Eurovision: still 'united by music'?

Saturday's grand final should be an evening of fun. But anti-Israel boycotts have spoiled the atmosphere - and that's not the only problem with Eurovision these days.

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I was surprised the other day to discover that the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest is taking place this weekend. Indeed, Eurovision celebrates 70 years this year, so it’s a ‘big birthday’. As a Eurovision fan, I’ve usually got the date in my diary and I’m checking out some of the songs before the big night. But recent contests have made me a bit weary of the whole thing.

That’s not just because of the disgraceful decision by five countries – Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Iceland – to boycott the contest this year over Israel’s participation. Having failed in their attempts to get Israel banned, these countries – or rather, their national broadcasters – have flounced off in protest. Ireland’s participating broadcaster, RTÉ, claimed that taking part ‘would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza’. It seems the joy of taking part in a night of camp entertainment promoting LGBTQI+ and all the rest has taken a backseat as the cause du jour. Instead of men donning women’s clothes and celebrating gender fluidity, now it’s all about donning a keffiyeh and blaming the Jews. How progressive.

The Eurovision organisers – motto: ‘United by Music’ – rightly responded by saying that the event is a ‘non-political contest designed to unite audiences and bring people together through a shared love of music and entertainment’. I’m all for keeping politics out of sporting and cultural events as much as possible, striving to find at least some way to see past the reasons for conflict and embracing the brotherhood of man (pun intended). Israel’s critics pointed to the exclusion of Russia from the contest after the invasion of Ukraine as setting a precedent. But those circumstances were pretty specific: it’s hard to be full of camp fun if the armed forces of one participating country are slaughtering the people of another with precisely zero provocation.

Those who want Israel to be kicked out of one festival of music seem to have forgotten that the war in Gaza began after the indiscriminate murder and kidnapping of participants at another festival of music – the Nova festival. Where’s the solidarity? It can be found, not among the right-on elites of Europe’s broadcasters, but in the votes of Eurovision fans, who have strongly backed Israel in the public vote every year since the horror of October 7th.

Spain, Slovenia and Ireland have decided to take things a petulant step further by not even broadcasting the contest on Saturday. (Never fear, Eurovision fans – it’s live on YouTube.) RTÉ2 has even decided to show the classic ‘A Song for Europe’ episode of Father Ted instead. The show’s co-writer and Israel supporter, Graham Linehan, has objected to the decision and accused RTÉ of using his creation as a ‘a tool of antisemitic harassment’.

Indeed, RTÉ seems to be so far up its proverbial fundament that the Nine O’Clock News on Tuesday reported that the Eurovision semi-final was taking place in Vienna ‘despite’ the RTÉ boycott, as if the whole world should stop in awe of RTÉ’s principled non-participation.

The tendency to boycott cultural events and cancel artists has become all too common – and it is thoroughly destructive. As a new report by Freedom in the Arts, The New Boycott Crisis, notes: ‘An ecology that was once built on talent, artistic judgement, meritocracy and creative risk has been gradually displaced by a different dynamic: fear, informal or direct sanctions, quiet cancellations, the normalisation of silence, the avoidance or subversion of due process and formal procedures, a heightened sense of anxiety about reputational risk, safeguarding and safety.’

However, my concerns for the Eurovision Song Contest run deeper than merely the ridiculous posturing around this year’s event. The contest has become more and more bloated. Starting at 8pm in the UK, it routinely runs on past midnight these days. The songs seem to lack the variety of old, falling back time and again on the blandness of so much modern pop. The system of semi-finals has long meant that some enjoyable if bat-shit-crazy songs no longer make it to the Saturday night final.

My biggest gripe of late has been that the qualities of the songs are too often drowned out by the staging, which gets more and more elaborate and overblown each passing year. Enough with the video screens, video floors and the rest, already. The problem is epitomized by last year’s winner, ‘Wasted Love’ by JJ – pop-opera sung falsetto while the singer is seemingly clinging to a ship being tossed around in the ocean.

JJ is, of course, ‘queer’ and has spoken out against Israel taking part, as have other Eurovision stars. Yawn. The shift from camp to queer is just boring. No wonder Julie Burchill has called Eurovision a ‘culture wars contest’: ‘The rise of “queerness” – gayness without style or humour – has had a dreadful effect on Eurovision.’

Still, the Eurovision Song Contest does present us with dozens of new songs by lots of very professional performers (maybe it’s a bit too slick these days) all giving it their best shot for fame and glory. Chances are there will be a handful of performances that will stick in the mind.

With that in mind, here’s a selection of personal favourites that mean I’ll probably end up in front of the gogglebox on Saturday listening to Graham Norton and watching the contest, fingers crossed for a few entertaining nuggets. (And worth watching to spite the boycotters, too.)

Please stick your own Eurovision favourites in the comments!

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BEST SUBVERSIVE PERFORMANCE
‘Divine’ by Sébastien Tellier (France, 2008)
Rocks on stage driving a golf cart, sings the second verse having breathed in helium and the backing singers are all wearing fake beards. Also, it’s a great song.

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BEST FIDDLE SOLO
‘Hunter of Stars’ by Sebalter (Switzerland, 2014)
If Mumford & Sons could only have been this much fun. Bonkers lyrics, catchy tune. This became a total earworm for me for ages afterwards.

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BEST SONG NOT TO MAKE THE FINAL
‘You & Me’ by Joan Franka (Netherlands, 2012)
More mildly folkie stuff, but a sweet song that has a touch of ‘Seasons in the Sun’ about it. Yet it came just 15^th in the semi-final. What were you thinking, Europe? No idea why she’s wearing Native American headgear, though.

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BEST FLOOR FILLER
‘Golden Boy’ by Nadav Guedj (Israel, 2015)
The biggest shock to me was when I found out Guedj was just 16 years old when he took part. Fabulously cheesy lyrics (‘Pull me, baby, I’m your trigger / You know that my love is bigger’) with their tongue firmly in their cheek.

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BEST EUROVISION ANTHEM
‘Fuego’ by Eleni Foureira (Cyprus, 2018)
Didn’t take to this watching live, but I love it now, with it’s vaguely Eastern riff, Millennial whoop and every drop-the-beat cliché you can shake a stick at. A fan favourite. The guy who wrote ‘Golden Boy’ came back to win in 2018 with ‘Toy’ for Israel, pushing this song into second place and thus robbing Cyprus of a famous victory.

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BEST OF RECENT YEARS
‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’ by Baby Lasagna (Croatia, 2024)
This rocks along in a suitably bonkers way with a great cheer-along chorus.

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CLEVEREST STAGING
‘Heroes’ by Måns Zelmerlöw (Sweden, 2015)
It may well have sparked the ‘staging wars’ I moaned about earlier, but this is smart and simple and took a good song to victory.

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BEST CHANNELLING OF SHIRLEY BASSEY
’Rise Like a Phoenix’ by Conchita Wurst (Austria, 2014)
Yes, it’s a bloke with a beard in a dress – but that’s just a vehicle to get some attention. Tom Neuwirth is a fabulous singer delivering a very dark and powerful song with Bond-esque production.

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BEST OLDIE
‘Tu Te Reconnaîtras’ by Anne-Marie David (Luxembourg, 1973)
From the days when Luxembourg (!) couldn’t stop winning Eurovision and an in-house orchestra was part of the furniture.

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BEST ‘HAVING YOUR MOMENT’ MOMENT
’Only Teardrops’ by Emmelie de Forest (Denmark, 2013)

With Eurovision being staged in Malmö, Sweden, it was just a hop across the bridge for the Danish supporters, so Emmelie was performing to a home crowd. It’s a good song. There are drummers, too. But it’s her reaction at the end when she’s knocked back by the roar of the arena that gets me every time.

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BEST NEVER-GOT-THE-CHANCE
’Think About Things’ by Daði Freyr (Iceland, 2020)

One of the favourites to win Eurovision 2020 – until the contest was cancelled thanks to the Covid pandemic. Still, the video was a hit across Europe with naff sweatshirts and a silly dance routine to accompany a funky slice of electropop about, er, becoming a dad.

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