The OG Eurovision

So, now that I have watched Eurovision 2022, I figured I’d provide a sequel to my American Song Contest review.

You may breathe that sigh of relief now – yes, I have decided to complete my documentation of the 2022 Eurovision journey.

I ‘m pretty sure most American music fans have at least heard of Eurovision, thanks to Abba, or more recently watched Will Ferrell’s most recent man-child turn in the Eurovision-Story of Fire Saga Netflix movie. But unless you were actually in Europe during the month of May each year, you probably have never actually watched any of it. 

I’ve mentioned before: within a couple weeks of college graduation in 1996, I flew to Europe for a month.  I was able to watch that year’s Eurovision finale with the family I was staying with, as it was an annual tradition for them.

I really wasn’t sure what to make of it, but listening to them was like when my mom and I would have catty fun back in the day watching Miss America pageants. It was quite entertaining.

So, on the weekend of May 14^th, the Eurovision final was aired live, including a livestream on NBC’s Peacock streaming platform. I did not watch it in real-time; I figured that’s the point of streaming service. I’ll watch at my own convenience, right?! When I finally sat down to cue it up the following night, I literally yelped out loud, “are you kidding me, it’s over 4 hours??!!” 

And this is not like a Super-Bowl-Pregame-Show 4 hours, where we have our de rigueur ads every 10 minutes from 2pm to 6pm. Oh, no. This is 4+ hours of nonstop musical mayhem – ad free. 

For the American viewer, it’s exhausting. My goodness, I wound up having to break my watching into five different sittings. So that was my first indication of the roller coaster of bonkerness awaiting me. 

Then, our host for American viewers is announced, and immediately I realize the bonkerness just tripled:

We get Johnny Weir as our guide! 

Johnny used to be an American figure skater, and he’s been teamed with Tara Lipinski to call figure skating events for NBC, including the Olympics, for probably the past 6 years now, and they are such fun. The extra bonus is Johnny’s love of flamboyant fashion. Imagine a 70s era Elton John calling figure skating with Walter Cronkite. That gives you an idea of the delirious fun that he and Tara are.

So here we get Eurovision Johnny Weir, in his white lace outfit with see through pants, angel wings he likely snagged from the last Victoria’s Secret Angels show, and fingerless gloves, totally stoked to be our American host for the US feed, am I’m like, ok, strap in, this is gonna be a hell of a ride…

Because an Italian artist won last year (Måneskin), Italy is this year’s host. The event is being held in Turin in a large arena, and the place is packed with what appears to be revved up soccer fans at a World Cup opening ceremony. I notice how prominent some Spaniards have made themselves for the cameras, decked out head to toe with Viva España regalia and acting like 12 year olds at a BTS concert….when they were in fact a group of 40 something balding dudes with their dad bellies. (Then when Spain performed, it made much more sense, lol).

Eurovision starts with 40 countries competing, and that gets whittled down over a few semi final rounds to…..wait for it….25 finalists!! (Seriously,  why bother even having semi finals?!) 

Our 25 hopefuls parade out at the beginning to wave to the crowd during the intros. I wonder where their sashes are because it’s totally like a beauty pageant. We are greeted to our hosts for the evening, and I recognize Mika vaguely. And I’m already feeling lost because I have no idea who these people are… but the crowd loves them. Lots of outfit changes for our female host, so much so she actually got overwhelmed halfway through the show and had to sit out a bit for a breather. I wasn’t surprised. 

It’s a hefty ask: hosting non-stop with no ad breaks for 4+ hours, performing during the interludes, and running around the arena floor to talk with the artists in their little designated ‘rooms’. My hat is off to them. Honestly, Oscar hosts are weenies in comparison if they ever complain about their duties. 

About 15-20 minutes in, our finalists begin with their performances. That stage crew for the show? They were amazing – 25 set changes within about 90 minutes, with barely four minutes in between each performance.  They don’t screw around: this show is a MACHINE. No wimpy sets either, we’re talking props, lights, Pyro, confetti, more fire, oh, and the stage is basically surrounded by a waterfall veil. 

There’s grandiose, and then there’s Eurovision.  

The essence of Eurovision is to highlight original songs, and it seemed like the ones that resonated most were those that were a solid representation of the artists country. I think it was mentioned that there were 14 different languages being sung in this year’s competition as opposed to the common assumption everyone should sing in English. At least for this American that was quite fascinating, where we tend to get bent out of shape if someone dares to sing half a song in Spanish on some singing show. 

These Eurovision singers certainly felt more at ease singing in their native language. And frankly, the emotion of what they were singing still translated fine. So, yeah, the Serbian singer: no idea what she was saying, but it was hooky, got folks doing a whole routine during the chorus, and it was pretty clear she was basically doing a PSA for folks to stay healthy and wash their hands. Covid is real, y’all!!

During the changeover between acts, Johnny Weir would give his recap of the most recent performance (he loved everyone, of course) and then set us up for who was next up. Like I said, no ad breaks – it was non stop, and quite dizzying to keep up. Of the 25 acts, only a few really stood out to me.

• My favorite, Subwoolfer from Norway (brilliant name!) had their shtick down cold. It was a great routine, it was stupid, it had a chorus of “give that wolf a banana” followed by audience involvement of everyone rubbing their bellies and screaming out yum-yum-yum. Exactly the kind of act I’ve always associated with Eurovision craziness.

• Spain was quite the revelation. Apparently she was an actress and dancer, this was her first ever song, and man is she a born entertainer. Terrific stage presence, terrific dancer, and smokin’ bod – no wonder the Spanish contingent were so bonkers for her.

• Moldova – MOLDOVA! – were easily the most entertaining group of the night. A traditional violinist, accordion player, with a dude bouncing around the stage like he was Everlast from House of Pain.  It was a brilliant meld of traditional with modern day hip hop.

• Sweden just churned out their latest Robyn clone. Yawn.

• The UK had this guy who looked like Duane Allman and sounded like The Darkness. And the audience loved him. I was left extremely confused because it wasn’t clicking with me

• Ukraine managed to get special passes from their government to compete, as half the guys in the group were active soldiers. They were a more serious Moldova, with a breakdancer instead of accordion player(!). The song was an ode to the one guy’s mom, but has since evolved into an unofficial anthem for the Ukrainian motherland. Obviously it carried quite a powerful punch, even with it not being sung in English

So, the performances wrap up…. And we’re barely 2 hours into the show. Whaaat? So now we get about 45 minutes of filler performances and chatter, etc while folks are feverishly working behind the scenes, tallying all the votes. Måneskin performed, other past winners as well, I think. The finalists are getting drunk off their ass on the arena floor with their posses, to try to take some of the edge off the building tension.

And away we go with the jury votes. Which literally takes an hour, to go live to some representative of each of the 40 countries and hear them give their big unveiling of who gets their 12 points. Now I see why the show’s 4+ hours, sheesh. 

As we saw in the American Song Contest, each jury of professionals in the music business picks their top 10, then those votes get combined with the public. I guess this is where politics and regional favoritism come into play, with all of Ukraine’s neighbors giving them their 12 points, while western Europe were split evenly between Greece, Spain and UK. (I totally did not get Greece’s appeal at all, and continued to question what it was I was not seeing with the UK dude.) At the end of the jury tallies, UK was in the lead, and the poor kid from Germany got not a single point from any jury.

So now on to the public, which, just like I mentioned on ASC, will totally flip the board upside down.  Points are allocated based on how much of the public vote they received (Germany managed to at least get 2 points from the public; Switzerland got the public goose egg).

What the jury likes is not always what the public likes. For example: Moldova was at the bottom of the jury list, but came in second or third in the public and got a monumental jump in the standings. The results were revealed in order from the bottom of the jury results, leaving the final showdown to be between the jury’s pick (UK), and the new favorite when combining jury and public votes, Ukraine.

It was revealed UK did not receive enough of the public vote to overcome Ukraine, so to the delight of the entire audience (ahem, Russia was banned from the competition this year), your 2022 Eurovision winners:

Slava Ukraini!

Was there probably a sympathy vote factor? Sure. Did they deserve to win? Yes!  Was Ukraine’s song good?

Absolutely:

Hopefully the country can enjoy some of that wave of giddiness for awhile, and will be able to host next year in a peaceful surroundings.

It took a few days, but I made it through the on-demand coverage eventually. Will I be back for 2023’s edition? 

Most definitely, as long as Johnny Weir is our driver here in the States!

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