What is the Eurovision Song Contest?
Started way back in 1956 as a way of drawing a fractured Europe back together with the healing power of music, the Eurovision Song Contest, or Concours Eurovision de la Chanson – the contest is telecast in both English and French – is open to all active members of the European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the competition.
Each country is permitted to submit one three-minute song to the contest – a song which is selected by a variety of means, usually a winner-takes-all competition such as Sweden’s renowned Melodifestivalen – which their selected entrant performs in one of two semi-finals in the hopes of making it to the glittering grand final.
Only six countries have direct entry into the grand final:
- The Big Four who fund most of the contest – UK, Germany, France and Spain
- The host country (which is the winner of the previous year’s contest)
- Italy, who didn’t take part for many years and was re-admitted in 2011 after a 14 year absence (it was one of seven countries that competed in the first event), making the Big Four the Big Five.
The winner is chosen by a 50/50 mix of viewer votes (you cannot vote for your own country) and a jury of music industry professionals in each country, a method which was chosen to counter the alleged skewing of votes based on political and/or cultural lines when voting was purely the preserve of viewers at home.
Past winners include, of course, ABBA in 1974 with “Waterloo” and Celine Dion who won for Switzerland in 1988 with “Ne partez pas sans moi”.Above all though, the Eurovision Song Contest is bright, over the top and deliciously camp, a celebration of music, inclusiveness and togetherness that draws annual viewing figures in the hundreds of millions.
This year’s event
Sporting the theme “United by Music”, the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 is being co-hosted by 2022’s winner Ukraine (“Stefania” by Kalush Orchestra) and runner-up the UK. Traditionally the winner would host but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which is ongoing, has meant that’s not possible so the contest will be held in Liverpool, with the event hosted by Ukrainian and UK presenters and a clear emphasis on the unity in music that Eurovision has always celebrated.
ICELAND: “Power” by Diljá
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Is being a new name a good thing when it comes to competing for some of the big prizes in music?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but for Diljá, this year’s representative for Iceland at Eurovision, it’s certainly has proven to be an advantage with audiences greeting the newly-minted national favourite with real enthusiasm.
One thing in her favour, notes her official Eurovision bio, is that she isn’t afraid to put her heart on the line, filling her songs with a “message of self-improvement and taking back her own power” which appears to struck a real chord with her fellow citizens.
Given how much message matters at Eurovision – yes, we love the music but we want there to be something meaningful behind beats – that’s a huge point in her favour, as is the fact that one of the luminaries of the Icelandic pop scene, Pálmi Ragnar Ásgeirsson (who was behind, notes the bio, María Ólafs’ Eurovision 2015 entry Unbroken) wrote and produced her song entitled, appropriately enough, Power.
With all those big positives in her corner, you’d have to assume, like so many of her countrypeople before her, that she will romp into the grand final?
THE SONG
Quite likely.
While the song is hardly pushing the musical envelope, and Diljá’s vocals are a little uneven, she definitely has presence which she uses to totally own the stage in her official video stage performance.
She is definitely one of those artists who seems to be able to take a fairly cookie cutter number and give it extra oomph and, well, power, which is going to come in handy in a contest where artists live and die, vote-wise on how well they capture the audience’s attention.
“Power” has pizzazz and vibrancy, buoyed to a significant extent by Diljá’s energetic presentation so expect Iceland to take its accustomed place in the grand final.
LITHUANIA: “Stay” by Monika Linkytė
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It’s hopefully second time lucky for Monika Linkytė who is back representing Lithuania at Eurovision although this time around, in contrast to 2015 when she partnered with Vaidas Baumila for a 18th placing out of 25, she’s going it alone.
Linkytė is one of those plucky artists who competed to get the Eurovision from 2010-15 and then again in 2023, her dual success proof she has what it takes to impress the jurors and voters who have a 50:50 sat who makes it through in the national song selection contest, Pabandom Iš Naujo! (We go again!).
In love with dancing and singing since she was a kid, Linkytė scored well in various competitions from 2008 to 2008 and has committed herself wholly to music as a career after tertiary study flirtations with public health and law.
Clearly, art won out, leading her to study music at at the BIMM Institute in London and to now stand on the blocks ready to hopefully bring glory to Lithuania which has hit the grand final 15 times out of the 22 timesit has competed since 1994 when it debuted.
THE SONG
Her second tilt at Eurovision glory is bolstered by a beautifully arresting song, “Stay”, which she co-wrote with Krists Indrišonoks, which rises and rises throughout her delivery thanks to emotionally resonant vocals which take the song well into heart-on-sleeve territory.
According to her official bio, “the song is grounded in local folklore, with the lyrics ‘Čiūto Tūto’ often used in Lithuanian folk dances as magical incantation”, and it’s this folkloric element which adds extra beauty and meaning to a song already rich in it.
This could well prove to be one those emotive ballads that stops the audiences in its tracks, and if Linkytė delivers on the promise in her clip, you can expect Lithuania to add a 16th grand final appearance to their tally and for the artist’s second trip to the Eurovision stage to be well worth her while.
POLAND: “Solo” by Blanka
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Poland’s Blanka is another one of those talented artists who clearly was not going to let the artistic grass grow under her feet.
She penned her first song at the tender age of 14, all the more remarkable since neither her Polish mother or Bulgarian father has any musical background, encouraged early on to join dance groups and to go to musis schools, proof that her mother saw abundant talent in the offing.
No doubt emboldened by her mother’s career as a model, Blanka hit the televisual catwalk in 2021, competing in Polish reality TV show, Top Model while at the asame time, and multitasking like a legend, Blanka released her first official single, “Better”, which was followed by “Solo” and a signing with Warner Music in 2022.
Now, after beating nine other competitors in Poland’s national selection contest for Eurovision, Tu bije serce Europy! Wybieramy hit na Eurowizję, can the artist translate all that tenacious success into pan-European glory?
THE SONG
It’s hard not to see Poland romping into the grand final with this supremely catchy number.
“Solo” has a jaunty LatinX beat that is going to down a treat with an in-arena crowd that loves to dance, with the song buoyed further by Blanka’s joyously energetic vocals which suit the song perfectly.
You get the feeling she has a gift for memorable stage performances which should elevate this nugget of pop fun even further and see Poland in the grand final once again.
While it’s unlikely to win the country the contest, it marks Blanka as someone with real presence and verve, and that alone is worth the price of admission for an artist who is going to do her country proud.
ROMANIA: “D.G.T. (Off and On)” by Theodor Andrei
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Once more to the talent show, my Eurovision friends, once more!
Romani’s representative in Liverpool kicked his nascent career off in 2017, when he was a mere slip of a lad aged 12, by taking part in Vocea Romaniei Junior (The Voice Kids) and reaching the semi-final, a feat he repeated three years later as a contestant on The X Factor where he made it as far as the bootcamps stage.
The young man has a taste for talent shows it seems, and he has the talent to go with it, his official Eurovision bio noting that he is “a singer, composer, and actor, with an impressively long list of theatre and voice-acting credits”.
So experience, tick, talent tick, and a winning participation in Romania’s national selection process for the Contest, Selecția Națională 2023, where he beat out 11 other singers to take the top prize.
But, you ask with bated breath, does he have the song to make the most of this exciting opportunity?
THE SONG
If nothing else, “D.G.T. (Off and On)” is a slice of musical quirk much loved in the halls of Eurovision.
Happily he employs fun costume changes, some interesting S&M performance / strip show flourishes which is all good because the song doesn’t really go anywhere.
There is rock swagger, an interesting bridge and some deep, emotionally meaningful vocals but while it’s fun to watch, it’s not really much of a contender as a song unless you love someone getting ever so slowly getting undressed through the course of his act.
Which, you know, isn’t necessarily a bad thing especially if there’s a catchy song to go along with it which this is, unfortunately, not.
SAN MARINO: “Like an Animal” By Piqued Jacks
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Apparently Piqued Jacks are, and I quote from their official Eurovision bio here, “bringing small town vibes to big stages around the world.”
But if you’re thinking apple pies cooling on window souls, lazy summer days with haze across the cobbled lanes and quiet gossip down shadowed laneways, think again, for while Piqued Jacks hail from a small Tuscan village, they have gone big opening for the likes of the The Boomtown Rats, Interpol, and Chevelle.
They have even garnered play on international radio, driving their global status home by marking the release of their current album Synchronizer by, and yes a quote again from the officially sanctioned bio, “skydiving from 4,300 metres in the stratosphere and then playing the full album track list once they’d landed on the airstrip.”
So some big dreams at play here, including it seems having Sting join them on a song at some future point in time – make it so Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, please make it so – but are they big enough to make a splash at Eurovision?
THE SONG
They certainly have the stage presence to make an impression.
The lead singer, Andrea “E-King” Lazzeretti, has the voice to get noticed, with the driving rock beats of “Like an Animal” helping establish them as an act that wants to be heard, and then some.
But while the song isn pleasant enough, it never really ends up gathering any head of steam; Måneskin they are not, and while this song is a perfectly lovely edgy way to spend some time, it doesn’t have quite the sense of place and time the band were likely aiming for.
You won’t hate seeing them on stage and they’ll likely eat up the arena stage in Liverpool but it’s all too tame and far too reliant on visual tricks to get them across the line.
SLOVENIA: “Carpe Diem” by Joker Out
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Now if you’re a music artist, while popularity is a good and financially rewarding thing, you also want some critical acclaim too, right?
To put this in Eurovision too, you want to bring both the televoters and the jurors along with you; Joker Out, one of the biggest bands, so we are told, in Slovenia, know precisely what this feels like and they have happily managed to get both the love of fans and the affirmation of the music press.
Happy days indeed, buoyed, we are assured, the personalities of the band’s members, Bojan, Jure, Kris, Jan, and Nace, who range from “methodically astute to blissfully spontaneous” which has, so the bio says, “led them to develop a unique sound, which they refer to as ‘shagadelic rock ‘n’ roll’.”
Whatever that actually translate to as an actual sound, the fact is that their debut studio album, Umazane Misli (Indecent Notions), has done very nicely indeed, busting the charts to bits domestically and fuelling sold out gigs across Slovenia.
But being in your home country is one good and glorious song but can that translate to something that vaults out of the Balkans and takes all of Europe by storm?
THE SONG
With a boy band sound mixed with some fun musical edge, there’s a very good chance that Joker Out, and their band, “Carpe Diem” could do very, very well indeed.
A buoyant slice of rock-pop that benefits from a hugely danceable chorus, a joyously escapist vibe and a clip that celebrates funky fashion and cool, illegal hotel room parties, the song is going to make for a fun number in the midst of semi-final 2 (they are at slot #10, just after halfway through so not too early and maybe just late enough to be remembered).
Sure, it might all be manufactured boy band-ness but it’s hugely enjoyable, and sure, it doesn’t hurt that they’re all very pretty and know how to dance and smile.
Throw all that onto the stage in Liverpool and you’ve got the makings of a song that should do nicely for Slovenia, catapulting it into the grand final and giving Joker Out the kind of platform they will no doubt being able to make the most of in time.
EUROVISION 2023 EXTRA EXTRA!
Now you may have noticed that Australia, not technically in Europe, has been in Europe for some years now, but not so New Zealand. One comedy act from Aotearoa is making a hugely fun bid to change all that, serving up a song that is honestly pretty damn good in the process …
The one-person votes are in … behold, my semi-final 2 top ten in no particular order.
- Australia
- Denmark
- Lithuania
- Slovenia
- Poland
- Austria
- Romania
- Belgium
- Cyprus
- Estonia