The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Eurovision 2023

Eurovision 2023

by 104 Comments

Of course when it comes to Eurovision you only need this.
https://youtu.be/-HuPP0BoVLA

As I’m in Kefalonia at the moment it doesn’t start here until 10 and really I’d only want to watch the voting which will be some unearthlyo’clockinthemorning. . Pity they don’t have the voting first then you could miss out the songs.

I used to enjoy it but now find it overlong and maybe only enjoy a couple of songs in the whole programme.

Anyone about to watch?

0

Comments

  3. We’re sitting in a train in Liverpool Street heading home now. We had planned to be out but a lack of late trains means we’ll be in to see it, and we always watch if we can. It’s a TV event and the music is irrelevant; the songs don’t exist outside those couple of hours. As a TV event is huge fun. The reason not to have the results first (apart from the obvious) is that we should be just nicely picked when they come around and ready to argue with them.

  6. Really looking forward to it, as always. And this year, for the first time, I actually own several albums by one of the acts: Germany’s mighty Lord of the Lost.

    Their song, Blood and Glitter, is not one of their best, IMO, and its mix of electro/synth and harsh screaming might be a bit much for more conservative voters, but overall I think they’re great and just what the show needs. Their latest album has been No 1 in Germany, and they’ve been supporting Iron Maiden on their world tour, so their profile is getting bigger all the time. I can’t help thinking they’re just doing Eurovision for the craic (or whatever the German equivalent is – Krak?), but I’ll be cheering them on.

    I’d they’d asked me, I would have recommended them doing one of their best songs, the very earworm-ish Heartbeat of the Devil.

      • I have 6 in all. Their latest, Blood and Glitter, is not bad, but their best is Judas, a double concept album about religion which has all the goth-synth-metal-with-occasional-80s-vibe you could want, including ‘Heartbeat of the Devil’.

        Clearly, the amount of crossover between LOTL and Eurovision is very small indeed, but long may they keep lording away.

          • I thought Lord of the Lost were excellent @Captain Darling. They brightened up the evening enormously. As did the Aussie rock band, Voyager. Amidst all the obligatory ESC nonsense, it’s a breath of fresh air to have real working bands.

            At one point LOFTL addressed the audience directly, something on the lines of “Let me hear you, Eurovision!”. That burst the bubble that some of the other acts are in.

            • Agreed. Musically, they are not really meine tasse kaffee but they read the brief, made it huge, had a tune and were great fun. I suspect the singers outfit didn’t help.

  7. I’ve just watched the 18 minute digest of all the final songs, with my daughters, which was good a some songs Portugal) we’re terribly boring. I quite liked the Belgian techno and the Serbian goth. It was pleasing that nobody seemed to take it seriously. The German song was shite (edit Whoops! Sorry, Captain Darling…). Blood and Glitter? The Irish in masks seemed to be channeling the Rubberbandits, which is ironic, if I remember Father Ted’s Eurovision song. The UK song was surprisingly not bad.

    • I took your advice however halfway through I found I was watching the 2020 one so I switched.
      I enjoyed Croatia’s tribute to Village People, I though the Irish one was possibly U2 in masks.
      18 minutes was enough.

  8. We’ll give it a go. It’s not a song contest though, not anymore (and even when it was primarily that it was always an odd idea). It’s an International Showing Off Contest. Who performs the best. Who’s production is the best. Who pleases the crowd the most.

    And that’s fine. It’s showbiz. If fucking relentlessly one note full on excited shrieking for literally hours showbiz

  19. The production values, the energy, and the pumped up atmosphere are great. And there’s some entertaining songs there. Moldova currently doing a Kalush Orchestra mini-me

    • Apparently the host oversees the staging. Each country get a max 20 minutes to go through their ideas with the producer (“Can we have two exploding goats and a shaved donkey?”). Some countries hand over a few notes on a scruffy piece of paper whilst others present a 100 page manual.

  21. I wandered through Liverpool earlier today and I’ve never seen it so busy. Like it or loathe Eurovision, there’s no denying there’s been a real buzz about the city this week and especially today

  23. Germany making a serious bid for another nul-pointer in this format. Germany and UK are the only countries who have scored the difficult-to-achieve zero in the popular vote as well as the pan-European thumbs-down.

  29. There is a total absence of drippy ballads which score bafflingly well with juries this year, but also nothing completely nuts (unless you count the recorder playing dwarf).

    Our top 3/4:

    1: Finland
    2: Spain/Germany
    3: Sweden

  35. Sweden or Australia for me, but I’d still like to see Germany do well (I know I’m being wildly optimistic there).

    The UK entry was very, well, nothing, wasn’t it? No mad Croatians, no little flautist, no cha-cha-cha. Has she never seen Eurovision before?

    • In all my many years of watching it, I’ve only predicted it once: Mans Zelmerlow’s “Heroes” for Sweden in 2015, which is still an absolute banger and was in a different class to everything else that year. Other than that, I’m one of the worst judges ever.

        • Ukraine’s Shum by Go_A in 2021 is the best Euro song ever IMHO. Beloved by my family it gets played regularly accompanied by lots of wild kitchen dancing. For this reason, although not in my DID top 8 it would probably make the top 20

          • Yes that’s the one. There’s lots going on in the song and I love the way it builds up, slows down and grinds to a halt – and then …ding! like a microwave…and goes totally apeshit. It’s a masterpiece.

  38. I predicted it to be between Sweden and Germany. I think that shows both that I don’t know what I’m talking about and that the Swedish song is such a banger even I can’t get it wrong.

  39. It was as ridiculously OTT as only Eurovision can be.

    But I suspect the choice of You’ll never walk alone (sung by Dutch ESC winner Duncan Lawrence) as interval music led to more than a few tears among Ukrainian viewers.

  40. I watched the last 10 minutes as I’d forgotten all about it, and switched the telly on expecting the News.

    The massive video screens on the back wall and stage were a very impressive sight. It is a long time since I’ve been to a big gig.

    The mad blokes in their Y-fronts, slightly less so. “You’re going to need tongs and a hot wash”, indeed.

    Last time I actually watched the whole thing, Bucks Fizz won.

    • Possibly the wrong kind of fun. The contest was moving on and it was leaving Wogan behind, about which he was increasingly bitter. I was glad when he left as he was one step away from being the old man shouting at the clouds.

      It’s undeniably better than it was then with a much longer build up, the songs being available to anyone with access to a streaming platform and a series of concerts that are about celebrating music, performance, diversity and the utter silliness that comes along with doing so for no more reason than it being a positive influence in the world.

      The BBC seems to have figured out you need to have people present Eurovision who love it and go along with the nonsense. Mel Giedroyc and a butter churn is the logical and welcome conclusion to that.

      • I completely agree. Wogan’s constant asides about what an endurance test it all was had become wearing, and he never had a clue about what would be popular (unless that was part of his grumpy old man routine).

        • I agree. Both Mel and Graham were excellent commentators. Hannah is real find as a presenter. The whole thing was incredibly well organised. All 26 songs were performed one offer the other with barely a pause for breath, the scenery and lighting changing seamlessly. The work that has gone into it was very impressive. Those little clips of a venue in Ukraine, mirrored by a similar one in the UK, followed by one of the next act’s home country must have been filmed months ago.

          Pity I didn’t like any of the songs.

  42. So feel saddest for France who had a great singer, great song. The options appear to be narrowing for success – pop banger (Loreen, Israel, Belgium), big ballad (Italy, Norway) or novelty (Finland, the 3 generals). Both Spain and France attempted something a bit different and failed to cut through. having said that UK’s staging was pretty flat of an OK song so less complaints about our position.

    • Damn right @moseleymoles! That French entry had everything going for it: memorable song, charismatic chanteuse, stylish and imaginative staging. I was immediately won over. A song I would definitely want to listen to again.

      I can understand the frustration of the French delegation.

      The Spanish song didn’t grab me so immediately but it had something I liked which made me keen to hear it again. It felt like a grower.

      An artist needs the hide of rhino to endure the humiliation of Eurovision voting.
      Hopefully these artists with low scores get a warmer reception back home.

      Back in the day, Norwegian singer Jahn Teigen built a whole career on having received Nul points in Eurovision.

      https://eurovisionworld.com/eurovision/1978/norway

      Posterity can mercifully sometimes be a little kinder than the Eurovoters.

  43. Many years ago my new girlfriend and my son were staying with me on Eurovision night. I said I’d like to watch it, the both of them said “do we have to?” At the end they were both ready to phone in their votes.
    I’ve had a message from her telling me I should have stayed up until two to watch it all as it was the best she had seen.
    TBH I preferred it when they had to sing in their own language as then I didn’t know what they were singing about.

    • It appears wires were crossed she’d watched a Eurovision special of Saturday Morning Kitchen we she’d thought was the best. She thought Eurovision was terrible.
      Thanks for the Eurovision themed hamper with a national dish for every country taking part. Suffice to say I’m stuffed like dolmades.

  45. Its a huge event for my daughter (17) and me. We watch both semi-finals “on demand” – and then get up at 5am in Aus to watch the final – making lots of noise, scoffing at the silliness, swearing at the voting abominations. Surprisingly we have similar tastes – both picking Albania, Austria and the pink ladies – and both loathing the Norway entry which sounded like a Nazi marching song. I thought the Australian entry surprisingly good, the UK entry a bit flat and the German entry deservedly last. I remember nothing about the winner other than she looked like an extra in Dune.

    • Some insight on Germany whose performances over the last few years has been woeful (though they were the first of the ‘Big 4/5’ to win after this was introduced) The national selection is taken very seriously, as in Sweden with melodiefest, and involves German states voting as nations do in the finals. However, the German public insist on voting for genres and artists(German-language rap for example) that have little international appeal. The German music industry juries always vote for completely different songs and despair at their public. They even asked international music industry reps to participate in the selection this year, to little avail. The rammstein-esque act this year Lord of the Lost aren’t too bothered as they are supporting Iron Maiden on a US tour this year.

      • It sounds like Germany and Sweden have had very similar experiences, @moseleymoles.

        Certainly as regards bringing in an additional jury of international experts to vote for songs that they believed would win.

        I’m not sure what I think about this. “No, you can’t vote for the song you like the most. So forget about that wonderful song in Swedish that you love. Vote for one of the songs in English which follow the latest hipster trends.”

        There’s something to be said with the opposite approach. “I really like Lord of the Lost.” Wouldn’t it be cool if they were on the ESC playing for millions of people all over Europe.”

        If the people voted for what they liked, Sweden would probably be represented by….

        Håkan

        Veronica

        Or this old chap. BAO, his band are very popular in Sweden but I wouldn’t put any money on him winning Eurovision!

      • Im probably a bit harsh on Lord of the Lost as definitely not my cup of tea. Id rather have the most inane bang-a-bong rubbish than daft metal – but thats just me. In retrospect Norway was worse.

  46. My router died on Friday night, so I had a very productive Saturday around the flat, which ended with a couple of films on DVD (don’t own a TV, nor a mobile phone – very much by choice I hasten to add!) So instead of watching Loreen compete I watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Sing 2.
    I tend to enjoy the ESC, but I can’t say that I missed it, really.
    (I would have voted for the Finn…)

    • I’m surprised you don’t have a mobile phone. I don’t own or want a TV, but I couldn’t live without a mobile phone, even though I very, very rarely use it for phone calls. For text messages and google maps alone I find it indispensable.

      • Like Locust I don’t possess a mobile phone, well I do I put £10 on it last August I imagine I’ve plenty of credit left. Texting is fine hate talking to people on the phone always have even two cocoa tins was too much.
        I use my tablet which was fine I couldn’t be contacted until someone video called me on messenger (I had no concept it could be done), my world fell apart.

        • Yes, I need more peace in my life, not more stress.
          I’ve actually never owned one (and barely ever used one), though they first appeared at a time in my life when I was very keen about new tech and my best friend was one of the first to get one (the brick sized) and upgraded to the latest model all the time. But something about that particular device just rubbed me the wrong way from the start, and the more advanced they got, the less I wanted one.

          Ten, or even five years ago when I said to people that I didn’t own one, they looked appalled and with disdain at me. Today, when I tell people that, almost everyone reacts with envy. They say that they could never quit, but that they wish they could, and ask lots of questions about how I manage to navigate through daily life without one.

          They’re making it more and more difficult for non-owners, but it’s still worth the small hassle they put me through…and quite frankly; the more they try to make it difficult or impossible, the more stubborn I get. Puts me in my “Don’t f-ing tell me what to do” mood. 😀

Leave a Reply