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 Five who fund most of the contest – UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain
- The host country (which is the winner of the previous year’s contest); this year that country is Switzerland.
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. (This mix applies only to the grand final; voting in the semi finals is purely by popular vote with no jury involvement.)
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
The grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, continuing the theme of “United by Music”, will take place in St. Jakobshalle, Basel, on Saturday 17 May with semi-finals on Tuesday 13 and Thursday 15 May. The 69th Eurovision Song Contest grand final will be hosted by Hazel Brugger, Michelle Hunziker and Sandra Studer while Brugger and Studer will host the semi-finals. Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR will host the event, together with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), will organise the Contest thanks to Nemo’s historic win in Malmö in 2024.
THE ARTIST
What is in a name, you might ask? (Well, not in everyday life obviously because that would be just plain weird but in your more existential wondering moments maybe?)
That question may well have crossed the minds of the members of the band NAPA – Guilherme Gomes, Lourenço Gomes, Francisco Sousa, Diogo Góis and João Rodrigues – all of whom hail from the island of Madeira, southwest of Portugal proper and west of Morocco.
Formed in 2013, the band were known as Men on the Couch, fitting in a way since it was in a basement, presumably with the band name-referenced piece of furniture, that the five men decide to take their love of music and make a career out of it.
With a sound derived from the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, the Beatles and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, NAPA have two albums to their credit – 2021’s Senso Comum, and 2023’s Logo Se Vê with a third on the way later this year – and a concert movie O Mundo Continua a Girar (The World Keeps Spinning) which was recorded, notes Wiwibloggs, “over two sold-out nights at the iconic Maria Matos Theatre, capturing the energy and magic of their live performances.”
(courtesy Eurovision.tv (c) Lucas Coelho)
THE SONG
If “energy” and “magic” suggest a band going full on all the time, then prepare to have your just-formed views of the band’s sound delightfully challenged.
“Deslocado (Displaced)” is a robustly upbeat slice of ’60s-inspired balladry, replete with a hauntingly beautiful opening, a chorus that picks up a little speed but only enough to allow the richly harmonic vocals to lift and soar as gently and pleasingly as a languid, breezy summer’s day.
Driven by mid-fi guitar and a certain emotional wistfulness, “Deslocado” is a gem of a song, a gorgeous song that is a love letter to coming home after trying to make it elsewhere where, despite your best efforts, you never really fitted in.
Sporting Beatles-esque harmonies and vocals, without once sounding like a trite ripoff of that legendary band’s sound, this is a song that will likely sweep audiences up in its thrall, and while it likely won’t win the event for Portugal, which they have only managed once in 2017 thanks to “Amar pelos dois” by Salvador Sobral, it will further reinforce how luxuriously lovely and meaningful the music of Portugal can be.
SAN MARINO: “Tutta L’Italia” by Gabry Ponte
THE ARTIST
Cast your mind my friends to the heady days of October 1998 when a band called Eiffel 65 released the insanely infectious track, “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”, a song that did nicely in Italy before storming the world in 1999.
Now over a quarter of a century later, one of the members of that band, Gabry Ponte, an Italian musician, DJ and producer, is representing the approximately 34,000 citizens of San Marino, which, thank you Wikipedia, is we are told the largest of the two micro states surrounded by Italy.
Geography aside, San marino’s great claim to fame this Eurovision is that they chosen one of the leading figures of Italian dance music to represent them, a man who in 2023 alone, played 90 times, in 11 countries to some 700,000 eager-to-revel audience members.
If that’s not, Ponte, born in Turin in 1973, is one of the top three Italian artists streamed globally, alongside Meduza and of course, the 2021 winners of Eurovision, Måneskin.
While he previously only had a tangential connection to the contest, thanks to being of the team behind Austria’s 2022 song, “Halo” by LUM!X feat. Pia Maria, he’s now directly in the hot seat so does his song have what it takes to deliver the goods?
(courtesy Eurovision.tv (c) Pier Costantini)
THE SONG
If you want to dance your socks off, assuming you’re wearing them in the first place, then absolutely “YES!”
Sporting an unmissable Italian musical vibe, “Tutta L’Italia”, which means, rather cheekily, all of Italy – given the country said “thank you but no” ti Italian unification in 1861, this is a little amusing (unless, San Marino is planning a takeover by winning Eurovision in which case, named perfectly – is a raucously joyous slice of danceable bonhomie that will have the Eurovision audience up and dancing almost immediately.
It’s a happily bouncy slice of pop that notes at one point “But with this thing it jumps” and good lord, it does, a surging, energetic that encourages everyone to “dance with a glass in our hands”.
Not sure if that’s necessarily a good idea but you will likely want to do it, the melody and drive of the chorus especially too strong to resist.
It may not win the thing but good lord who will notice when you’re have ng this much fun?
SLOVENIA: “How Much Time Do We Have Left” by Klemen
THE ARTIST
A Slovenian actor, singer, songwriter, comedian and TV host, Klemen Slakonja, who goes all mononymous when it coems to his professional life where he’s known by his first name only, kicked off his TV career in 2007 on the show Hri-bar where he did impersonations of Slovenian singers.
His gift for impersonations have become his thing, with his repertoire now extending to world figures like Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, and rather topically, Donald Trump and earning a lot of attention on YouTube where, his official Eurovision bio assures us, he draws “huge viewing figures”.
But Klemen is not just the sum total of his gift for impersonating others; he has also hosted a slew of TV shows, including four editions of EMA, which selects Slovenia’s entry each year, which you have to assume he didn’t host this year or crowning the entry, which is him, would’ve looked a little narcissistically awkward.
Music also figures prominently in Klemen’s career, it will not surprise you a jot to learn, with songwriting taking up more of his time of late which is handy with his first London-recorded solo album due to land later this year.
(courtesy Eurovision.tv (c) Tomo Brejc / Universal Music Slovenia)
THE SONG
For a man well-verse in comedy, Klemen has faced one of life’s most unfunny experiences when his wife, Mojca, was diagnosed with a “serious illness” which she wasn’t supposed to recover from but w=from which she has made a full recovery.
Klemen has poured this chilling period of his life onto the arrestingly emotional beauty of “How Much Time Do We Have Left” which feels like it has every gram of the artist’s lived experience poured into it.
It perfectly captures the fear of losing someone and how when you receive the diagnosis, your world stops in its tracks while uncountable life continues around you.
I felt the same when my mum told me she has terminal cancer and “How Much Time Do We Have Left” distills the horror of all that impending loss so perfectly it will make you cry in the best possible way.
As songs that are a combined musing on the fragility of life and the joy of profound, enduring life go, “How Much Time Do We Have Left” is right up there and I will be surprised if there are dry eyes in any house in Europe and around the world when the artists delivers what’s sure to be a highly emotive performance.
SWEDEN: “Bara Bada Bastu” by KAJ
THE ARTIST
You may be wondering how a comedy group formed in Vörå, Finland have come to represent Sweden and what their connection to Swedish culture might be.
Vörå, in the west of Sweden’s neighbour, is a bilingual area, as fluent in Swedish as they are in Finnish, and so KAJ, comprising Kevin Holmström, Axel Åhman and Jakob Norrgård (you may notice they have pulled an ABBA and formed their band name from the first letters of their given names), are more than able to perform in Swedish, which is the language they work in professionally much of the time.
Mixing together comedy and music, the trio have earned, so says their official Eurovision bio, a “a reputation for their witty, nostalgic songs celebrating Finnish and Swedish culture”, infusing them with “Nordic folk melodies, modern pop and theatrical performances.”
Seven albums and two musicals into their career, and with musical genres woven into their music as diverse as K-pop, latin, rap, opera, disco and schlager, KAJ have the ability to cover a lot of musical, and lyrical ground which should stand them in good stead as the first Finnish act to represent Sweden at the contest.
(courtesy Eurovision.tv (c) Erik Åhman
THE SONG
It’s interesting to note, in light of them being the first Finns to represent Sweden at Eurovision, that their song “Bara Badu Bastu” is the first entry to be sung in Swedish since 1998.
Essentially a tongue-in-cheek love letter to sauna, which is quintessentially a Scandinavian cultural touchstone, “Bara Bada Bastu” is ridiculously, earworm-capturing catchy.
While it might seem like a kitschy Eurovision entry on the surface, the song is a serious piece of upbeat fun pop that not only ticks a host of repeat listenable musical boxes but is performed with real brio and a sense of performative energy that makes you love KAJ for who they are as much as their music.
It’s tipped to win the whole damn contest by some, and while that could definitely happen, even if it doesn’t, we are going to have enormous fun with this song which makes your heart glad, your feet dance and which wraps a smile right across your care-worn face in mere seconds.
UKRAINE: “Bird of Pray” by Ziferblat
THE ARTIST
Formed in 2015, Ziferblat, consisting of vocalist Danyil Leshchynskyi, guitarist Valentyn Leshchynskyi, and drummer Fedir Khodakov, have been hailed as the future of Ukrainian music.
Combining traditional sounds with “rich production and heartfelt lyrics, the band released their first EP, Kinoseans, in 2017, before performing the single “Vnochi” on X-Factor Ukraine in 2019 where they were mentored by Eurovision royalty, Verka Serduchka (the drag queen persona of Andriy Mykhailovych Danylko.
This flurry of activity was followed by the release of the band’s album, Peretvorennya in April 2023, the year in which they won the category, “Best New Names in Alternative Music” at the Muzvar Awards.
While they didn’t make the shortlist of Ukraine’s Eurovision song selection contest, Vizbir in 2023, they did in 2024, taking second place, a placing which they of course bettered in this year when they won the right to represent their country at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.
(courtesy Eurovision.tv (c) Anya Wayne)
THE SONG
“Bird of Pray”, which features lyrics in both Ukrainian and English, has a gorgeous lilt to its opening stanzas and its musical bridges between chorus and verse which it then turns up to a mid-fi buzz as the song progresses.
Sporting a beautifully woven in 1970s vibe and some fleeting traditional folk influences, the song is an arrestingly lovely slice of luminously melodic that has both vivacious energy and a calming presence to it.
In a live context, “Bird of Pray”, should absolutely fly (yes, word use well and truly intended) and while it likely won’t win the contest, it’s going to get noticed and make its presence felt.
SEMI-FINAL 1 TOP TEN
All of these reviews, bring us to the end of semi-final 1, beg the question – which ten acts do this humble reviewer think will make it through to the grand final and possible Eurovision glory?
ALBANIA: “Zjerm” by Shkodra Elektronike
ESTONIA: “Espresso Macchiato” by Tommy Cash
NETHERLANDS: “C’est La Vie” by Claude
POLAND: “GAJA” by Justyna Steczkowska
SAN MARINO: “Tutta L’Italia” by Gabry Ponte
SLOVENIA: “How Much Time Do We Have Left” by Klemen