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Eurovision Song Contest 2023


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18 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

Yeah I was surprised Germany couldn't get past the last place curse this time, I think maybe Croatia and Finland soaked up the fan votes they might have gotten.

I thought they might pick up a bit, I was surprised that them and Voyager scored so poorly with fan votes as they are reasonably known (albeit in a crowd not often associated with Eurovision but... Lordi was a thing that happened) then I thought about it. While it's a fairly catchy industrial metal number... Finland had an even more incredible poundland Rammstein (complete with doctored logo ink!) which definitely hoovered up.

I did think that we'd get a little bit more despite finding the song uninspiring, it was performed pretty badly and that sunk the nail in the coffin. 

Not surprised at the end result and called those two (as to be fair I think did most people ahead of it) but I do feel that there are going to be few times that the jurys are so out of synch with the actual viewers. As soon as the votes were announced for the first few juries and Loreen was double anyone else and Finland had taken a run of 0s you knew it was over. Obviously Finland was the big one but there were a bunch of high scoring acts with the jury that did barely a ripple and a couple of pretty big jumps. Norway being one of the most notable swings.

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The judging panel needs overhauling. Each country's representative(s) is/are made up of former Eurovision performers and songwriters etc. The UK's panel was: 

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

  • Debby Bracknell – Backing vocalist for the United Kingdom at Eurovision 2018
  • Katrina – Winner of Eurovision 1997 with “Love Shine A Light”
  • Paul Jordan – BBC Eurovision correspondent, known as Dr. Eurovision

You can see the rest here: 

https://eurovoix.com/2023/04/17/the-euro-jury-2023-jurors/

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Dave Bassett: managed Wimbledon from the Fourth to the First division and German Eurovision juror. What a career.

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23 minutes ago, Naitch said:

I love that one of the Irish jury members' sole justification for having the role was that he's done it once before.

Begs the question what was the justification that time...

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On 14/05/2023 at 08:45, Cymbols said:

Tbf, the new voting system led to some suspense right at the end which you wouldn’t have gotten the old way. That said, Finland was robbed.

Eh, these things have come down to the wire before, it's exciting but that doesn't come down exclusively to the voting system.

I know you agree but to also add that the sheer volume 243 to 376 public votes is massive, it didn't deserve the dramatic finale because Finland clearly ran away with it in public eyes.

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The Finnish song is like a weird hybrid of PSY and Rammstein that blossoms into a Katy Perry tune. I've been playing it all week.

Loreen was great though, I don't see the issue with the song. Not quite Euphoria, but still a pretty good tune. I liked her live performance box stage thing, and she probably had the best voice of all the entries.

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I think most of the criticsm comes from the fact that it was against Cha Cha Cha which had absolutely everything and was a great song that hit on every level across the musical divide. I thought Loreen was good but that was all, the performance felt a bit uninspired although I liked what she was going for in her box and never really hit its stride, in my opinion of course, so while it was worthy of a high finish I don't know if it realistically did enough to win so comfortably. I do think if Cha Cha Cha hadn't been there nobody would have really cared at all. People who don't even watch or listen to any of the songs would still raid the bottom half with the internet about "how corrupt the EU is and of course they give it to Sweden for 50 years of ABBA" but most people who actually did watch it would be in agreement of "fair enough it was the best song".

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I haven't watched Eurovision since 2008. we tuned in half way and missed a ton, so knowledge of the songs largely came in late (though some I watched during the voting/intermission too). I've watched them all on replay and Cha Cha Cha was the runaway winner for me, followed by Queen of the Kings.

The Loreen win annoys me because the first time I heard it proper was the encore in a room of four other people and three of us immediately identified it as a rip off of something before I clicked it was the Winner Takes It All by ABBA (hence my live post being a WTF). It was a mid rip off of a great song with a good live performance (watched the first performance later on replay).

Having said that, if it had won by a reasonable margin of fan and jury, then fair enough, my tastes don't always match others and that's life, but the sheer margin of difference is absolutely BS that it won, and I think people are justified in wondering exactly why the jury votes were both so different from viewers and why Sweden seemed to absolutely steamroll the 12 pointers. It has soured me a little on giving what was otherwise a fun show another go around next year. I'm not even a Eurovision person, though in theory I'm absolutely the audience, a music fan who loves the international community and celebrating diversity and cultures who would drop money on artists they enjoy.

At the end of the day, it's all a bit of fun I suppose and means very little. KAARIJA and Loreen will probably benefit from the contraversy more than if either had won outright, so there's no real losers other than the Eurovision competition itself which is probably going to take a rep hit from all this, but even then I doubt it'll affect viewership or bottom line.

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I think with Sweden for me there's always just this mountain to overcome because every year they submit a technically excellent, very well-performed song that never has an element that actually hooks me. The difference between this one and like five other Sweden songs from the last few years is at most that even by their standards Loreen is I think a lot better than their usual performers and, uh, long nails?

And it should be said that even by Eurovision jury vote standards this one felt extremely lopsided. They had a result they wanted (I think I agree with the general "they really want it in Sweden for ABBA reasons" take) and it would take the audience basically going "meh" to not get it. But that does kind of lead to the next point, which is that the fans did not go "meh." Sweden got the second-most audience votes of anyone. 240 points is hardly a vote of no confidence even if obviously Finland got decidedly more. I think there will probably be a bit more acute awareness of how the jury votes going forward and that's good. Other than Iceland showing up to do Iceland things I think the jury voting phase is pretty tedious and usually end up resenting whatever well-crafted, deeply hollow track they all get behind. But I don't think I can really, truly say that Sweden is an undeserving winner as such.

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I think that is the thing, it was a good song at least but I think that the jurys wanted to overcompensate in case of what happened last year. They knew that Cha Cha Cha was going to be popular and it felt like they wanted to make sure it couldn't swing it. The sheer number of countries that decided it wasn't worth anything at all just feels strange. There's differing tastes and I get it but it was so polarising it feels like it jumped out as something "wrong". Before they started we knew Loreen was almost a sure fire win but between the Abba tribute and it feeling a little uninspired compared to what we were anticipating before she performed it was a bit of a surprise.

For what it's worth, my top 3 personal picks were pretty much in line with the public votes in the end, I was Finland, Norway, Sweden so at least it wasn't like I'd gone nuts for something completely random! Either way, it wasn't like it was something completely mediocre like a few people in recent years.

Either way, I'm more qualified to be on the UK jury than "Doctor Eurovision". Back in my radio days I had him on my show and seemed to know more about historical acts and in our "top 10s" battle I was 7/10 and he was only 4/10 for the year. Time to start that Lanky for Eurovision 24 campaign. 

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