kylie's extremely correct opinions on the 2025 eurovision song contest: part 1

semifinal one preview plus a bunch of throat clearing

email readers: this is going to get cut off in your inbox because it’s incredibly long, so I recommend clicking into the browser version. I’ll also hopefully have a voiceover version ready to go there in the next 24 hrs or so. thank youuuuuu!

I had trouble getting excited about Eurovision this year, and that freaked me out.

A lot’s changed in my life in the last 12 months, and there’s nothing like an annual televised event to remind me of the scale of that change. New city, new priorities, same freakazoid singing show.

Some context: I’m an American who doesn’t have the lifelong tie to the contest that Europeans do, but due to a series of coincidences or perhaps an ancient curse, this televised event is deeply entwined with my sense of self, despite having the depth of a puddle and the intellectual heft of a fluffy gel pen. I first got into it during a mental breakdown impactful moment of self-discovery (tl:dr broke up with boyfriend and lost job in a period of ten days, forced to rebuild sense of self through Eastern European pop music — there’s an essay that gets into the details here if you’re nosy).

In a circuitous and baffling way, it’s led me toward everything good in my life right now — loving it, and allowing myself to love it, opened up a level of acceptance and playfulness that I had stuffed away during that weird, humorless post-college stage that I think is both common and under-discussed. It was the first domino in a chain that has led me to publish more, talk to more strangers and move across the country. It’s my favorite thing, my hyperfixation, my most beautiful game.

I also — still — feel mildly embarrassed whenever I talk about it.

Especially as I adjust to a city where coolness and taste seems to be valued more than CAA contacts, I’ve struggled to figure out where this odd obsession fits into my self-concept. I know the contest is lame and I know it’s lowkey evil from a political standpoint. As much as I can abstract and attempt to intellectualize it, the core product is still a bunch of dudes singing about saunas and a bunch of broadcasters making excuses for genocide.

Eurovision is easy to be thrilled by and difficult to love (I might be, too, but we don’t need to go there). And it’s tough to bring up at a party where people read The Paris Review.

All that to say — I avoided writing this preview series for a long time, telling myself that I just wasn’t feeling it this year or that I was too busy. As stupid as it sounds to toot my own horn like this, the three-part series I wrote on it last year is still a project I’m genuinely proud of. I worried that I couldn’t write anything better than, or even equal to, that series on the second go-around. I contemplated just skipping it. But I like to keep my promises where writing is concerned, so I am actively accepting that this series will be looser and less defined; that’s just the reality of a sophomore slump and the compromise I need to make in order to get it done.

If you’re a fellow American who is Euro-curious, I’d recommend checking out my extended explainer post first:

If you’re lazy (as our people tend to be), here’s the topline details (imagine me saying this in one single breath) — the Eurovision Song Contest is a 69-year-old televised music competition that gives public broadcasters in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) the option to send an original song in a kind of UN-meets-The-Grammys marathon live show hosted in a different city every year.

It has all the trappings of a major sporting event — betting odds, pre-season drama, underdog stories, a vulture class of commentators and never-ending debates over referee calls and hyper-specific regulations — without the pesky “sport” part. Or it’s its own sport, but the ball is the power of song and the goals are the hearts and minds of the European public. Or something like that.

It’s held over one week in May, and involves three chunks of television in its current format: two semi-finals on a Tuesday and a Thursday, and a grand final on Saturday. The semis are May 13th and 15th this year; with the final on the 17th, all hosted in Basel, Switzerland. If you’re in the US, the easiest option to watch is Peacock (though the sound quality tends to be ass), but it’s also streamed on YouTube if you use a VPN.

37 countries are involved this year, six of which have an automatic pass to the grand final either because they fund the contest or are hosting. The other 31 need to fight for American Idol-style televotes in the semi-finals — the top 10 from each semi make it to Saturday, where the voting resets and a whole new crop of professional jury votes are brought in to confuse everyone.

While some entries grasp at the contest’s origins as a chaste celebration of regional music, seven decades’ worth of cultural degradation has turned it into a delirious meta-game. I often remind people who are (rightfully) weirded out by the whole thing that Eurovision songs are not meant to be good music, they are meant to win Eurovision.

The contest favors the catchy, the corny, and the immediately memorable, and the insane bicameral voting structure creates a distinct split between jury favorites and the taste of the general public. Juries love impeccable production, classically-trained vocals and songs that you probably wouldn’t object to at a local CVS. The public loves songs that would probably give someone a panic attack. Juries gravitate toward English-language songs; the public tends to reward native languages. Juries insist that the contest is apolitical; the public literally never treats it like that. There are more complexities to get into (Eastern vs. Western Europe; pop production vs. traditional instrumentation; sleaze vs. cheekiness), but I want to get to the reviews, so I’ll spare you there.

But I will also give you a warning: if you’re coming into Eurovision in 2025 (which I welcome you to), you’re coming in at a very weird time. Last year’s contest was generally considered to be the worst in the franchise’s history, for both participants and audience members. The songs were great, but they were generally overshadowed by operational mishaps and clumsy, mealy-mouthed messaging from the EBU itself. Israel’s continued inclusion turned the Malmö arena into a powderkeg, and the surprise disqualification of Dutch contestant and fan favorite Joost Klein made things even worse (he was taken out of the contest after semi-final two because he allegedly pushed a cameraperson out of the way in the green room). Multiple artists came out of the grand final saying it was the worst experience of their lives. Come to think of it, the fearful and depressing feeling of the 2024 contest might have been a harbinger for the general state of global politics in the year since. It felt like no one was steering the ship, and few of the participants even seemed to be having fun.

This generally rancid vibe extended into the preseason this year (again, context: each national broadcaster uses their own system to determine their entry, with some just picking an artist they like and others mounting multi-week televised competitions that rival Eurovision itself in production quality).

There was a staggering number of last-minute disqualifications and upsets, and many artists seemed to be rightfully gun-shy about participating. The thinned ranks left a lot of room for the slightly-vacant NPC artists that make up the ESC’s middle class, forcing them into main character positions they may not be ready for. Most fans agree that this year’s crop of songs is relatively weak, dominated by over-the-top meme songs and washed-out Swedish nothingburgers (Google Translate tells me this would translate as ingentingburgare).

The vibe of the 2025 contest seems to be “damage control,” which is an odd bedfellow with TV razzle-dazzle. The show’s longtime executive supervisor, Martin Österdahl, is Martin Österdone (well, he’s still there, but his role has shrunk significantly) after a cascade of controversies around anti-booing technology and flag banning in the arena. The Swiss team’s main goal seems to be to hold up their country’s reputation for weaponized neutrality and simply telegraph the message that they’re HERE and CAPABLE OF PUTTING ON A SHOW. They chose the ugliest font that anyone could ever imagine and debuted a franchise mascot that no one asked for, so they’re not starting on the best foot, but whatever. It’s hard to believe that a single iteration could fully recover the goodwill lost in 2024, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect the Basel team to right all the wrongs done in Malmö and by the EBU at large.

But someone also said, once, I think, that a dog couldn’t play basketball and that a metal-tinged hyperpop song about drinking too many piña coladas couldn’t win hearts and minds. Eurovision exists to defy expectations, and that’s what makes it so obscene and thrilling. The risk there is that it does not care what direction it is defying them in.

I could talk until I’m blue in the face about how the tensions at the heart of the ESC, between attention and artistic merit, propaganda and patriotism, unnecessary rap breaks and unnecessary dance breaks, are fascinating barometers of the culture at large. Last year, I wrote a whole thing about how Eurovision forced me to contend with the utility of entertainment itself; I regret to inform my audience that I have come to no further conclusions on the questions posed there.

This year, I’m a bit more focused on listening to gleefully stupid music and checking Polymarket to see if I’ll make the $5 I put on [REDACTED COUNTRY] back. Might as well take you along with me.

SEMI-FINAL ONE

I’m pulling from my typology of Eurovision songs laid out in this post, with a few slight adjustments:

• “Swedish Bulldozer” remains the same

• “Genre-Mixing Novelty” is now renamed “Weird Little Guy” because that seems more accurate

• I’m retiring “Dua Lipa Reject,” with apologies to Ms. Lipa, and adding a more specific “MOTHER IS MOTHERING” category for the diva-driven girlie bops that seem destined for a RuPaul lip sync challenge

• “Old-Fashioned Chanson” is the same, but we are adding a subcategory specifically for the “Balkan Ballad” — there aren’t any in this crop of songs, but you will freaking know it when you see it

• “Ethno-Bop” is the same

• I’m adding new categories called “BIG STAGE PROP,” “SAD ABOUT THE HOMELAND,” “TOO GOOD FOR EUROVISION” and “SEA SHANTY?”

My three-star scores remain objective, correct, and entirely without justification.

🇮🇸 ICELAND - VÆB, RÓA

Type: SEA SHANTY? sun, Weird Little Guy moon, Swedish Bulldozer rising

Language: Icelandic

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :(

Remember when everyone briefly lost their minds over sea shanties in 2020? How every half-assed cultural critic felt the need to point out that by singing songs about dead Scotsmen into our front-facing cameras, we were actually processing trauma or collectively grieving or whatever? Clearly the sweet little boys of Væb were paying attention — and I do mean it when I say little, because Hálfdán and Matthías were 17 and 18 at the time. As some of the youngest competitors in the contest, their tongue-in-cheek presentation and off-stage antics beg for a Lonely Island comparison even before you realize that the song is quite literally about being on a boat. Lyrics that translate to “rowing today, rowing tonight/rowing to where the stars are bright/and nothing's ever stopping me now” deserve a place of honor in the list of delightfully stupid Eurovision lyrics, and even though the duo is slightly iffy in live performance, the choreography from the national final is just goofy enough that I think they’ll get by on charm alone. Really excited to see this one kick off the first semi-final with a blast of unhinged energy, but songs placed early in the telecast tend to suffer, and I’m worried this will meet that fate.

🇵🇱 Poland - Justyna Steczkowska, GAJA

Type: Mother Is Mothering sun, Ethno-Bop moon, BIG STAGE PROP rising

Languages: Polish, English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes

Justyna Steczkowska is a returning contestant who last represented Poland in 1995 (apparently, Eurovision looked just like the PBS pledge drive at that time), when she presented a slightly Björky ditty called “Sama (Alone)” that ended with a whistle tone that could put Mariah to shame. Now, she’s 52, thoroughly Instagram-faced, and is giving us a more energetic, overtly pop-oriented entry that mostly revolves around her holding the vowel “AAAAAAAA” for a combined 40 seconds. She also swings around like P!nk on a trapeze at one point, pulls out a violin, and does a full dance break. Her dedication to the contest and sheer physical endurance will be enough to pave her way to the final, but the song still feels a bit one-note to me, and I wish that such a charismatic performer could be given something a bit more layered. To be clear, the one note is AAAAAA.

🇸🇮 Slovenia - Klemen, How Much Time Do We Have Left

Type: Old-Fashioned Chanson (derogatory), BIG STAGE PROP

Languages: English

My Very Objective Score: n/a

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :)

Oh god. So my understanding is that Klemen is like the Slovenian Jimmy Kimmel (complete with blackface scandal), and is mostly known for doing celebrity impressions and hosting award shows. When he was revealed as a contestant in the Slovenian national final, the natural assumption was that he’d bring what he was known for — comedy, that is, not blackface. And then he revealed…this! An English-language account of his wife’s battle with cancer that is so literal, its lyrics include the phrase “I admire…your ability to heal.” It’s like, one step away from pulling out her chart and wailing the words “malignant carcinoma.” I am so happy to hear that his wife is okay, and I truly have no idea why he decided to sing half of this song upside down. But there is no way this is going through to the final. Slovenia, you’re better than this.

🇪🇪 Estonia - Tommy Cash, Espresso Macchiato

Type: Weird Little Guy and nothing else

Languages: Italian, English (with an offensive Italian accent), Spanish (which might just be poorly-pronounced Italian)

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes :/

Oh god but louder. Honestly, I hesitated to write this post at all because I did not want to write about this song.

Context, to the degree I can provide it: Tommy Cash is an Estonian performance artist (I hesitate to say musician) who is kind of incomprehensibly famous in Eastern Europe and crosses over into the Western avant garde quite frequently. He’s worked with Rick Owens, Charli XCX and A.G. Cook, and last year he also went viral for hosting something called the Sex Olympics. No one can seem to decide if his sleazeball persona is some next-level commentary on post-Soviet masculinity or just plain creepy. As a notable collaborator with ESC’s people’s princess Käärijä and ESC’s jilted lover Joost Klein, he seemed to enter the contest this year with a distinct chip on his shoulder and a desire to win back honor for Weird Little Guys everywhere. And he plans to do that with a song that includes the line “no stresso, no need to be depresso” in a Super Mario Bros.-level Italian accent.

Maybe I’m too small-minded to see the vision here, or maybe I should know better than to expect anything approaching subtle from Mr. Sex Olympics. I watched a 45-minute video explaining how this song articulates the tensions present in the ESC and refuses to come to tidy conclusions, but I don’t know if I can give Tommy that much credit. He clearly has higher ambitions here; when given the option to post an alternate song on the official Eurovision YouTube channel, he covered 4:33 by John Cage — which is just 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The teaser video for “Espresso Macchiato” was also a reference to Andy Warhol’s burger scene from “66 Scenes from America,” and Tommy’s long red tie seems like it could definitely be a Trump thing. He’s clearly trying to say something here, but it’s unclear what. His bit would also go a lot farther if he wasn’t such an inconsistent live performer. This song is stupid, likely on purpose, and while it is kind of funny that the entire nation of Italy got up in arms about it, the fact that it is so openly mean-spirited toward another country feels icky, even if that cruelty is making some artistic point that I have yet to understand.

As an attempted entry into the Weird Little Guy pantheon, it hits the “weird” and “little” parts out of the park. But it forgets that the thing that made Käärijä and Joost’s entries work so well is the genuine sense of care and sweetness behind them. It might not be so much about the “weird” and the “little.” The issue might just be the guy.

🇪🇸 Spain - Melody, ESA DIVA

Type: “Mother Is Mothering” sun, Swedish Bulldozer moon, BIG STAGE PROP rising

Languages: Spanish

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? N/A; automatic qualifier

It is slightly disappointing to see Spain play things so straightforward after their Iberian Kate Bush act tanked in the televote in 2023 (no taste, no taste!), but they do know how to make a solid girl bop. Former tween one-hit wonder Melody is an undeniable vocalist, and I like the slightly witchy energy that she brings to a nonsense song about how the real divas are nice to each other. But girl, the dance break. Not every song needs one! It’s not 2018 any more! You’re safe now! And no, adding a random swing at the beginning and a little hair-twirling trick is not going to properly distract from the fact that this woman’s name is Melody, not Choreo. Let this mother mother in peace!

🇺🇦 Ukraine - Ziferblat, Bird of Pray

Type: Sad About The Homeland sun, Too Good for Eurovision moon, Ethno-Bop rising

Languages: Ukranian, English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes :)

Ukraine is obviously in a unique position in the contest, and every entry since the Russian invasion in 2022 seems to be judged as both a pure showbiz product and a rallying cry for the country itself. This tends to push their entries away from Weird Little Guy territory, and they consistently put together really strong packages that integrate both traditional instrumentation and native language with production. Every entry since 2022 seems to be a straight-faced version of “Love Love Peace Peace” shot through a different genre filter. We had hip-hop Love Love Peace Peace in 2022, R&B Love Love Peace Peace in 2023, ballad Love Love Peace Peace in 2024, and now we’ve reached…prog rock Love Love Peace Peace, I guess. Honestly, no other country has as much latitude to send something serious, and while this song does sound a bit odd in the candy-coated competitive field and features some more all-time examples of bungled Euro-English (“someone who cares of me”), the pure power of the vocal will sail it through to the final, where it’s guaranteed around 200 jury points out of sheer political goodwill. Not a political contest, though, remember?

🇸🇪 Sweden - KAJ, Bara Bada Bastu

Type: Weird Little Guy sun, Ethno-bop moon, BIG STAGE PROP rising

Languages: Swedish (!), there’s a few Finnish words in there too

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes, obvs (I actually just realized that Sweden is not in the Big Five auto-qualifiers bc they’re so stinkin good at this)

I don’t know the exact number of times that baby Kylie had to be dropped on her head that would make 27-year-old Kylie think this is the best song ever made, but in this moment, I am thankful for the brain damage. Never bet against the Swedes! After decades of committing to bland-but-perfect pop songs, the producers of Melodifestivalen (the televised national selection process for Sweden’s act) seemed to catch the changing winds and attempt to find Weird Little Guys of their very own. Well, close enough — they had to reach over to Finland to personally ask KAJ, a Swedish-speaking comedy group, to join the contest. Being Finnish citizens, the trio had to take on a Swedish songwriter to meet the contest’s requirements, who presumably channeled the dark Max Martin magic that seems to be added to the tap water there. This will be the first Swedish-language entry since 2012, and the first Swedish-language entry from Sweden since 1998, when the rules literally required them to do that. And it’s from a bunch of Finns talking about — what else — a sauna.

KAJ was at the absolute bottom of the betting odds when Melfest started, and ended up beating Sweden’s 2015 Eurovision entrant (and accused wife-beater) Måns, who seemed to assume that his win was a settled matter and did not take it well when both the Swedish televote and Melfest juries were charmed by their quirky, musical-theater inflected performance. 2018’s entry, Jon Lundvik, was also ousted, and also gave the Swedish press a delightfully bitchy little soundbite about how novelty songs aren’t “real” entries. Sorry, bro, but you’re just boring! And this is a novelty song with a key change!

I’ve been accused of simping for Sweden before, and I am not beating the allegations here, but come ON. This has winner written all over it. Goofy little guys, creative staging (they literally build a sauna in the Melfest performance, though they’ll need to cut down the number of dancers per ESC’s 6-person limit), an underdog narrative, a proverbial burying of the hatchet between the class-clown Finnish delegation and the teacher’s-pet Swedes — this could genuinely lead to the second Swedish win in three years.

EDIT: Because my mom and most of her book group reads this, I should clarify that I was NOT dropped on my head as a baby. My head is soooooo strong and round. Honestly, maybe that gave me the intellectual SUPERIORITY to appreciate the delicate beauty of a song that others may call “annoying.” Idk.

🇵🇹 Portugal - NAPA, Deslocado

Type: Old-Fashioned Chanson sun, Sad About The Homeland moon

Language: Portuguese

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :(

You gotta respect the Portuguese approach to the contest, which seems to boil down to sending out an annual PSA that they have a lot of feelings and an incredible amount of hot, tortured artists per capita. Can we blame them? No. “Deslocado,” from indie folk group NAPA, is a variation on a common and slightly corny Eurovision theme around the longing to return home (in this case the island of Madeira), but no one does yearning (sorry, saudade) quite like the Portuguese, and the delicate production and McCartney-esque structure will be like a refreshing, salty little sea breeze amid the four-car pileup of loud-ass entries in semifinal 1. Unlikely to qualify, but a pleasure to have in class.

🇳🇴 Norway - Kyle Alessandro, Lighter

Type: Swedish Bulldozer all the way

Languages: English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes :/

Norway is a strange entity in Eurovision — as its Nordic neighbors duke it out for the soul of the contest, it maintains a dedication to the most boring, down-the-line pop songs that it can muster, but with like…a medieval aesthetic? They tried to get quirky with it last year, bringing a Norwegian-language metal song about a girl turning into a wolf, and got nothing out of it, so they went right back to the Troye Sivan factory and put in an order.

I feel bad bagging on this song too hard because Kyle Alessandro is 19 years old and has a genuinely striking stage presence — he is someone who can handle a dance break, and his live performance with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra is fantastic. I could see him winning the whole thing sometime in the next five years.

Also, this song is apparently about his mother’s battle with cancer, and I’ve already been mean enough about one cancer song. But nothing can justify these lyrics. You had to walk a hundred thousand miles? Imperial system slay, but what does that have to do with your mother’s medical trauma? You’ll be your own lighter? Nothing can burn you now? But you’re also burning something to the ground? Huh?

There’s a rumor that this song was called “Fighter” until the last minute, when the songwriting team realized that Luxembourg had sent a song of the same name in 2024. Lesson for next time: maybe when you realize that the song you’re ripping off is so blah that you completely forgot it existed, it’s time to got back to the drawing board. I’m sorry, Kyle. You deserve better than this song, and you’ll get it eventually.

🇧🇪 Belgium - Red Sebastian, Strobe Lights

Type: Swedish Bulldozer

Languages: English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :)

If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, this performer is named after the Jamaican crab in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” The fact that one of the more trance-adjacent tracks in this year’s contest is connected to the “seaweed is always greener” guy should tell you everything you need to know about the show’s proximity to the dance music communities it attempts to pull from. I get nothing from this song. It feels like riding an “It’s A Small World” boat through an animatronic version of Berghain. And the live vocals have been questionable at best. The Alice in Wonderland references don’t help. Sometimes, things are just bad. This is one of those things.

🇮🇹 Italy - Lucio Corsi, Volevo Essere Un Duro

Type: Old-Fashioned Chanson sun, Too Artsy for Eurovision moon

Language: Italian

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? N/A, automatic qualifier

We’re getting an odd little triptych of Italy-related songs in this semifinal, and the one actually from Italy comes last. Turns out Italians are not just a pile of pasta and rosary beads, but actual…people? With thoughts and feelings? News to me!

Anyway, this is a wistful, 70s-esque ballad about a little kid who “wants to be a tough guy” and eventually accepts that he’s only supposed to be himself. Lucio Corsi has a very striking visual — vampire Pinocchio meets Ziggy Stardust — and a surprisingly sweet voice, and his weirdo earnesty is a welcome counterpoint to the over-the-top nature of both “Espresso Machiatto” and “Tutta L’Italia.” In a contest overwhelmed by songs attempting to represent an entire nation and watering themselves down to nothing in the process, it’s refreshing to hear something from the distinct perspective of a single individual. Unfortunately, that perspective is kind of boring. His duet with Topo Gigio (the most famous mouse in Italy) was adorable, though.

🇦🇿 Azerbaijan - Mamagama, Run With U

Type: Too Artsy for Eurovision sun, Ethno-bop moon

Language: English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No

I’ve genuinely wracked my brain for several days trying to find something to say about this song. So far I’ve got this:

• The first time I heard the intro I did briefly think it was a Daft Punk song. I’d taken a gummy about an hour before, though, so I don’t know if that comparison holds up.

• Lead singer sounds like Mike Posner.

• Crazy to drop “betwixt” like that.

• This sounds like it was made to be played in a Sweetgreen.

• Post-chorus instrumental is the best part.

• The sci-fi theme in the music video makes me worried that they’re going to reuse the spacesuit and big glitter hands from last year’s staging.

  • EDIT: Watched the music video again and noticed that last year’s entrant, Ilkin Dovlatov, makes a cameo IN HIS SPACE SUIT FROM LAST YEAR. So now there’s an Azeri Eurovision Cinematic Universe that I need to keep track of.

I net out positive on this one, though. Weirdly structured song that doesn’t seem to have any clear peak or singalong moment, very unlikely to qualify, but I like the chances it’s taking.

🇸🇲 San Marino - Gabry Ponte, Tutta L'Italia

Type: Ethno-bop sun, Swedish Bulldozer moon

Languages: Italian

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes :/

Somehow, San Marino manages to become more bizarre with every passing year. Not only did they opt for a DJ in a contest known for singing, they decided that the best one to pick was the guy whose main claim to fame is remixing “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” Now you might listen to this and go oh, sure, Gabry is mostly a DJ, but he’s singing pretty well on here. Wrong. That’s not him you’re hearing. That’s three unnamed studio musicians. If you watch a live performance, they’re the three guys in masks that are perched next to him like spooky man-pigeons. He’s the guy at the laptop. In the gorgeous, twisted logic of the Sanmarinese delegation, the absolute best song that this laptop guy could send, the best one to represent the beautiful country of San Marino was…a song about Italy. A song that is so aggressively about Italy, it actually served as a theme song for the Italian national final before Sanmarinese selection even began. It was apparently originally meant as an Italian entry, but couldn’t qualify because they’re sticklers about the whole “someone in the the song contest needs to sing” thing.

Nothing about this makes sense, and honestly, if the lyrics “spaghetti, vino, padre nostro” were sung by someone not Italian, they’d be considered more stereotypical and offensive than anything Tommy Cash has ever done (Sex Olympics included). I often use “stupid” endearingly, but this is a brain-dead jock jam at best and an onstage train wreck at worst.

However, through this I fell down a minor rabbit hole of watching live versions of “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” I’m a simple woman, and few things are funnier to me than a full-grown man saying “blue his house with a blue little window” and an entire crowd losing their minds. That’s artistry, that’s showmanship, that’s everything Tutta l’Italia is NOT.

🇦🇱 Albania - Shkodra Elektronike, Zjerm

Type: Ethno-bop sun, Swedish Bulldozer moon, there’s a Weird Little Guy moment but I wouldn’t classify this as a Weird Little Guy song per se

Languages: Gheg Albanian

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes, if there is any justice in this cruel world

Say it with me now: I love Albanian Sonny and Cher! I love Albanian Sonny and Cher! I love Albanian Sonny and Cher! This song slays. Beatriçe Gjergji is such a magnetic performer, and her live vocals seem to only be improving as the pre-season moves forward (look at this video from the London preview show. No one sounds good in the preview shows! And she sounds better than the studio version somehow). And then there’s a random scary spoken word section! This is one of those songs (up there with SHUM and My Sister’s Crown) that hits this perfect balance between folk and pop aesthetics, creating a type of song that I would truly never run across otherwise. This one is slowly creeping up the odds, and while it’s kind of inconceivable to think of it unseating the bookies’ favorites, it’d be really delightful to see a small country like Albania take it all the way on the strength of one song.

🇳🇱 Netherlands - Claude, C'est La Vie

Type: Swedish Bulldozer sun, Sad About The Homeland moon

Languages: English, French

My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? Yes

Claude has a very sweet story about watching Eurovision in a refugee center after he emigrated to the Netherlands from the Democratic Republic of the Congo at age nine, and built this song around his mother’s advice to him during that time. It’s a simple song — a complete heel-turn from the Netherlands’ balls-to-the-wall entry from last year — but simplicity can be good sometimes. This is one of those pop songs that you can kick the tires on and go “yep, still kickin!” It’s a trustworthy pop song. I would lend this song $100 and not worry about it being paid back. The French-language lyrics and warm, danceable instrumental make a Stromae comparison unavoidable (Claude did open for Stromae on a recent tour). It’s bright, it’s inoffensive, I’d be happy hearing it in hair salons and pharmacies for the rest of my life. It’s a graceful follow-up to the weirdness around last year’s Dutch entry; Claude has one of the best voices in this year’s batch, I love the just-artsy-enough gestural choreography and the references to Dutch portraiture in the music video. This song is weirdly high on the betting odds for its lack of gimmicks, but I wouldn’t be mad if it went all the way.

🇭🇷 Croatia - Marko Bošnjak, Poison Cake

Type: Weird Little Guy

Language: English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :(

Let’s start with the positives — the intro of this song of this could be a very funny Weeknd parody if presented in the right tone. The first little riff on “I” scratches my brain in a nice way. And then it goes off the fucking rails. Someone slaps the “theater kid energy” button, and the song’s eerie R&B vibe turns into a lumbering, nightcore-tinged monstrosity. Then Marko switches into a vocal register that I can only describe as “twins from The Shining.” And that’s in the first 50 seconds. The song cycles through about five more discrete genres in the remaining 2 minutes, and one of them is a bouncy little jazz breakdown. There are also firework noises layered into the chorus. Oh, and it’s all about baking a cake to poison your lover. A poison cake. Get it?

The team behind this song seems to have watched Ireland’s entry last year — a similarly schizoid ride, delivered with a heavy dose of Hot Topic-friendly metal aesthetics and theater-goth black glitter — and cycled it through ChatGPT a few times while they were waiting in line at a bakery. It’s one of the few entries this year that I find genuinely unlistenable. And yet. I do want it to go through to the final, if only because Marko Bošnjak was pelted with homophobic attacks after narrowly beating out a conservative Christian band in the Croatian national final, and seems like a sweetie who deserves a win. I’ll cheer for it, but will probably keep the TV on mute.

Sidebar — I spent days trying to figure out which very specific song this reminded me of. Eventually I realized it was that “Do You Have The Antibodies” song that Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg from Succession) put out two months into the pandemic. Take this as an excuse to rewatch this video, please — it’s a really underrated document of mid-pandemic shared delirium, complete with some killer L.A. River footage. And the part that goes “PLEASE! Can you find a testing siiiiiiiiiiite” sounds just like “Poison Cake.” These are the kind of thoughts that take up space in my brain, and I just need to be okay with that.

🇨🇭Switzerland - Zoë Më, Voyage

Type: Old Fashioned Chanson par excellence

Languages: French

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? N/A, automatic qualifier

I don’t quite have words for this one, but I can’t figure out if I’m suffering from a “how does one describe the majesty of a sunset”-type lack of articulation or a “why would one try to explain the taste of a plain boiled potato” situation. The host country gets to be pretty and bland if they want, though. It’s their privilege. Gorgeously neutral on Switzerland’s part, which I guess is right on brand.

🇨🇾 Cyprus - Theo Evan, Shh

Type: Swedish Bulldozer

Languages: English

My Very Objective Score: ⭐

Do I Think It’ll Qualify? No :)

I did initially read this as “Theo Von” and got really confused/excited. Knowing the Cypriot delegation’s tendency to look outside their own country, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility! But no, this is Theo EVAN, who is actually from Cyprus — shocker, after they sent Australians two years in a row. The song seems to be distinctly Cypriot in lyrical content, as well — the whole thing is basically a riddle, with clues like “robbed by jealousy and cheated by my enemy, from tears to blood to flowers, who am I?” and “I’m famous for my beauty, who am I?” All these clues seem to point toward the Greek god Adonis, who, according to Ovid, was the son of King Cinryas of Cyprus. Adonis’ mother was King Cinryas’ daughter, but “I am a product of mythical incest, who am I?” didn’t seem to make the cut lyrically.

I’m cautiously excited about staging here — if the Adonis theory is correct, they could have a lot of fun with costuming and stage design. There’s also the very funny coincidence that another performer, from Czechia, has the literal stage name ADONXS and looks like he came from the same hot-guy DNA syringe that I assume they use to make these male performers. Honestly, I only have one real gripe about this song: WHY is it called “Shh” when he’s clearly saying “hush?" Is that part of the riddle?

OKAY THAT’S IT!

SEMI-FINAL TWO PREVIEW COMING AS SOON AS I CAN FINISH!

if you’ve made it this far, you’re a real one. thank you <3

ALSO IF YOU KNOW OF A BAR IN NEW YORK THAT WILL BE PLAYING THE GRAND FINAL PLEASE LET ME KNOW