chorus itself being so easy to sing along to is a boon. The shift in tone in the middle eight is well timed before the song plunges back into its take-no-prisoners chorus to round itself out. Ultimately, Rim Tim Tagi Dim proves to have been three minutes of straightforward but very resonant pop. It’s bizarre and faintly alarming to think that it only made it into Dora by accident. How many [almost-]winning songs are jettisoned because the selection committee are blind to their Eurovision potential?

V: Basic, but it works or it works because it’s basic? Take your pick. The dancer playing the daddy in the set-up is as camp as a row of tents, but then so is most of the performance. The crowd chiming in on the ‘woah-ohs’ is the moment you realise (if you hadn’t already) that it’s got the final televote in the bag. In its way this is as stark an improvement on the national final performance as Ireland’s is: Marko is clearly something of a wallflower, so to see him having blossomed to this extent and being so much more commanding on stage – both vocally and in terms of being present on it and in the moment – is a delight. As was the moment he returned to Croatia to a hero’s welcome and promptly burst into tears. And the way the country embraced the entry so wholeheartedly.

*According to Wikipedia at least, where someone called Khris Richards is listed as a co-writer on the Moldovan entry

 

⁰⁹ Iceland

B: Well, that bio certainly sets her up for a fall. “I feel it coming” indeed. There’s stuff to like in these lyrics though: the idea of “standing on the edge of a promise” and ‘diving in heart-first’, plus the imagery in a “heart-shaped bruise”. It’s just a pity the chorus is so pedestrian.

A: Hera’s barely reached the end of the first line of the first verse when you realise you know exactly where this song’s going, which is to say not very far. The studio version still sounds like they made one or two tweaks to the demo before shrugging and leaving it at that: not even the vocals sound very good. It attains a nice lift and drive towards the end, but that’s about it. An inoffensive piece of Eurotrash no one was ever going to pick up.

V: Lovely warm colour scheme, but nothing was going to save this: Hera looks better than she sounds, and it has last place written all over it. As nice as it is to see them (in medium and long shot – we’re never granted any close-ups of them), what are the backing vocalists doing there when the BVs are clearly pre-recorded?

 

¹⁰ Germany

B: Much has been made of the opening line of a German entry being “I am nothing but the average”, with good reason. “Run from the silence” makes this something of a counterpart to Croatia, even if the struggles underpinning the two songs otherwise have little in common.

A: With a voice so unmistakable he was immediately compared to Rag’n’Bone Man, Isaak rip-roars into this from the opening line, imbuing the song with more passion than the music manages to until everything comes together at the very end. That said, it’s a solid composition and several notches above the barrel-scraping stuff Germany’s predominantly chosen to offload onto the contest of late. The instrumental version is an acoustic treat that offers moreish moments of strings and woodwind. Despite being almost as repetitive as the Polish entry, the ending here doesn’t feel stretched or laboured at all.

V: I’m not sure the claim that Isaak’s “early experiences as a street performer have shaped his artistry today, instilling in him a deep connection to both his craft and his audience” is borne out here, unless he used to do his street-singing while staring blankly into a bin-fire. He’s in his own bubble most of the time. He’s also a tiny, teeny bit off for swathes of the performance during the semi; not in any way that derails the performance, but it’s there. Thumbs up though for vocally chucking himself on the pyre every single time. I have the same question here about the backing vocalists as I had for Iceland: they’re obviously just miming, so why bother?

 

¹¹ Slovenia

B: This is all rather metaphysical and psychodynamic. A touch Freudian, too, in questions like “Koga se bojiš / ko svoje želje zatajiš?” And who, after all that, is the eponymous Veronika?

A: I don’t think I had any idea this was 20-something percent penned by Joker Out. It sounds like it’s going to do something after about a minute, but then reins itself in and chooses to layer on more atmosphere before it decides, with barely a minute to go, that it ought to get to the point. Which it then hammers home. It’s beautifully orchestrated, and I wouldn’t dare argue that it doesn’t achieve the ‘musical alchemy’ it sets out to, but I still find it hard to get into, let alone love.

V: An intense performance in which Raiven, who looks stunning, hardly takes her eyes off the camera – at one point seemingly caught in a game of who’ll blink first with the viewer. It’s also, in every sense, a controlled performance. (One of the dancers unintentionally goes off-script for a moment in the semi when she appears to be chewing on Raiven’s hair.) Everything about it works for me except the dancer’s outfits, such as they are, which look like adult nappies.

 

¹² Finland

B: For someone who purports to live by no rules, Windows95man sure was quick to both call out and capitulate to the EBU on theirs.

A: Faint praise though it may be, I would say in this song’s defence that at least it’s not as bland as Iceland. It’s a brilliant evocation of some of the worst aspects of ’90s music, so it’s no wonder the Finns went for it.

V: THIS IS FINLAND, GET OVER HERE! See, I told you. The question “Is there something wrong with the way I look?” is answered in this performance. Credit where it’s due though: this is a genuinely funny routine. I love the fact the comedy stage director is actually providing backing vocals. And the vocals as a whole are surprisingly good, considering they don’t really need to be.

 

¹³ Moldova

B: Natalia, I’m not surprised to discover, writes most of her lyrics herself. She might want to start outsourcing permanently. “Tarararararararara”? Uh-ua, no-ua.

A: Those strings in the verses! Strong opening, too. But god the rest is boring, which is what Moldova tends to revert to when it’s not doing wacky. The song is well produced – I much prefer the instrumental version – but occasionally pretentious, and so aimless.

V: Gorgeous use of the LED screens. Why waste money you don’t have on props or other people when you can let the walls and floor do the work for you? Besides, Natalia fills this stage, giving an even more impressive vocal performance in my books than she did in 2007. The song’s still a sow’s ear, but this is a designer silk purse and no mistake.

 

¹⁴ Sweden

B: I suppose this is an accurate depiction of what it’s like to fall for someone you really shouldn’t. And that’s all I can think to say about this one: Unexceptional would have been a more fitting title.

A: parp-parp-parp-parp-parp, beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. I mean, it works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. There’s a dark, dangerous edge to the arrangement and an incessant build, both of which work for what the song’s saying. The final four bars sound like an alarm’s going off.

V: If you saw Melodifestivalen, then you’ve almost literally seen this – the Malmö stage just gives it a bit more space to work with. The juddery effect is no better here than it was for Ukraine. Marcus and Martinus sound exactly the same in every iteration, too, so you know you’ll be getting the usual polished performance which works without necessarily pushing too many of your buttons.

 

¹⁵ Azerbaijan

B: A sweet and compact set of lyrics which is content to just exist in its own right. The only line of note is one of the Azeri ones, in which the four words “Sənsiz göy mənə dar” somehow translate to “Even the sky is not wide enough for more”.

A: Poor İlkin Dövlətov! Regardless of his all but equal billing, we’re not told a single thing about him in the official bio, which is all Fahree this, Fahree that, Fahree the other. Which is sad and ironic, given his mugham is arguably the most interesting thing about this song. I won’t deny I’m disposed towards it generally: it’s nicely put together, and flows well. Indeed, I have much more time for Azerbaijan when they stop being thirsty and do this sort of less ambitious but somehow more genuine-seeming stuff. It mightn’t be securing them the results they want, so I doubt this approach will last long, but I’m way more appreciative of it. The instrumental version shines the spotlight on the string arrangement and some wonderfully complex harmonies. The composition, as a whole, is one of my favourites of the year.

V: Fahree is OK here, but it doesn’t really feel like his heart’s in it – perhaps because most of the heavy lifting in the song when it comes to injecting energy and emotion into it is left to his wailing partner. I can see what they were aiming for with the staging, but the glittery buddha on the backdrop looks, obviously but unhelpfully, exactly like the cheaply generated avatar it is, and doesn’t add the sense of grandeur to the performance it’s meant to. Add in a few ill-timed camera shots and the whole thing’s pretty underwhelming.

 

¹⁶ Australia

B: Props for the few words of Yankunytjatjara we get: they’re the shiny gold, black and red dragées on a lyrical cupcake already sprinkled with hundreds and thousands of eclectic references, some fascinating, others impenetrable. “I stand in the eye of the spiral… / My soul slips away from its title… / And I descend to the centre of the earth” is evocative, and there’s something alluring about the idea of matter dismantling when you kiss someone. The 0.618 thing is a head-scratcher though; even after looking up the Fibonacci reference I’m none the wiser.

A: Such a rollercoaster! The opening lines are magical, then the yidaki is introduced and I’m like: yeah, no. But then the house piano draws me back in like a moth to a flame, and I flutter around the rest of the composition wondering where I (or it) will land. There mightn’t be a kitchen sink in there, but just about everything else is. It does a decent job of representing contemporary Australian dance music while fusing it with indigenous elements, but the end result is a hodgepodge that feels like it lasts much longer than three minutes.

V: A meandering performance in which everyone who’s not behind a keyboard appears to drift about at random. Sadly, the vocals go a-wanderin’ too, with the strain showing as early as the first chorus before dissolving into ad-libs which are neatly executed but can’t hide the fact Zaachariaha has no hope of hitting the high notes again after the first couple of times. Other than the vibrant Aṉangu art adorning the LEDs, which is the singer’s own, the staging offers little to revel in, or cling onto. Fred Leone’s not-a-didgeridoo cameo comes across as a last, desperate attempt to give the crowd something to cheer about.

 

¹⁷ Portugal

B: The official bio describes Iolanda as merely “a promising singer and songwriter”. That’s either incredibly self-effacing (if she penned the blurb herself) or criminal underselling (if someone at RTP did): these lyrics have some serious heft to them, rivalling Italian for their effortless poetry. The nub of the song is contained in the lines “Quero largar o que me deixou ferida / Peço à estrela mãe que faça o dia / Nascer de novo”, and it’s gratifying to see that initial, quivering quero largar transform into the more resolute hoje eu largo by song’s end.

A: Iolanda’s voice is framed beautifully by that a-cappella opening, and enhanced by the addition of the guitar and harmonies. The song then evolves into something less typically Portuguese than you might expect, albeit just as well produced and effective in its intent as any of their entries from the last five years. The build to the scream of the title is perfect, as is the way the tail end of the song spirals down to silence. Portugal really has entered a golden age in Eurovision – something, admittedly, that some people might only come to appreciate after the fact.

V: The visual minimalism is stunning, and suits the subtle but outspoken choreography perfectly. The audience rightly recognise an outstanding vocalist when they hear one. Mesmerising stuff.

 

¹⁸ Luxembourg

B: Quite the little anthem to self-belief. It’s intriguing that cette petite voix, chant de sirène, qu’elle entend au loin et qui lui dit tout bas “I will never let you down” does so in English when the rest of the time it’s beating her up in French.

A: The strange choice made in the revamp to take the oomph out of the chorus, with the boom after the first mention of the eponymous ‘fighter’ being replaced with a weird crumpling sound, remains a sticking point here: said effect couldn’t sound less like someone successfully standing up for themselves if it tried. The composition as a whole though, acoustically led as it is, and backed by piano and strings, earns my seal of approval even if it doesn’t display much sense of adventure. A solid return to the contest.

V: The Vocal Coach (capital ‘the’) was in raptures over Tali’s technique, but it’s not entirely in evidence here: she sounds the most exposed she ever has in the semi, despite the backing vocals doing so much of the work. That said, she’s perfectly fine, and better in the final in any case. As the national final indicated, Luxembourg weren’t coming back to the contest blind and clearly knew they’d have to throw something at the staging. The result, perhaps inevitably, feels like they haven’t got the hang of it yet: the robot jaguars (?) deserve the ridicule they came in for, and the box thing they all start off in looks like something they Allen-keyed together at the last minute having bought it flat-pack from the local Ikea. Still, not bad overall, and promising for the Duchy’s future entries.

 

¹⁹ Malta

B: At least she realises she’s equally to blame for the borderline dysfunctional catch-22 situation they find themselves in. That’s something.

A: As with Luxembourg, I feel like the songwriters – in this case all nine (!) of them – shot themselves if not in the foot, then at least in the little toe in rejigging things in the chorus here, with the new take on ‘loo-oo-oop’ having none of the recursive appropriateness of the original. The song as a whole displays the requisite repetitiveness, which doesn’t help it of course. It does try to disguise it by taking minor detours along the way, but soon reverts to type. I rather like it, and did from the first time I heard it, but I can see why it didn’t go down well with the voting hoards of Europe.

V: Someone’s drawing a line under her JESC past! “It was obvious we’d end up like this.” Yep, that dance break was always coming. But it, and everything else in this performance, is far too well executed for Loop to languish at the bottom of the scoreboard. The song itself was no doubt the issue here, since this is some of the slickest staging the Maltese have given us. The visuals across the board are terrific – although not enough is made of the moment where Sarah and her clones are in their white honeycomb – and the boys in binbags are central to the routine without being intrusive or overshadowing Sarah herself.

 

²⁰ Albania

B: “Every tear’s gonna ricochet” stands out in a bunch of other lines that are all a bit the-lady-doth-protest-too-much.

A: It says something that even knowing this was coming up I’d more or less forgotten it existed by the time I reached it. The original Albanian version was nothing much to write home about, but is still streaks ahead of this: one for the ‘disastrous revamps’ chapter of the Eurovision annals. The chorus remains rousing, but the plodding verses take their sweet time reaching it, underscored by the listless percussion introduced in the second of them. The change of tempo at the end is an eleventh-hour attempt to inject some life into the song that’s ultimately as ineffectual as the rest of it. The karaoke version, stripped of all vocals, reveals some interesting choices of instrument and arrangement that claw back a little worth, but this is far from Albania’s finest hour.

V: Besa is allegedly known for her “exuberant performances that are always full of surprises, suspense and emotion”. You wouldn’t know it from this. (She’s also quite the chameleon, given the Laura Palmer ‘Wrapped in Plastic’ look she initially promoted the song with.) Is she being shadowed here, or is it just double-tracking in that opening section? Either way, she doesn’t need it. Neither does the performance, which arguably needed many other choices to have been made instead: the staging is weirdly low-energy, and when paired with the song it all but asks to be stuck on at #2. Once again the real-life backing vocalists seem to be contributing zip.

 

²¹ Greece

B: This is an incongruous set of lyrics: you’d expect them to match the music they’re set to, but lines like “Όταν χαράζει με τρώει το μαράζι / Μόνη πεθαίνω αν είσαι αλλού” completely undercut that sass, which is only really evident in the bird-flipping aside about karma being a bitch. If you were to read the lyrics in isolation (and took out the ta-ta-tas) you’d probably assume it was a ballad. But then, as the bio points out, Marina is an artist who defies categorisation.

A: “I’m gonna do it my way.” You don’t say! “Κι ας είναι να μας φέρει ό, τι θέλει μετά” sounds like the approach that was taken to composing the song by Gino the Ghost and friends – just roll the dice and see what happens. The retro opening to the video remains, musically, more appealing to me than just about anything in the song itself, which is very much an acquired taste. It’s a fascinating prospect, but I’m not sure what to do with it, or make of it. Its drive is undeniable, but much of it sounds like random pushing of buttons. Which is probably underselling it, since I’m clearly not the target audience for tabla-driven, zurna-infused reggaeton. But as unqualified as I feel to venture an opinion on it, I have to proffer something. I’ll just say it’s another very long three minutes and leave it at that.

V: Yep – it just goes on, and on, and on. Surprisingly, for all the hanky-dancing and other irony being physically deployed in this performance, it’s almost as lacking in energy as Albania. Some of the choices are perplexing as well, like the Google Street View bit. The central concept has a lot of potential, but most of it goes unrealised, or realised in a “fuck it, that’ll do” kind of way. Marina seems to feel the same about her vocals. I know she’s aiming for attitude – faked or otherwise – but it makes the whole thing feel like they’re just chucking it out there. Less so in the final than in the semi, but still.

 

²² Switzerland

B: “This story is my truth.” Sing it! Fitting that preternaturally neutral Switzerland, always somewhere between the 0s and 1s – the best line of the song – should produce a non-binary winner celebrating being neither one thing nor the other.

A: A song composed by and for the TikTok generation if ever there was one, throwing something new into the mix at regular intervals to keep your attention. Not that it has to try very hard to either earn or retain it, since Nemo’s vocals – as impeccable when reined in as they are when allowed to soar, and as convincing when Nemo’s singing them as they are when they’re rapping – are the most effective hook in the entire song. It’s no musical slouch, of course, merging genres so that dubstep sits comfortably alongside an orchestral arrangement of plucky strings and blasting brass. This is a song that will be heard.

V: I suppose, what with the whole binary thing, that the choreography borrowing from The Matrix makes sense. It forms part of a truly winning performance, with one of the best vocals of the contest and arguably the best prop ever created for it, both speaking to and enhancing the performance. The camerawork in the semi unwittingly betrays some of the secrets that went into the complex but otherwise flawlessly executed staging, but is perfect in the final. As brilliant as the prop is, however, Nemo is at the centre of this performance, impressing from the first line to the last and making it look easy as they flip from pop to rap and opera and back again. Their outfit is definitely a choice, but it was never going to distract or detract from the strength of the entry as a whole. The reprise is joyous.

 

²³ Czechia

B: Plenty of keen observations here, from the opening lines (“Your sorry means nothing / When everything else / Stays the same”) to that entire second verse (“Love of your life, just please don't ask / For any actions or any proof / Oh the irony / Where did my pride go? / I feel no shame, but you should”). That being the case, I can’t tell whether the idea of the narrator putting herself on a pedestal is a clever inversion – either of what she perhaps did to the guy she’s aiming this all at, or since it would mean exposing herself to her own flaws – or just a misunderstanding of the underlying meaning of the phrase from someone writing in their second language.

A: With its Indie-brand introspection this isn’t unlike quite a few songs that haven’t done much in Eesti Laul over the years. That it probably only got the ticket to Malmö because the app used for voting in the Czech final was unintentionally (or, less charitably, incompetently) set up to favour whoever was first on the list doesn’t mean it didn’t deserve to be there: it’s very well put together, and strikes me as being one of the most authentic entries of the year. The niche it carves out for itself was always going to be a harder one to achieve much crossover success from, but it’s a strong entry in its own right. Also an improved one: this revamp actually works in its favour. The screaming match is one of my favourite bits of any song this year.

V: Another astonishing turnaround from the national final. This performance makes far and away the best use of the stage, incorporating its physical elements in a way that’s visually effective but also entirely in keeping with what the lyrics are saying throughout. Aiko makes the most of the opportunity, putting in a uniformly good turn. (I still wish she’d had an actual barney on stage with her bloke, but we can’t have everything.)

 

²⁴ France

B: Something of a coup for France to get an artist of Slimane’s popular stature to agree to do ESC. Does make you wonder though whether the lyrics he wrote for this were his way of dumbing things down for the contest, what with all the mon amours and je t’aimes and rendez-vous. In any event, it’s one of several songs this year to showcase a dysfunctional (or at the very least one-sided) relationship. That last question is borderline pathetic/bathetic.

A: As competent and effective as it is in its own right, the composition here is so much background music: the song is all about Slimane’s voice, of which he has full and abundant command. I’m still not a huge fan of it though, even if it serves the lyrics in getting the growing desperation across. I recognise the appeal of both Slimane and the song, which is clearly what a lot of people want from a French ballad, but it feels a bit overegged to me.

V: Speaking of which, I honestly can’t be doing with this performance. Slimane is a brilliant singer, but I don’t need him to stand six feet from the microphone and scream at me to realise this. (It’s ironic that until the final, when he at last nails it, this is the moment that leaves him most exposed vocally in pretty much every rendition leading up to it, undermining the point.) Nor do I want to see him getting handsy with the camera, which is just weird and creepy, and makes what he’s singing sound even more like it’s coming from a stalker who really needs to be put on a watch list. On the plus side, his braids are amazing, and he has a lovely smile, though the top he’s wearing looks like one of those sheaths you slide over a bottle of wine to stop it clinking quite so obviously against all the others you’ve just bought.

 

²⁵ Austria

B: “No one knows a thing about my haunted soul”, apart from its choreographic credentials: the official bio mentions dancing and staging four times, which is four times more than it mentions singing. The use of the future in the title here annoys me for not being the correct tense given what the rest of the sentence is saying.

A: Rhythm Is a Dancer… M.C. Sar & The Real McCoy**… What else are we referencing here? Even with those references, it has little to say for itself after the halfway mark that it hasn’t said already. Kaleen has just the right sort of reedy twang to her voice for the kind of song this is, which could indeed have come straight out of 1995 – just not the 1995 (or 1990s generally) that Eurovision gave us. Better late than never, I suppose.

V: She certainly sounds the part of the singers who sang/mostly lip-synched to this sort of stuff. Looks it, too – she nails the aesthetics throughout. But for a singing choreographer, the routine seems a bit basic to me. Impressive flourishes are few and far between; the rest feels a bit “let’s not run before we can walk”. Nevertheless, the crowd lap it up, partly because Kaleen’s one of the few performers this year who encourages them to. She generates a lot more static electricity in the final, where the picture failure towards the end is a shame, but I guess we’ve gotten the point by then anyway.

**She all but namechecks them live.

 

²⁶ Denmark

B: The sandcastle being washed away by the incoming tide is nothing new as a metaphor, but does what it says on the tin. “I can feel you slipping through my hands” could be about the performance and/or Saba’s chances of qualifying.

A: Brave of a song to underplay its chorus for most of its running time. The ooh-ooh hook in it is decent enough, but it takes more than two minutes to introduce the SAND! SAND! one, which is much more effective. The bridge is the most interesting part of the song musically, which is otherwise decent enough, if workmanlike. That it concedes nothing to the three-minute rule and just stops is irritating.

V: This made sense winning DMGP, but that’s rarely an endorsement in and of itself: given what it was up against in Malmö, it was only ever going to scrape through if it was going to qualify at all. It didn’t, of course, but if there was such a thing as an award for literal interpretation, Denmark would be 2024’s runaway winner. A song about sand? Let’s have some literally slipping through her hands. A heartbeat effect in the music? Let’s project a beating heart onto her! None of which does anything to lift the performance, which is flat throughout – occasionally matched by Saba’s vocals, in another literal (if unintended) pairing. The one thing I don’t get is her double on the screen behind her. What’s it there for, apart from to fill up the void?

 

²⁷ Armenia

B: I love the fun that’s being poked at social mores here and how ridiculously contradictory they can be (“Շատ մի՛ խոսա, / Շատ սուս էլ մի՛ նստի”), as if there’s only one Goldilocks way of being. I also love that Jaklin’s response to that is to do the exact opposite, declaring, “Ես աղջիկ եմ ազատ, / Ես կպարեմ, դու էլ նայի՛”. You go, free girl! Dance like everybody’s watching!

A: I can’t pretend to have heard of maloya as a genre before Ladaniva inadvertently introduced me to it, but from the examples I happened upon, there are definite elements of it in the music (and indeed staging) here. Those opening bars sound like we’re being drawn into the Wild West, but we’re promptly whisked off to somewhere far more removed from Western musical standards: the composition stands legs akimbo, one foot in the far east of Europe, the other dipping its toes somewhere in Southern Asia. It’s a unique proposition that displays some impressive instrumental dexterity. That said, for the shortest song of the year it still feels like it’s twice as long as it needs to be. As much as it embraces its repetitiveness – indeed, it revels in it – that does nothing to mitigate it. Which is to say it’s fun, but only up to a point.

V: The unselfconsciously gorgeous Louis is the embodiment of French bofness, exuding near-complete indifference to their result in the final. His contribution to the performance feels quite arch as well. Not that this lessens its impact: it’s a frothy, colourful serving of pure energy after a very gritty Danish pancake. Jaklin has charisma by the bucketload, and the camera loves her. Her vocals are on point, too. The rotating backdrop towards the end is a brilliant final flourish, but the graphic design throughout has been great.

 

²⁸ Latvia

B: “I’m drifting in and out of who I am” is a lovely turn of phrase. The shallow/hollow combo has come in for some criticism, but given what the lines are saying I think they make an impactful pairing. The side is let down somewhat, however, by “a bad disease that I can’t shake”, especially when you consider that two of three lyricists were native speakers of English.

A: I do love a piano that harmonises with itself. The bridge here provides the necessary transition between the verses and chorus but is ever so slightly weaker than both. Having said that, there’s some really quite extraordinary use of woodwind leading into the first chorus you don’t hear unless you listen to the instrumental version, which as a standalone piece of music is a highlight of the year for me. There are so many considered touches. Even the electric guitar, of which anyone who’s read even a handful of my reviews will know I’ve never been a huge fan, fits seamlessly in a composition that beguiles equally for its moments of sparsity and its moments of insistence. As with Denmark’s ‘Sand! Sand!’ bit, here the cry of ‘Hollow! Hollow!’ is the pinnacle of the song, but much more effectual for being held back.

V: “Dons still finds his happiest moments as an artist standing in front of an audience, sharing the magic of music.” That’s easy to believe when you see his very real reaction at the end of the semi performance, which I find genuinely moving. He’s note-perfect throughout, and the centrepiece of the staging, whatever the [beautifully designed and lit] prop behind him might think. His outfit is a bit Akvamāns from Wish, which is somehow appropriate. I was thrilled he made it to the final, against all odds – it shows that a heartfelt performance of a good song given a minimal staging can still take you places.

 

²⁹ Spain

B: All power to Mery for owning this completely and reclaiming the slurs levelled at her. It’s interesting, which is to say depressing, that you’ve got two singers in the same semi from separate generations decrying the same misogynistic pigeonholing. “Cuando consigo lo que quiero / Jamás es porque lo merezco” hits the bullseye, and the entirety of “Ya sé que no soy quien tú quieres / Entiendo que te desespere / Pero esta es mi naturaleza / Cambiar por ti me da pereza” is a joy.

A: Don’t you know? It’s just the eighties coming back. Whereas the likes of Finland and Austria feel like they’re just copying the music of the time, this feels like it’s emulating it and is much more cognisant of what works, and why. Not that this saw it fare any better with either the televoters or the juries, alas.

V: Perhaps they couldn’t look past Mery’s vocals, which were always going to be the song’s undoing live. I mean, they’re fine (and better in the final), but as slender as she is. There are plenty of faniards in the audience who lap it up, but when did they ever not love an empowered woman sticking it to the [straight] man? Never mind when she rocks up with a pair of assless chaps. Strange directional choice to not show the actual moment the lads do their burlesque strip. In another Twin Peaks reference (after Besa, not the assless chaps), the staging here is oddly reminiscent of the Red Room.

 

³⁰ San Marino

B: Apparently 11:11 is an angelic number and an important numerological reference to synchronicity and spiritual awakening. Who knew? (Answer: Bambie Thug, who apparently has a song of the same name.) As if it wasn’t obvious enough that Megara were drafted in off the back of their mid-table success in Benidormfest in 2023, they then go and namecheck the place in the lyrics.

A: Fairy floss rock with a side of flamenco. It’s no Arcadia, but it’s better than it being good enough for San Marino would imply. Said flamenco interlude is far and away the best bit of the song, and one of my favourite bits of any song this year. The rest I’m indifferent to, not disliking it, but with no great love for it either. It gets a point taken off for the forced laugh at the end.

V: Not for the first time among Sammarinese entrants, here we’re gifted one of the worst vocals in the contest’s history. Had Kenzy peaked too early, sung herself ragged by that point, or is she just not very good? (Given the song’s all about flipping their detractors off, no doubt their response to my criticism would be M.E.L.A.P.E.L.A. “Si tu no me quieres / Otra gente me querrá” and all that.) Great visuals though: the animations are easily the year’s best on-screen effects. The new introduction works well in setting the scene, too. The rest is frenetic and OTT and dies a slow, painful death.

 

³¹ Georgia

B: From crumbling sandcastles to houses in flames, there are a lot of destructive metaphors for failing relationships this year. This one’s more obvious than Denmark’s, but also harder-hitting, determined as it is to get its message across. Amidst the more humdrum lyrical kindling there’s “Did we build empires just to watch them burn?”, which isn’t necessarily more inspired, but it does sound better than most of the other lines.

A: This bears down on you from the first note like that steamroller in Austin Powers – there’s every opportunity to throw yourself clear, but you somehow find yourself unable to move, hypnotised by its behemoth intent. Which must make it sound like I think it’s shite: I don’t, but I do understand where people are coming from when they describe it as a wall of noise. Nutsa’s powerhouse vocals only amplify that effect. Still works for me, all told. It does have an odd structure, but then left-of-centre is Georgia’s calling card at Eurovision. Unlike most of their entries, however, this one feels much more focussed to me in terms of what it’s trying to achieve.

V: Nutsa blasts her way into the Saturday-night line-up with these vocals – among the best on offer – in a performance that showcases her star quality but also serves to show how much better she is than the song. It’s the burnished spectacle of flame-throwing stop, drop and roll it was born to be, and does all that’s required of it to get Georgia back in the final.

As an aside, I wonder how many minutes into meeting each other it was before Nutsa and Olly were fangirling in a corner over Kylie.

 

³² Belgium

B: “One more drink and I’ll be fine / You’re the living proof” is deliciously cutting. The lyrics as a whole are a call to action to effect personal change, but I’m not sure how successful they are, since they’re born of a plus-ça-change world-weariness that weighs them down for most of the song. Then again, that makes the last-minute desperation to break out all the more credible.

A: This is a very taut and attractive composition (even in its water-treading first two minutes) which is enhanced by Mustii’s vocals. But it’s still the last 45 seconds that make the song as a whole work, and which provide the most rousing close to any entry in the competition. It’s not hard to see why the Belgians and the bookies had high hopes for it.

V: And then we see it on the Malmö stage. Belgium drops a plinthful of microphones into Denmark’s sandbox and then sets fire to the desert in what is (thankfully) one of those rarest of Eurovision beasts: a performance in which absolutely nothing works. The visuals are the least of its problems, as unhelpful as they are: the issue is Mustii. For an actor who’s played Hamlet, he doesn’t exhibit much sense of how to pitch a performance, unless his default mode is ‘intense’. He also punctuates the entire three minutes with a physical tic that’s as glaring as it is off-putting. And as a singer, he lets the early choruses (if that’s what those “Are you still playing the game?” bits are) get away from him. It’s not the first great song in the contest to be cruelly undone by its performance, and it won’t be the last, but it feels particularly wasteful here when so many better choices could have been made.

 

³³ Estonia

B: These lyrics aren’t nearly as random or rambling as they may appear to be. In fact they’re rather clever, full of puns and slang, plus some [very specific] references and allusions to all sorts of [obscure] Estonian stuff, imbuing them with much more meaning than they seem to have. Of course, no one outside of Estonia – and as I found, far from everyone in it – was going to appreciate all of them, so it’s kind of a moot point. For what it’s worth, the entire third verse (or whatever it is: “pardikesed väikesed, kuid moonid on nii pikad / mõnuaineid väldime, las seda teevad rikkad / kohal varahommikul ja kirevad kui kikkad / ära viisid kommid mul need kurva näoga plikad”) is brilliantly constructed. The official translation on Eurovision.tv – not mine – does it no justice.

A: This has the feel of something that’s trying to hide the fact it’s better than it seems to be. That has a lot to do with the vocals, which are downright unattractive at times, but strip the song of them entirely (as the karaoke version does) and you’ll find a composition that’s about as successful as a merger of 5Miinust’s usual sound with Puuluup’s self-styled zombie folk was ever going to get.

V: Can a performance be described as less than half-arsed? Whatsit who starts things off can’t even find the lock, let alone the key, throughout the semi-final performance, and the vocals across the board are no great shakes. (He manages to stay in key for about two lines in the final before giving up.) They’re like a bunch of guys on a stag-do. The generic backdrop is predominantly black, which makes dressing the lads in the same colour a problematic choice, to say the least. The dance – rooted in the folk culture of Estonia’s western islands, believe it or not – is the only bit of the performance that works, but it was obviously enough to win over the audience at home looking for a bit of drunken levity on a Thursday night. And I suppose that if just one person Googled ‘talharpa’ after this performance (or more likely “What was that weird thing the Estonian act was playing in Eurovision this year?”), Puuluup’s job was done.

 

³⁴ Italy

B: As you’d expect from the Italian entry, there’s some exquisite use of language here: the play on words in “La mia collana non ha perle di saggezza” for starters, then “Vivo senza soffrire / Non c’è croce più grande” and “Una corona di spine sarà il dress-code per la mia festa”, which could read as entitled victimhood if this wasn’t a song about female solidarity and entrapment in domesticity – messages that are more pertinent than ever given the current trajectory of Italian politics in a society that is itself largely trapped in antiquated conservatism. That makes the switch to “Vivo perché soffrire / Fa le gioie più grandi” all the more satisfying. Angelina apologises for singing songs like these, saying “non ti voglio annoiare / Ma qualcuno le deve cantare”, but there really is no need when what she says is so clever, so meaningful and so necessary.

A: Reasons to go with this pile one on top of the other during the first verse, which opens the door to the richness of the rest of the composition. Angelina’s vocals are integral to the success of the song as a whole, which placing them front and centre towards the end underscores, but the instrumental is so strong in its own right that I’m happy to listen to both versions and give them their individual dues. It really is a production and a half.

V: There’s a touch of American Beauty in the rose-strewn backdrop, which as it morphs and evolves is stunning for its intricacy but has the effect of making things merge into one – including, to an extent, Angelina and her proudly body-positive dancers. (The more contrasting outfits they wear in the final serve to correct this on the Saturday night, where it seems they’ve turned the lights up a bit as well.) Transplanted to the Eurovision stage, and bringing to it something completely different than what we saw in Sanremo, Ms Mango doesn’t have quite as compelling a presence. Vocally she’s on point – even more so in the final, where it feels like she’s regained her spirit – but there’s just something lacking overall to catapult the song from the top-10 finish it got to the top-5 result it arguably deserved.

 

³⁵ Israel

B: Whatever their inspiration, and however suitable that made them for a supposedly apolitical song contest, these lyrics do have their affecting moments even in their watered-down form (the last two lines of the Hebrew coda in particular). That said, I’m not sure whether the writers intended the lines “Someone stole the moon tonight / Took my light / Everything is black and white” to have the double meaning they do, considering how things have unfolded. If they did, they and the song would certainly go up in my estimations.

A: Eden has a fascinating voice: one with fullness and power behind it, but which in its quieter moments demonstrates a sort of smoky fragility you don’t often hear. It suits this textbook ballad to a tee. Beautifully orchestrated and arranged, it features some unexpected touches – like the early seascape, and the final flourish on the acoustic guitar – which really add to it. In any other year you wouldn’t question a song of its calibre doing as well as it did on the strength of the song alone.

V: A not particularly exciting but admirably focussed performance in the semi, despite Eden being a bit flat on the squealy bits. Ditto the final, which is even more impressive given the added pressure, if a little less controlled. Strangely, the modern dance recital is distracting one second and invisible the next, but has clearly had a lot of thought put into it.

 

³⁶ Norway

B: Since the original version of the song was more than twice as long as this, it’s no wonder the lyrics we get feel like half a story. And that’s exactly what they are: perhaps the purest fairytale Eurovision has ever staged, with the fair maiden and evil stepmother in a rags-to-riches story with the requisite bloody twist. But even by the standards of the most peculiar of fairytales, the “Ho skapte meg om til eit svær og ei nål” bit is particularly odd. I’m sure it means… something.

A: Having had to seriously downsize to fit the Eurovision time limit, this sets out its stall from the opening bar. If you were ignorant of the lyrics, however, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t meant to be this length: it feels very organic as is, and to be honest I’m not sure you’d want any more of it than you get. (The televoters clearly didn’t.) It’ll never be a favourite of mine, but I do like it, and it added something different to the year’s line-up, which is always a good thing.

V: Like the other Norwegians in the contest, Gåte take an if-it-ain’t-broke approach to their staging in Malmö, importing it wholesale from MGP. And why not? Everyone gets a bit overexcited, tossing things in the air and jumping off furniture like kids at a party after their umpteenth fistful of Haribos, but it works. Apart from the storm-tossed sea background – was that beamed in from the national final as well? – which strikes me as being a bit out of place. Surely a gloomy forest or something would have been more appropriate.

 

³⁷ Netherlands

B: I dunno, it still feels a bit like he’s taking the piss to me. Which is fine – there’s nothing wrong with gentle mockery, especially when it’s paired with self-deprecating humour (“Hoef geen paella, no / Ik weet niet eens echt wat dat is”). I’m just not sure what the whole thing’s trying to say: that the idea of Europe is better than the reality of it?

A: Especially the way it’s phrased. This is the most attractive and interesting of the three ’90s throwbacks by quite some distance, but it’s a pretty low bar. Its pop-punk catchiness and happy-hardcore silliness would surely have changed things at the top of the scoreboard in the final.

V: He can’t really sing, can he? That aside, taken on its own terms this is undeniably fun. It’s mad (what was the explanation for the blue duck again?) and I’m not sure the humour necessarily translates, but Joost is a great showman. The way I see it though, it still knowingly sits on a fence – and if everything that’s gone before is the cake, then the confessional at the end is less the icing on it and rather more the eat-it-too bit. Particularly since it feels as artificially conceived as the rest of it. A crowd-pleaser and no mistake, but I can’t help feeling we’re being hoodwinked.

 

And so to the points...

 

1 point goes to the UK

2 points go to Lithuania

3 points go to Germany

4 points go to Ireland

5 points go to Croatia

6 points go to Czechia

7 points go to Italy

8 points go to Latvia

10 points go to Switzerland

 

and finally...

 

12 points go to...

 

Portugal!

 

In a close-fought race to the bottom, the wooden spoon is somewhat unexpectedly awarded to Poland.