Hot mess drama all over the place. Friday was all abuzz with stories about the Netherlands’ entry possibly withdrawing. A whole bunch of stories circulated involving confrontations with the Israeli delegation (widely regarded as being full of confrontational jerks) or a strategy to prevent Israel from winning.
Stories were also circulating about Israel and/or Russia being involved in fraudulent efforts to rig the vote for Israel (not sure how or if that’s possible…). As it turns out the Israeli performer is also a russian citizen and had performed (as a teenager) in occupied Crimea. There was another story about the Dutch singer being aggressive with a female reporter from Sweden…. The Netherlands did not perform during the Jury show and film of the semi-finals performance was used instead.
Finally Saturday morning a terse announcement was released about an ‘incident’ between the Dutch performer and a female EBU (European Broadcasting Union) staff member after Thursday’s semi-final no other performer or delegation was involved. The police, however, were involved and the Netherlands would not perform in the final or receive any votes and jury votes were to be recalibrated. Several other artists threatened to withdraw including Ireland (which did not show up for the last rehearsal) and a few celebrity presenters set to announce vote totals from their countries pulled out). Even last year’s winner declared that she would not personally hand over the trophy if Israel won. The Netherlands issued a statement about their side which was curiously… unspecific beyond the idea that it had been ‘agreed’ that he would not be filmed backstage and an aggressive gesture….
To make matters worse, well ahead of the contest members of Abba had categorically refused to reunite for an anniversary performance… so the whole raison d’etre of Sweden winning (according to last year’s rumors) was all for nothing.
Pull away all the distraction and I can’t help but wonder if russia is behind some of this… russia’s goal is to create chaos that can be exploited and Eurovision has never seen such chaos. Like the US russia is working both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in very different ways than the US is – rather than help both sides they’re trying to sabotage both sides) and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were subsidizing protests and trying to rig votes…
So the final took place in an atmosphere best described as ‘awkward’…. Not much of the humor landed and it was in fact the performances that were the highlight. There were sound issues similar to the first semi-final but overall the performances went smoothly.
An innovation this year was to preview full performances of the songs with byes so that kinks could be worked out and audiences would be more familiar with them.
Sweden: Very… forgettable. Boy band doing a cookie cutter Swedish Eurovision bop.
“This is fine” said Eurovision.
Germany: The singer is not… photogenic to put it mildly and the set had a lot of fire. He delivered the entry, a power ballad about as well as could be expected…
Spain: Massive crowd reaction. One of the biggest of both nights with the audience singing along with the disco duo couple (both in their 50s, she sings he pretends to play something or other).
Italy: Great up-tempo song delivered by a solo female who has a great crowd connection, far better in the final than during the semi-final. Still, I do not hear cumbia in its bouncy rhythms, if anything I hear some influence of manele (Romanian genre mostly performed by gypsies… and there are lots of Romanians in Italy….).
Eurovision turned into a hardcore sex show so gradually no one even noticed…
UK: Up-tempo discoish number performed by a solo male and choreographed by…. Tom of Finland? While gay-themed presentations are nothing new in Eurovision muscular boxers who look like they’ve been beat… up? Grinding against each other are…What’s next? Fisting and money shots?
France: Burly solo male croons and growls and howls various iterations of ‘Je t’aime’ over and over… and over. Crowd loves it.
Voting starts and is tense especially when Israel announces its votes to loud booing and when the Netherlands does (more loud booing though… not sure who was being booed).
It quickly becomes clear that the juries are going all in for Switzerland and it develops what looks like an insurmountable lead by the time the televoting is announced. Switzerland doesn’t do nearly as well in televoting (fifth behind Croatia, Israel, Ukraine and France).
Final top five in ascending order 5. Israel (12th jury, 2nd televote) 4. France (2nd jury, 4th televote) 3. Ukraine (5th jury, 3rd televote). 2. Croatia (3rd jury, 1st televote) 1. Switzerland (1st jury, 5th televote).
Switzerland is mostly a safe choice and doesn’t present any of the problems of the other top five (two being at war, one neighboring a possible war and other other at perpetual war with itself… Switzerland was internal refuge of choice during the last war so it makes sense now as well.
Swiss winner: “I’m gonna smash this freakin’ award to bits! You hear me?!”
Swiss winner is ecstatic and almost immediate breaks the trophy…. and I’m reminded that Nemo spelled backwards is….