Feels like we are going to need a thread about this!
I’ll be doing my annual tradition of ignoring it. 40 years, and still going strong.
By having a little bit of taste.
No biggie for people who enjoy it, I just throw shade at anyone who does.
I love Eurovision. The final is such an exciting night.
/brushes shade off my front/
It just comes across to me as people embarrassing themselves, on an international stage, for 15 minutes of fame.
I love Eurovision as well. A fun European tradition of almost 70 years. There are always great songs, fun songs, boring songs, forgettable songs and bad songs. It’s all part of the fun, though. As is following the national finals before the contest and interacting with the bubble during the season.
I ignored it for many years as my parents hated it but watched it at a friend’s house once and since then my wife and I make a point of watching and even introduced our kids to it the last 2 years. There are genuinely good songs involved alongside the gimmicks and its just fun, inclusive and joyful. Inevitably the song we like least usually wins but lots of the songs end up on my Spotify playlist.
There’s nothing embarrassing about it.
Especially these days. Eurovision as a production, and in terms of overall song quality, has improved significantly over the past decade. The '90s and early '00s were a dark period for the ESC, as the televote-only contests meant that joke songs, gimmicks, and Eastern European countries with loads of neighbours usually came out on top, and the winning songs rarely survived past the season. These days, however, the songs are generally much better aligned with general music tastes and ever since the juries were reintroduced, countries have put a bigger emphasis on well-produced acts. This also means that a lot of the songs have ended up becoming genuine worldwide hits after the contest (Arcade in 2019; Think About Things from the cancelled 2020 contest, which became a major TikTok hit; Zitti e buoni in 2021; Tattoo in 2023 - and even Armenia’s entry Snap in 2022, which came 21st but was the biggest hit of that year’s songs!).
It’s a great celebration of diversity, and it’s a joyous night. I’m less interested in the voting and so on, as I’m usually in bed by the time results start trickling through, but the first half of the night, with all the novelty and more mainstream songs together. In a generally negative world, Eurovision is a force for good.
But those who don’t like it, don’t have to watch, and there’s no penalty.
I watched Eurovision 2023 and loved it.
I watched Eurovision 2024 and hated it.
And you’ll watch Eurovision 2025 and get hooked for life!
Maybe.
Maybe.
Oh cool a Thread about another Topic, where I have an Opinion on it! (Woah, a Doctor Who Fan who has Opinions??? )
Anyway, I do think there is a lot to like about EuroVision, I am a more casual Watcher of it, in that I usually don’t look up who gets nominated, besides Germany for obvious Reasons :P. Been watching the Finales since 2021, only really not doing that in 2024 since I lay mainly sick in Bed around that Time.
Not sure if I will watch it this Year, as I do associate it a lot with a Person, that I would like to move past. But we’ll see.
I do think as a Concept it’s lovely, admittedly most of the Songs there don’t catch me, but then again my Music Taste is a bit of an Oddball one really. I do appreciate some Acts, especially when they get creative, even if I am not likely to listen to 95% of those Songs again. Still somewhat a fun Thing really.
Hope everybody enjoys it when they watch it this year!
(Also from what I can recall 2021 was okay, 2022 was meh and 2023 was a pleasant surprise in terms of their finales in my personal Opinion).
The eight songs for the Danish Melodigrandprix has been released.
There are two good songs in the mix I’d say and six rather mediocre ones, but even then the two good ones need a hell of a stage show to get anywhere.
I want Denmark to get out of this “musically repressed Nordic noir rut” we seem to be stuck in. Not a single modulation in sight…
In conclusion - I don’t think we’ll even get close this year…
And the voting system for deciding the Danish song for Eurovision is ridiculous.
For five consecutive days here in February we can text vote once per day per song, but we can also vote once per day per song via an app.
Then we have the live show where we again can vote once for each song both via text and app.
Then three songs gets in the national finale in the same show and we can once more vote for every song once both via text and via app.
But on every step of this there’s a bloody jury that whose votes count for 50% of the total votes…
Oooh! I have to listn to them! I’ve been following Mello in Sweden as well and our UMK, of course, and I also gave the Norwegian entries a listen…
Me too! I feel so bad for you that you keep NQ:ing year after year. You used to crack the top ten pretty regularly and you won twelve years ago! What happened??
Yeah, that sounds needlessly convoluted.
Sweden has this as well. We also have juries, but they only couunt for 25% of the vote. That’s good and bad - they placed Windows95Man in last place last year, but they ended up winning thanks to the televote. And Käärijä would not have won our selection in 2023 with a 50/50 split.
The UK stopped letting the public vote for the song years ago. Now they just throw any old singer/group at the competition and see what happens. I always find it hilarious that we have sent Blue, Bonnie Tyler and Englebert Humperdinck in the past.
That’s a strategy that has yielded varying results, mostly poor ones. But Sam Ryder was a moment of the UK doing something right again!
honestly i love the bonnie tyler song we sent, i think it was my first eurovision and i thought it was fab
That’s a fake name if ever I saw one