Explain the Eurovision Song Competition to me

Cafe Society
1

I just stumbled upon a Eurovision Song Competition video and was kinda hooked. Since I knew nothing about it, it has been fun watching old performances and looking up the history and rules.

I don’t quite understand what is actually being judged. Is it the song itself, independent of the performer, performance, and production or are all of those things given a certain amount of weight in determining who is the winner?

Do countries ever get a famous pop star or “ringer” to sing their song? I would imagine having Adele, Beyonce, or at the very least your country’s most popular or respected performer singing your country’s song would give you a boost as compared to an unknown or little known performer.

Do people take this competition as seriously as the crowd reaction and YouTube comments make it seem?

2

The voting, and indeed the whole competition, is enormously political. :smiley: This is a pretty good article on the topic - it’s an interesting and informative read:

3

The one time I watched it (1977), the British entry (“Rock Bottom”) was sung by pop star Lyndsey Paul. The Irish voted against it, and the French entry won. It got a week or so of air time and then pretty much disappeared without a trace.

4

UK has sometimes used established singers or groups as their entry. Examples include Cliff Richard, Sandie Shaw, Lulu, The Shadows.

5

The Eurovision Song Contest is enormous fun and is taken somewhat seriously to not at all seriously by the various participants and viewers. The voting is done partly by a panel of judges and partly by viewers as measured by phone calls in each country; you’re not allowed to vote for your own country and you’ll find that the votes break down by either regional loyalty or genuine enthusiasm for a particular performance. I’ve lived in Europe for just under 23 years now and it’s one of my very favorite things ever.

The last time Sweden hosted, their terrific hosts put together a formula for a winning entry, which is also enormous fun: Love Love Peace Peace

6

In the 70s and 80s, it used to be one of the highlights of the year, the sort of event that everyone watched and talked about at school/work the following Monday.

Yes, the music was mostly awful, but it was fun ! And there was always the “cultural alibi” : you got to discover some obscure country’s history and sights in the introductory vignettes. Plus, the songs were still sung in a wide variety of native languages, allowing us to hear those exotic Finnish, Croatian or Greek phonemes.

7

It’s become political, it wasn’t always. It’s become crap, it wasn’t always. It’s become funny, it wasn’t always.

In the 60s to the 80s, the UK used to submit songs from successful bands. Bucks Fizz (not sure of the US knows of these) and a few others, Brotherhood of Man, Lulu, Sandy Shaw, Dana. Other countries too, Abba, Celion Dion. UK winners and runners up would often have quite successful careers off the back of wins. During the 80’s the UK’s popular music declined into a myre of Stock Aitken and Waterman songs, and those bled out into the competitions entries. They lost heavily a lot of times during that period, with a disconnect between what was good, and what was popular (because SAW churned out hits for children, which were bad). Some other countries did take it seriously, and it was a chance for their foreign language hits to make it internationally.

The relentless losses of the UK, meant it became much more an object of fun, and it was often through the UK where the rest of the world got its coverage. I think at this time the members expanded, with the addition of eastern europe into the mix, and diluted the pool much more. Non EU countries are now in there, such as Turkey and Russia and non European, but European like, such as Israel too. Even niche almost rogue states such as Belarus enters.

At some point in the 90s Ireland had a lot of success, winning three of them in a row, and the downside of which is that you had to host the next one. It was costing them a fortune. My Lovely Horse, and episode of Father Ted is their version of Ireland trying to throw the competition because they kept winning it. This just added to the fun of it.

The more musically global countries, UK and Ireland, sort of stopped putting too much effort into selecting their winners for a while. Then they got bored of that and started competitions which inevitably got really bad bands entered. They tried real successful bands a few times too. Bonnie Tyler was the 2013 UK entry. However, that was too late, because it had become political.

With the newer states entering the competition, they often had their old enemies and new friends to vote with. They voted in blocks. It became a place to show their countries opinions on the behaviour of others, usually the UK. Often getting really low scores and even getting 0 points in 2003.

Inside Europe, the people I’ve known in some places use it as a great fun celebration of cheesy music. In the UK it is either ignored, an object of fun, or another bitter faded glory for someone to care about.

If you really want to realise how the UK thinks, I really have no doubt that at least a million people voted to leave the Eurovision song contest in 2016…

8

Can’t argue with **Smid’**s analyis.

I would add that there used to be quite a few acts that entered the competition at various times in their careers.

Winners such as Lulu, Abba, Celine Dion, and Katrina and the Waves are well known internationally but there were also some other notable performances such as Julio Iglesias, Nana Mouskouri, Cliff Richards, Olivia-Newton John, t.a.T.u, Engelbert Humperdinck, Bonnie Tyler, Blue, Justin Hawkins…

9

I was surprised when Dervish won. I love them, and thought their brand of Irish trad wasn’t necessarily translatable to a huge audience.

10

In the 60’s through most of the eighties it was a competition for real. Pure unadulterated kitsch, but also completely straight-faced.

From the 90’s onward people pretty much caught up on the joke and it’s nowadays campy on purpose.

11

Nitpick - Dana is Irish and represented Ireland, of course, not the UK.

But the bitter faded glory line is a spot-on beaut.

j

12

Bucks Fizz were put together purely to compete in Eurovision.

13

Other nitpick - Bucks Fizz was formed for the purpose of entering Eurovision - they weren’t a successful band before that.

Having first encountered Eurovision in 80’s Britain as “that cheesy fun thing that nobody takes seriously” I find it hilarious that Australia is now a) in it at all, b) selecting legit pop stars like Jessica Mauboy and Guy Sebastian to represent us. I don’t think any performer in the UK who cared about their reputation would be seen dead - though it’s possible I may be out of date

14

The competition is run by the European Broadcasting Union, which isn’t an EU institution. It is comprised of public broadcasters from many countries, including those from North Africa, the former Soviet Union and the near Middle East. There’s associate members from all over the world.

15

I suppose we should also add that much of the entertainment of the UK telecast comes from the sarcastic commentary provided for many years by Terry Wogan; and since his death, by Graham Norton. Indeed, without the disrespectfully funny commentary, I doubt that many would watch.

Though to give GN his due, he does fairly frequently seem genuinely charmed by what he sees.

j

16

It all started because the major public broadcasters in the European Broadcasting Union wanted ways to demonstrate what they could do now they had established interconnectivity between all their different technical TV standards, as well as dealing with the difficulties of transmission over long distances. It was only a handful of years since the BBC had managed the first live broadcast across the Channel.

There was politics from the start - in those days, the major record companies had a lot to do with putting their singers and songwriters forward in the national competitions, and the French record companies therefore had not only France, but also Monaco, Luxembourg, Belgium every other year, Switzerland every third or fourth year (until recently, entries had to be in one of the country’s official languages).

And the five biggest contributors to the EBU get an automatic spot in the final (which explains why Australia is in - they pay in).

Today’s big stadium style shows more or less started with Ireland and their Riverdance interval show. The idea that hosting the show (the privilege of the previous year’s winner) was a way to get your country/city on the map wasn’t much heard of until about then (it became a bit of a joke that Ireland’s successive wins were beginning to be such a burden for RTE thatthey were looking for a stinker so as to be sure to lose).

17

The list of host cities is kinda funny for Ireland; there’s this list of big cities like Stockholm, Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris, Birmingham and… Millstreet, Ireland. Population 1500. A tiny rural village with pretty much two streets and a horseracing arena.

It didn’t quite get put on the map.

18

The only Eurovision Song Competition I saw was in the '80s, when I was a student in the UK. I remember the British entry, grownups dressed up as schoolchildren singing in faux Cockney: “It’s 'Orrible Being in Love When You’re Eight and a 'Arf” ('arf was rhymed with scarf).

19

That was actual kids doing a song for an actual kids Saturday morning TV show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkyWE2jy0Go <- this is evidence only, don’t watch because it is really terrible.

20

I wasn’t aware of that, I think I was about ten when they became famous.

However, they did have a number of very successful hits afterwards which were not Eurovision entries and were one of the more successful bands of that time.