no one asked for this, pt. 3
the eurovision preview series concludes; this one gets a little personal!
this issue is late because I had to dogsit a horrible french bulldog named geno who is now my sworn enemy; also I was scared :)
there’s a lot going on here, and it doesn’t coalesce quite as I’d want it to – more of a big, messy collage than an essay, really. thanks for being here anyway. audio version is here with a LOT of incoherent chatter at the end. lfg.
If this was a borderline-exploitative essay in The Cut, it would be titled something like this:
“10 Days Ruined My Life. Eurovision Held It Together.”
“How A Three-Minute Video Cost Me My Boyfriend, My Job and, Maybe, My Mind.”
“A Slovenian Boy Band Ended My Relationship – And I Couldn’t Be Happier”
None of these titles tell the whole truth, but that’s not what headlines are for. If you read the last two essays, you may have noticed me circling around whether Eurovision songs “count” as “art.” You may have sensed me sweating through the page, searching for a way to define them as such, and failing at every turn. The truth is that Eurovision came into my life at a very odd time, and inspired me to make some very odd choices. Choices that needed to be made, but might’ve felt more justified if they were spurred by something a bit more respectable. Or so I tell myself.
The truth is, I’m an aspiring snob. If you’re reading this, you probably are too. Blame it on precocious reading habits, heterosexuality, or the shame of being surrounded by wealth while painfully middle-class. Throughout my young adulthood, I’ve spent a lot of mental energy on liking the right things, figuring out what to say about them, and second-guessing myself into oblivion. This pattern shows up everywhere, but it’s most obvious in music. In middle school, I listened to the Billboard 100 in sequence so many times that I still subconsciously expect “Starships” to autoplay after “California Gurls.” When a boy told me he liked Kanye West and LCD Soundsystem in high school, I memorized both of their discographies to catch up with him and read half the archive of Pitchfork, just to be safe. In college, I always wanted to join the radio station, but gave myself an impossible syllabus of classics and college-rock standards to gulp down before I’d allow myself to send in an application. I genuinely enjoyed all of this exploration, but I can’t delude myself into thinking that it came from anything other than an anxious desire to belong, or more cynically, to impress.
My tendency to mirror and amplify other peoples’ taste has always made me a bit uncomfortable. For a while there, I wasn’t sure that I had any genuine opinions of my own. I’ve spent so much time reading about the idea of taste that I can rattle off the major conceptions, at least in simplified form, with embarrassing speed: David Hume thinks a “tasteful” work of art is one that can stand the test of time and is “well made,” which says absolutely nothing. Immanuel Kant posits that everyone shares a “sensus communis” of what is good and beautiful, but can only access it through “ideal conditions” – conditions that, coincidentally, sound a lot like his own dandy little eighteenth-century life. Again, wildly unhelpful.
Pierre Bourdieu, though…that guy gets it. His theory of cultural capital recognizes that the music, books and clothes we like can help us gain a competitive advantage, or at least stay afloat, in a social hierarchy. He views taste not as some inborn conception of beauty, but as something that fulfills a need.
When Bourdieu surveyed the French public about their taste in the early 1960s, he found obvious rifts between the upper, middle and lower classes. Most notably, those with “low cultural capital” – read: poor people – judged cultural products on their function, rather than their content. Good music was fun to dance to, good food tasted nice, a good movie made you laugh for an hour or two. This stood in stark contrast to the middle- and upper-class interviewees, who connected their likes and dislikes to annoying stuff like personal values and “artistic merit.” Anxiety about cultural consumption seemed to increase in direct relation to perceived social mobility. Among the striving classes, the search for “distinction” was never-ending, because it stood to preserve or heighten their social standing.
When I encountered the theory in college, I felt both called out and comforted – for what was I if not a doomed striver, grasping at distinction. If Bourdieu was forced to watch Eurovision (which he probably did – dude died in 2002, just in time to see an Estonian Barry Manilow-meets-Macarena ripoff clinch the victory), he might point out that it’s an essentially “functional,” and therefore lower-class, product. To call back to last week’s essay, it’s possible that my American brain rejects the essential corniness of the contest because I am forced to take my own taste more seriously than those in countries with more settled, generationally-defined class positions.
The myth of class mobility fuels the search for coolness, and Eurovision stands at odds with all of that. I can’t “trade in” my knowledge of it for any kind of approval from immediate peers. If anything, my passion for it actively repels the kind of people I’d want to impress, which unfortunately tend to be dead-eyed indie filmmakers and women who smoke American Spirits. It doesn’t fit into my usual conception of socially-determined taste, and seems to fulfill an entirely different, and more personal, set of needs.
Okay cool, you’re probably thinking, what about the whole “life falling apart” thing? Where is the exploitative New York Mag essay I was promised? Thanks for eating your vegetables, dessert’s on the way. I already laid out the primal scene of my fandom in the last essay. Early-summer night, 2023, big pile of washcloths, empty apartment.
What I didn’t mention is that someone else was supposed to be there: my boyfriend. We were on a “break” – that favored tool of the monogamous and delusional. There’s nothing more boring than other peoples’ love stories, so just trust me when I say that ours was a good one. We met right before the pandemic, and allowed our lives to collapse into each other as the world shut down. We shared everything, and I began to like the things he liked – not because I consciously wanted to impress him, but because it was so much fun to talk about them together. The world we built together was supportive, playful and loving. But it was also small.
As the years went on, I wondered if a relationship raised in captivity could survive in the wild. I began to miss my sharp edges, and wondered if anything – a book, a song, a poem – could ever feel truly mine again. I pushed those thoughts away, over and over. I’d never felt more understood by or interested in another person, and our cozy partnership was just too good to walk away from. We laughed every day, even as the essential sweetness of our relationship became overripe, sticky, and eventually, rotten.
Tensions escalated. I asked for time apart because I needed to think. We agreed to 17 days – two and a half weeks seemed like enough time to get our selves back, or at least figure out where they’d run off to. We hand-wrote a contract, saying that this time was meant for “reflection and self-discovery,” and stuck it to the refrigerator. He packed a bag and drove to his parents’. I remember hearing the door shut and staring at that piece of paper. I let my ears adjust to the silence. For someone so consumed by questions of taste, I sure had trouble figuring out if I liked it.
So that’s where my head was on that Tuesday night, when I stumbled on that Peacock stream and found myself entranced by a silly little song contest. But it wasn’t until the second semi-final – Thursday, May 11 – that my world truly tipped on its axis. That’s when I first encountered 2023’s Slovenian entry – the song that opened my heart and ruined my life.
Again, I’ll set the scene. I was hunched over my laptop on the too-small couch we’d just finished paying off, adding footnotes to a script about the Zoot Suit Riots. This was an everyday thing at my fancy, big-tech writing job. We don’t have time to get into that. My eyes flicked up as Slovenia’s finest – a rock band called, inscrutably, “Joker Out” – started their act. They all looked like fucked-up variations of Harry Styles – except for the drummer, who looked like Ron Weasley. I saw floppy hair. Pink pants. Unplugged instruments. It was the kind of fizzy indie rock song that I assumed they outlawed after 2014, sung in a language that sounded like Simlish. The lead singer’s smile evoked a horny golden retriever, and at one point he literally licked the camera lens. The bassist and lead guitarist had coordinated dance moves. The whole thing would put Robert Christgau in a coma. I was repulsed. I was intrigued. I was…in love?
When the song ended, the Slovene twenty-somethings made K-pop-style heart hands at the camera. I pawed at the gummy purple buttons on the remote, willing it backward to re-experience the sonic sugar rush. The immediacy that Eurovision necessitates creates some real duds, but when it works, it fucking works. I watched the video three more times, my Looney Tunes-style heart eyes growing with every minute. None of it made sense to me. I’m hesitant to even link it here, like it’s the video from The Ring or something. But here it is. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Later, when the results were called, I found myself holding my breath, waiting for Slovenia to be called into the grand final. When they were called in, I audibly yelped. I sent this text within minutes:
I wasn’t stoned. At all. But I might as well have been. I hadn’t felt excited like this in months. I hadn’t felt excited like this, alone, in years. This wasn’t just a confusing celebrity crush, or a burgeoning obsession with an overseas song contest – it was a moment of joy that was utterly my own.
If you know me in person, you know what happened next. If you don’t, you can probably guess. My boyfriend moved back in on Saturday, and we put ourselves on our best, over-therapized behavior. But it was evident that our puzzle pieces had warped in the time apart – some parts expanding, others shriveling. The following Monday, stuck on the 110, I recorded a voice memo where I admitted I didn’t want to tie my life to him any more. After I parked the car, I watched the stupid Slovenian video twice before heading into the apartment that no longer felt like home – grasping, I think, at the tiny, sovereign bit of space that had opened within me, or trying to remind myself that it existed at all. On Tuesday, I told him I wanted to end things. On Wednesday, he moved out for real. Ten days after that, I lost my job.
The weeks that followed were as shitty as you’d imagine a combination breakup-and-layoff would be. I also had a major dental surgery, to sweeten the deal. There was one moment, late at night, when a stitch came loose and I woke up, almost choking on my own blood. I stumbled to the bathroom to spit in the sink. I examined my own reflection, because that’s what people at rock bottom are supposed to do.
My eyelids were permanently puffy from days of crying, my jaw distended and bruised. My best friend was gone, my prestigious-yet-unfulfilling writing job was gone, blood was dripping from my mouth, and the hours – hell, the weeks – stretched out ahead of me without shape or substance. The only thing that made me feel a hint of joy was a bunch of feather-light pop songs in languages I couldn’t understand. There was no one to mirror, no one to impress. I downloaded a shady .tor file of the last decade of grand finals and made it my mission to watch them all, slicing the interminable days into three-minute, rhinestone-laden chunks. Slowly, I started to hear myself again.
Okay, nice, you might be thinking, another excellent addition to the “white girl learns to love herself” canon, with a shoehorned little Eurovision twist. Could’ve cut the whole Bourdieu part at the beginning, but good for you, girlie. Clicking out in 3…2…WAIT!!! There’s more to this story! I went all the way to Slovenia to see my little guys, but I don’t have time to write about that! I need to remind you that I am a pathetic little SNOB! Through all of this, I hated myself for being bolstered by something so lame!
I WISH my heart was opened by a Jodorowsky movie or an obscure 1980s reissue! Hell, even a well-crafted episode of “Cheers” would make for a better story than this. For the rest of my life, I am going to be forced to sit across tiny tables and tell men from Hinge that my last relationship ended over fucking EUROVISION. I’ll have to explain the 12-point system at least 40 more times before I find genuine companionship. What happened to the socially-mobile cultural consumer? Will she ever recover from this?
I’m getting over-the-top because it’s late and I’m worried this essay is falling apart. It’s wild to me that I’ve written 15,000 words about this contest, and still can’t fully admit that I love it. I can’t explain the manic hit of self-determination and wanderlust that it inspired last year, or, honestly, the hard-headed drive that caused me to spit out these 15,000 words in the first place.
After years of fixation on taste, Eurovision took me by surprise, bonking me on the head with a glittery, nonsensical frying pan. My inexplicable attraction to it forced me to go looking for other definitions of where art should fit in my life. I found newer, and perhaps more nuanced, ones, like that of critic Clement Greenberg, who proclaims art to be less about social rank and more a result of the audience’s choice to see the world in aesthetic terms:
The turn from ordinary to esthetic intuition is accomplished by a certain mental or psychic shift. This involves a kind of distancing from everything that actually happens, either to yourself or to anyone else. Consciously or non-consciously, a mind-set ensues whereby that which enters awareness is perceived and accepted for its own immediate sake; not at all for what it might signify in terms of anything other than itself as an intuition in the present; not at all for its consequences; not at all for what it might mean to you in your particular self or to anyone else in his or her particular self; not at all for the bearing it might have on your interests or anyone else's interests…If anything and everything can be intuited esthetically, then anything and everything can be intuited and experienced artistically.
Essentially, he’s saying that beauty is a function of attention, and that the act of giving that attention – of tuning in to your wants, needs and judgments – is a worthwhile “end in itself.” Honest taste may be more important than good taste, for both critical and personal development. Getting in touch with that honesty can feel overwhelming, especially when it’s been drowned out for such a long time.
In “Everything I Need I Get From You,” Kaitlyn Tiffany wrestles with her own outsize reaction to a lightweight, possibly-insidious cultural product: One Direction. She wonders what causes her, a full-grown woman, to scream like a child when she sees the band onstage, and why embracing this side of herself has changed her life for the better. She concludes, quite beautifully, that “the experience of bodily joy is an invitation to reconsider the conditions that hold you away from it most of the time. Screaming at pop music is not direct action, and screaming does not make a person a revolutionary, or even resistant, but what screaming can and does do is punctuate long periods of silence.”
This whole saga is something that I will likely write about again – hopefully, it will make a little more sense next time. But for now, that’s the extent of my understanding.
Eurovision punctuated my “long period of silence” in the loudest, goofiest way possible, and shook me out of myself for just enough time to see a new way forward. It reminded me that anything we love – or perhaps the act of loving itself – can have a touch of the divine in it, especially when it baffles us just a little bit.
There’s a reason that fan is the shortened version of fanatic. An element of faith is required, and the rewards, when channeled correctly, can be transcendent. Even when it involves weird geopolitics, unnecessary backup dancers, and a shitload of wind machines.
IT’S EUROVISION WEEK BABY LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
how to watch as a stinky little american
Okay no more goopy stuff – if I have my shit together, this is coming out right before Semifinal 1 starts (it’s at 9 pm CET, so 12 pm PST), so you have no time to waste!
As mentioned before, the easiest way to watch in the U.S. is through Peacock, but last year their audio was horrendous, so I’d recommend also downloading a VPN to watch the official YouTube stream if you want to be safe.
It’s available in all countries except Australia, UK, Greece, Lithuania and, of course, the US, so just set the VPN to Mexico or Canada and you’ll be fine. The streams are available here:
Semi-final 1 (May 7, 12 pm PST)
Semi-final 2 (May 9, 12 pm PST)
Grand Final (May 11, 12 pm PST)
I should also mention that both the Peacock stream and the YouTube stream will not have commentators, which is fine if you just want to focus on the songs, but does forfeit a little bit of the experience. BBC iPlayer is a good choice if you want to hear a very bitchy Graham Norton speak a little too highly of the UK entries. Both the Finnish and Swedish broadcasters tend to not be geoblocked and presented their national finals with optional English commentary, so they might have that for the real deal as well, and Iceland’s stream is also easy to access, according to Reddit.
You can also vote (in the “rest of the world” category) through the official ESC app or at esc.vote – note that each vote costs €1 (I think?), and you can send out up to 20 votes per event.
Song time!!
🇳🇴 NORWAY - Gåte, Ulveham
Type: Ethno-Bop sun, Genre-Mixing Novelty moon
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
It’s not necessary to read the translated lyrics for all non-English entries, but you’ll probably want to check them out for this one. “Ulveham” is the first Norwegian-language entry since 2006, and is actually a modern interpolation of a 11th-century-ish ballad called “Møya i ulveham,” or “Maid in Wolf Pelt.” The story follows a young woman who is turned into a needle, a knife, a sword by her jealous stepmother – happens to the best of us. When everyone still loves her in her various metal forms, the stepmother turns her into a wolf, thinking that will finally turn the town against her. But the wolf/girl just kills the stepmother instead, ending the ballad by drinking her blood and eating her unborn child. The traditional text is accessorized by folk instrumentation and a sampled kulokk, which is basically like a Norwegian yodel, from an early 20th-century ethnographic recording. It’s also performed by a metal band, so yeah…there’s a lot going on here. Honestly, this song hits my ear wrong – the lead singer also sounds more like she’s calling cows home than creating anything beautiful at certain points – but I’m happy it exists. Norway sent a kind of silly Game of Thrones-meets-EDM track last year, and I like that they’re going for a more earnest riff on the medieval theme this time around.
🇵🇱 POLAND - LUNA, The Tower
Type: Dua Lipa Reject sun, Swedish Bulldozer moon
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
I need someone to back me up here: this song really sounds like “Oblivion” by Grimes. The dreamy, sinister synths, the cooing vocal, the lines about walking alone at night…it’s too much for mere coincidence! That said, I do appreciate that Luna is placing herself in the lineage of weirdo art-pop girlies and creating a female-empowerment slapper (a Eurovision genre all its own) in that mold, even if it feels a little paint-by-numbers. This number builds beautifully throughout the first minute or so, but fails to kick into a second gear. Without some really impressive staging (which I don’t trust Poland with), I’m pretty sure this one will get lost in the shuffle – much like Luna’s eyebrows. Sorry!
🇵🇹 PORTUGAL - iolanda, Grito
Type: Old-Fashioned Chanson
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐
I made an offhand joke about Portuguese songs being their own genre in the first installment. After listening to this one, hopefully you’ll understand what I mean. Portugal has a compulsive need to do its own thang, consistently sending gorgeous, self-contained and painfully serious entries that seem hermetically sealed from the rest of the contest. The day that Portugal sends a novelty song is the day that hell freezes over. You will pry the minor chords and bracing sincerity from their cold, dead, beautiful hands. In a year filled with joke songs and sly references, the unblinking lack of irony in “Grito” feels both disarming and necessary. Iolanda’s textured alto is mournful yet wise, building on the Portuguese tradition of fado (melancholic ballads about yearning and irreparable loss…who can relate) with a healthy dose of 21st-century self-esteem. It creates a world of its own within the contest – one that I’ll be happy to step into for a few minutes, but seems unlikely to make an impact with voters.
🇸🇲 SAN MARINO - Megara, 11:11
Type: MESS
My Very Objective Score: ⭐
San Marino…what are you doing. I don’t want to write anything about this song because that would require me to listen to it again. There are songs that I don’t love in this contest (Cyprus, Georgia, Norway), and there are even songs that I outright hate (Belgium), but this is the only one that gives me such an immediate sonic ick that I skip it completely. “11:11” is as jarring to the ears as its pink-and-black color palette is to the eyes; it’s a borderline atonal rock (??) song that somehow manages to feel both overworked and juvenile. San Marino is notorious for its chaotic approach to the contest – because the country only has 34,000 people, it opens its national selection to artists from any country, which is how we ended up with the whole Flo Rida-at-Eurovision situation. It’s also how we ended up with Megara, a Spanish rock band that was rejected by their local broadcaster this year after placing fourth in Benidorm, Spain’s national selection contest, in 2023. They adjusted the lyrics slightly for Una Voce per San Marino, adding some digs at the Spanish broadcaster (“If you don’t love me other people will love me,” “we surrendered to Benidorm”) and an Italian verse to please the Sammarinese judges. I never thought I’d complain about bad sportsmanship in a song contest, yet here I am. The whole thing feels mean-spirited and gross, which only compounds the rancid sound of the song itself. Not even a random flamenco break and freaky little dancing skeleton twins can save this one. Great for a bathroom break.
🇷🇸 SERBIA - Teya Dora, Ramonda
Type: Old-Fashioned Chanson
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
Again, I don’t think everyone needs to look up translations to have a good ESC experience – ideally, a song will get its message across regardless of language – but when someone says a single word 25 times in a three-minute song, it makes sense to look it up. Plus, we get a bonus botany lesson out of this one! The ramonda is a flower native to the Balkans that can revive itself even when fully dried out, giving it the nickname the “phoenix flower.” Its regenerative abilities and bright color made it a national symbol during World War I, particularly in relation to the Serbian army’s 1915 retreat across the Albanian mountains, which resulted in mass casualties for soldiers and civilians. The song refers to this historical event very literally, with Teya Dora taking on the voice of a civilian refugee, saying that “the world is on fire, every flower too” and searching for a purple ramonda that might keep her hope alive. She also makes reference to a mass grave near the Greek island of Vido where 5,000 soldiers were buried, saying “under the water, everything is dead silent.” It’s heavy stuff, and Teya Dora’s rich, haunting vocal hits a nice balance between solemnity and hope. I can’t help but wonder, though, if the context won’t carry across language lines. I’ll admit that I found it pretty boring before I looked up the translation, and still struggle to feel much more than a slightly-distanced respect for it.
I checked with a Serbian friend to see if this makes me heartless, but he agreed, saying that it “really makes us seem like a depressed nation,” is a “lil over the top,” and that “nothing noteworthy is even happening in Serbia rn.” Thanks, Aziz, for assuaging my American guilt. Here’s your contributing editor credit.
🇸🇮 SLOVENIA - Raiven, Veronika
Type: Swedish Bulldozer sun, Old-Fashioned Chanson moon
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Veronika of Desenice was the second wife of Frederick II, the Count of Celje, who was drowned in 1425 after being accused of witchcraft. She’s since become a frequent inspiration in Slovene and Croatian literature as a symbol of defiant femininity and doomed romance. Raiven is a Slovene opera singer who also makes dark, orchestral pop music and has been on fans’ Eurovision wishlists for years. Bojan Cvjetićanin is the lead singer of last year’s Slovene entry (the horny golden retriever himself), one of the writers on this song, and my future husband. So I’m a little bit biased here, but I think it’s well-deserved. Raiven takes on the voice of Veronika, rising from the depths to curse the father-in-law who ordered her murder. At the end, she broadens Veronika’s story, saying that every woman has a bit of Veronika in her (really felt my 10 weeks of Slovene lessons paying off when I could tell that “jaz sem/ti si Veronika” meant “I am/you are Veronika”). It does get a little close to “we are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” territory for my comfort, but the grounding in actual historical events and tasteful deployment of Raiven’s obvious vocal muscle keeps it from getting too maudlin. The music video’s naked-people-on-a-riverbed concept might be a little tough to translate into the Malmö arena, but c’mon! It’s Slovenia! They can do no wrong in my eyes!
🇪🇸 SPAIN - Nebulossa, ZORRA
Type: Dua Lipa Reject
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
“Zorra” literally translates to “female fox,” but really it means something closer to “bitch” or “slut” in colloquial Spanish. So when you’re seeing Nebulossa’s 56-year-old lead vocalist say she’s a “zorra repostal” in her finest Cher-in-Mamma-Mia-2 garb, she’s saying she’s a picture-perfect slut. That rocks. The Spanish prime minister actually had to make a public statement on this entry, clarifying that the word could be empowering, which means he also had to read out the phrase “picture-perfect slut.” That also rocks. The song’s pretty good, but nothing spectacular – a glittery disco track that feels more like a nice vibe to put on in the background than a showstopper. There’s no major vocal moment that will stick in voters’ minds, and even if viewers do understand the word’s connotations, I worry that the novelty and shock factor will wear out quickly.
Fun side note: Nebulossa did a promo trip to Miami to perform on Univision in February, which represents the first time that a Eurovision contestant included a U.S. stop on a pre-contest press tour. When I’m right I’m right!
🇸🇪 SWEDEN - Marcus & Martinus, Unforgettable
Type: Swedish Bulldozer DUH
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐⭐
The first thing you learn as a Eurovision fan is that you’re supposed to hate the Swedes. They have too much money, they only send proven hits, their uncanny dominance in non-ESC pop music gives them an unfair advantage, ABBA met the devil at the crossroads of Sveavägen and Kungsgatan and made a deal that must be repaid, etc. etc. To the Sweden haters I say…grow up. Use your ears. This song kicks ass. This seething, Y2K-inspired dance number is a weapons-grade showcase of the Swedish strategy, relying on slick production, bland yet charming Swinglish lyrics and expensive, imaginative staging. It sounds like an alternate universe where Justin Timberlake’s bad boy phase involved more than just being a bad person – and also there are two of him. The title can and should be interpreted as a threat. They have a giant laser-toaster contraption onstage. This is literally what dreams are made of. All that said, “Unforgettable” is, believe it or not, a bit of a sandbag entry for Sweden – as host country, they’re more intent on setting the right tone for everyone else than dominating in their own right. The restrained excellence of this entry seems to be a sly reminder that they could win if they wanted to. Nothing exemplifies that saving-the-best-for-next-year vibe better than the fact that Marcus and Martinus are, in fact, Norwegian.
🇨🇭SWITZERLAND - Nemo, The Code
Type: Genre-Mixing Novelty
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
Switzerland is the odds-on favorite to win this year, and while this song isn’t a personal favorite, I can understand why. The operative word here is just…impressive. Within three minutes, this song glides from a baroque pop bauble to a tooth-gnashing power ballad – with detours into Hamilton-esque rap verses and a few operatic arias thrown in for good measure. This entry was noted as one to watch during the preseason, but the studio version seemed almost impossible to reproduce in person. It shot up the prediction charts when the audience realized that yes, Nemo really can do all that on stage. The song is an explicit celebration of Nemo’s nonbinary identity (“somewhere between the 0s and 1s/That’s where I found my kingdom come”), which adds to the overall “polite clap and maybe a MacArthur grant” vibe. But I have to be the Jeff Goldblum in the room for a sec – just because they could put five genres into one entry, does that really mean they should? This song precludes the possibility of being more than the sum of its parts by just having way too many parts, and I’m not sure that manic switching between genres represents the nonbinary experience past the obvious parallels. Plus, it sounds a bit too much like Twenty-One Pilots for my taste – but maybe Europe was spared from that particular brand of cringe the first time around.
🇺🇦 UKRAINE - alyona alyona & Jerry Heil, Teresa & Maria
Type: Ethno-Bop
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
When you take a step back and think about Ukraine’s general situation (a renewed assault on Kharkiv, 30,000 civilians dead, Russia announcing nuclear drills), the fact that they’re in Eurovision at all is kind of incredible. The country has been a powerhouse in the contest since its first entry in 2003, is the only country outside of the Big Five with a 100 percent qualifier rate, and has developed a distinct mix of hip-hop and folk that they send year after year. There’s nothing particularly new about “Teresa & Maria,” and it could easily be written off as a less-exciting version of their winning 2022 entry, Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania.” This one also is about the quiet power of Ukrainian women, this one also features a rapid-fire verse complete with some delightfully corny ‘90s-style camera work, this one also centers around a powerfully-layered East Slavic vocal – something in my mysterious Austro-Hungarian heritage gets ACTIVATED when I hear that chorus. But this one lacks the joyful tenacity of “Stefania,” which is a bit heartbreaking in its own right. Where “Stefania” represented a burst of defiance, being performed just a few months into the Russian offensive, two years of steady warfare have dulled the national voice to one of resignation. The message is less about fighting back and more about making the correct choices when they are presented to you. It’s a powerful song, but unlikely to be a winner. I wish alyona alyona (the rapper) was given more stage time, and I wish there was more of a musical climax somewhere in there, but it feels a bit ridiculous to nitpick an entry from a literal war-torn country. Happy they’re there, they’ll almost certainly place in the top 12, I’ll probably cry, you should too!
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM - Olly Alexander, Dizzy
Type: Swedish Bulldozer
My Very Objective Score: ⭐⭐
If hating Sweden is Eurovision 101, being confused by the UK is covered on the first day of the second semester. By all measures, the country should be good at this. As the homeland of The Spice Girls, the Eurythmics and I don’t know, the fucking Beatles, they seem to have an embarrassment of pop-music riches to choose from, not to mention all the resources available to one of the most well-funded public broadcasters on earth, the BBC. And yet! Even when they send an established act – Olly Alexander, former frontman of indie pop outfit Years & Years and star of Channel 4 series “It’s A Sin” – they can’t get their shit together. This song does nothing for me. It’s clearly trying to place itself in the lineage of queer British pop acts like the Pet Shop Boys, but it isn’t able to find anything more than pastiche. The combination of skittering 80s instrumentals, sampled church bells and a very…sweaty? vocal performance all evoke the unfocused, oiled-up vibe of Saltburn, which isn’t helped by Olly Alexander’s resemblance to a malnourished Barry Keoghan and choice to set most of the music video in a bathtub (if you know you know). To Alexander’s credit, this song sounds less like a CVS air-filler when it’s performed live, and I’m excited to see the UK’s staging. Rehearsal footage is starting to leak as I’m writing this, and it looks like they’re going for a zero-gravity bathhouse vibe. The mere choice to avoid a spinning platform for a song called “Dizzy” is worth celebrating.
❤️👀✨ MY 2024 ESC RANKINGS ✨👀❤️
These are my favorites, not my predictions on who will win, based on studio versions, music videos and pre-rehearsal live footage (I’ve seen some teasers of the contest staging, but am keeping myself pure) and goes from least favorite on up. There’s a fun ranking tool here if you want to compare.
🇸🇲 SAN MARINO: Megara, 11:11
🇧🇪 BELGIUM: Mustii, Before the Party’s Over
🇱🇻 LATVIA: Dons, Hollow
🇩🇪 GERMANY: ISAAK, Always On The Run
🇲🇹 MALTA: Sarah Bonnici, Loop
🇲🇩 MOLDOVA: Natalia Barbu, In The Middle
🇮🇪 IRELAND: Bambie Thug, Doomsday Blue
🇮🇸 ICELAND: Hera Björk, Scared of Heights
🇬🇪 GEORGIA: Nutsa Buzaladze, Firefighter
🇵🇱 POLAND: LUNA, The Tower
🇨🇿 CZECHIA: Aiko, Pedestal
🇨🇾 CYPRUS: Silia Kapsis, Liar
🇦🇱 ALBANIA: Besa, Titan
🇩🇰 DENMARK: Saba, Sand
🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG: TALI, Fighter
🇪🇸 SPAIN: Nebulossa, ZORRA
🇱🇹 LITHUANIA: Silvester Belt, Luktelk
🇦🇲 ARMENIA: LADANIVA, Jako
🇳🇴 NORWAY: Gåte, Ulveham
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM: Olly Alexander, Dizzy
🇭🇷 CROATIA: Baby Lasagna, Rim Tim Tagi Dim
🇬🇷 GREECE: Marina Satti, ZARI
🇫🇮 FINLAND: Windows95man - No Rules!
🇨🇭SWITZERLAND: Nemo, The Code
🇦🇹 AUSTRIA: Kaleen, We Will Rave
🇷🇸 SERBIA: Teya Dora, Ramonda
🇵🇹 PORTUGAL: iolanda, Grito
🇸🇮 SLOVENIA: Raiven, Veronika
🇦🇿 AZERBAIJAN: FAHREE feat. Ilkin Dovlatov, Özünlə Apar
🇺🇦 UKRAINE: alyona alyona & Jerry Heil, Teresa & Maria
🇫🇷 FRANCE: Slimane, Mon Amour
🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA: Electric Fields, One Milkali (One Blood)
🇸🇪 SWEDEN: Marcus & Martinus, Unforgettable
🇮🇹 ITALY: Angelina Mango, La noia
🇳🇱 NETHERLANDS: Joost Klein, Europapa
Okay whew! 12 points to the Netherlands for me! We’re done! It’s crazy it’s party! Thank you for following this little project – tbh I just got tired of being creatively blocked and set an objectively stupid goal to write three essays in three weeks to snap myself out of it. I did technically biff my deadline by one day, but putting together 15,000 or so words in a little under a month kinda rocks and I am proud of myself in that regard. Here’s your reminder to set unrealistic (yet controllable!) creative goals and tell yourself you’ll never be forgiven if you don’t achieve them :)
I’m excited to watch the actual telecasts and then sleep for a week. I hope you get to engage with whatever your equivalent of Eurovision is, and take me as an example to indulge in your own passions to a borderline-unhealthy degree. I’d say it’s worth it, but it’s also 3 am and I need to clock in at the email factory at 9. So maybe check with me in a couple days.
<3 Kylie