Lessons learned from this year's Eurovision. It is best not to be overtly gay. Don't drown yourself out with visuals, Don't touch the camerawoman. And, of course, don't take any of this too seriously.
Eurovision is essentially a gay pride rally but even gay performances can be a little too over the top as was the case with British "bad boy" Olly Alexander, who received zero points from the audience. The Lithuanian singer Sylvester Belt put in a good performance but he was virtually hidden among the bold graphics so that it was hard to see what was going on during his song. Lastly, the "Dutch artist" Joost Klein got a little too friendly with a camerawoman and was booted from the finals. Not that it really mattered as his song sucked, even if it was considered one of the favorites.
Honestly, I don't know why we continue watching this crazy thing. The kids are long gone, but here we were staying up till two in the morning hoping that Nemo would hold onto his lead after the Croatian singer received an astounding 337 points from the audience. Baby Lasagna was considered the favorite going into the competition but there was absolutely nothing special about his performance. Yet, there he was salivating a come-from-behind victory only for the Swiss falsetto-voiced Nemo to score just enough from the television audience to climb back on top.
Like every year, the discrepancy between the jury and audience votes was staggering. Israeli singer Eden Golan was near the bottom among the juries from the 37 different countries, but was second among the audience, temporarily vaulting her about Nemo. This drew a loud chorus of boos from the crowd at Malmo, who hadn't been very favorable toward Eden on stage either, as many thought Israel should have been excluded from the competition just like Russia and Belarus. But, here she was singing about the Israelis who died in the October 7 Hamas attack. It was hard to tell from her tone that this was a mournful song, unlike Jamala who sang of the Tatar victims of the 1944 deportations by the Soviet Union in her Eurovision winning song of 2016. Eden tried to put last year's massacre on the same footing but the juries didn't buy it. Yet, she struck a nerve with the television audience that was decidedly in her favor.
Politics have long played a role in Eurovision even if the show's sponsors pretend they are non-partisan. The Ukrainian hip-hop group barely managed to skirt around the song guidelines with their winning entry of 2022 by trimming references to the Azov battalion holding out in Mariupol that year. Instead, they turned a song about the group leader's mother, Stefania, into an anthem for the whole nation. It won going away.
Unfortunately, Eurovision becomes ever more generic. This year's production seemed to be going through the motions, as the Swedish producers failed to get ABBA to perform their award winning song from 1974, and had to resort to Swedish has-beens like Bjorn Skifs to sing "Hooked On a Feeling." Yes, he actually wrote the song that B.J. Thomas made so popular. In the end, they relied on a holographic projection as part of an ABBA tribute.
Any song with a bit of an edge stuck out. Most were just floor shows. It seemed like every other woman on stage was dressed in a bodysuit or stripped down to their skivvies like the Irish witch to show off her delicate features. Finland once again made a mockery of the event with their entry but this year went too far and finished near the bottom. That ignoble placing went to Norway.
Every year we hold our breath for the Lithuanian entry, hoping he or she doesn't finish at the bottom. Sylvester did better among the television audience than the national juries, finishing a respectable 14th, and edging out fellow Baltic contenders for bragging rights in the region. We were pleased to see he is such a soft-spoken kid, not holding any grudges despite suffering a lot of bullying for his sexual orientation in high school. Our daughter has told us it is an all too common problem. One of her friends suffered through it. Instead, Sylvester turned his pain into a song that gently speaks about waiting for his moment to come.
Nemo had to sweat a little despite building what seemed like an insurmountable lead among the juries. The two boring hostesses tried to leach some suspense out of the final roll call, noting that he needed 183 votes to remain on top. He got slightly more than 200 votes, sending the arena into a wild cheer as he was clearly the favorite among the live audience. But, votes tend to split along regional lines, and it seemed like the Croatian singer garnered a lot of support among Eastern European television audiences, where I guess his song had more resonance. Daina tells me each year that I make too much out of all this voting, but even she was shocked that this act could score so well among television viewers.
Nevertheless we made it to the end. The night skies seemed to shine a little brighter with a severe solar storm giving providing quite a light show. Our son sent us pictures from his garden house on the outskirts of town where Aurora Borealis shined the brightest. He too had stayed up watching Eurovision. It's unusual to get the Northern Lights this far south of the Arctic Circle.
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