This was a pretty awesome year overall. My pick didnât win, but I was really glad to see the voting push non-standard stuff toward the stop again. I was even happier to see the scantily-clad, jiggle and wiggle movement crash and burn. Cyprus could have been titled âFuego 2: Maybe Blonder and Nakeder is Better?â
I was really proud of Go_A! They got the second-highest popular votes, but sadly the juries are what they are.
You lot can bugger off to Italy now, bye bye! 
0 points for the UK is historic. Even right after Brexit it wasnât that bad. 3 for Germany is deserved, maybe? Their heart was in the right place but the song was missing something. I feel like it was all refrain and no verse. Iâm just glad France and Switzerland (narrowly) didnât win. Especially Switzerland was just boring and both of them are of the kind that inexplicably does well but is ultimately forgettable. Canât say that about Italy.
The politics around Israel and Russia were interesting this year. Both of them had really strong songs so they did better than external circumstances would have suggested.
Equally remarkably, in the first semi-final the Russian televote (public voting) gave twelve points to Ukraine.
I joked at the time that from the conservative Russian perspective they were probably just voting for Russia⊠
Watch the winner here, if you like. I think it sucks. 
Maybe a better-filmed version is available, but I couldnât find one.
I got the feeling that there were subtexts to Germanyâs entrant that I wasnât getting. His âAnnoyingâ necklace really stood out. The whole presentation ( 
â 
) and the lyrics kinda made me feel as though I was being trolled.
For me, GBâs offering was just phoning it in. Itâs tiring that sometimes it feels like a âWhich Song Sounds Like Western Radioâ contest. Every year, we have to sit through the Bieber clones, the Shakiras, Gagas, etc, etc ad nauseum. The results consistently punish that thinking, but many countries still keep right on doing it. Was it a 0 song? I didnât give it any points on my card.
Neither Israel, (same old top 40 radio music), nor Russia got any points from me. Russia was difficult because I liked the message, but I really just didnât like the song, at all. I felt the same about Israelâs win a couple of years ago. One test for me is âWould I be motivated to actually get up and cross the room to change the channel if this song was on the radio?â, and I had to answer yes to that for Russia.
The last (and only other) time that happened was when Tony Blair was cheerleading for the Iraq war in 2003. Itâs almost like the rest of Europe doesnât like it when the UK government does irredeemably stupid things. Jemeniâs performance was shit in 2003 though, so that didnât help and was probably a bigger factor, but it was obvious that we wouldnât win that year before this disastrous performance.
Eurovision voting has always had a political element to it, giving high scores to your allies or enemies you want to appease. This yearâs Eurovision was no exception, Cyprus and Greece gave each other 12 points, the Scandinavian/Baltic alliance gave their maximum points to Lithuania, Finland or Iceland. There is some degree of predictability to it, all thatâs changed is that Ireland are far less willing to give the UK points.
Look at this wikipedia image of the pattern of which countries reliably gave high scores to who, between 1997 and 2017
There are no surprises there to long time Eurovision fans.
We might have a hope of winning if he did this.
Now that would be awesome. Not just the metal but anything Bill Bailey would write would be great.
Of course lyrical cleverness isnât rewarded by Eurovision audiences but heâs good enough just as a musician that he would make it funny without relying on people all over the continent grasping word play in their second or third language.
AstraZenica fallout?
The politics around Israel and Russia were interesting this year. Both of them had really strong songs so they did better than external circumstances would have suggested.
I liked them both, though Russiaâs entry from last year was more Eurovisiony.
While Iâm a glam rock fan (going back to the 70s) I donât get Italyâs win. It was pretty lacking in imagination. For metal I preferred the Finnish entry.
I could be wrong but I put that down to jealousy: you get to go into the show without qualifying whereas we donât appear there any more as we fail the qualifying round.
That and embarrassment maybe.
ETA
Game theory too. No point giving full marks every time to another country unless youâre going to get it back and we, obviously, canât.
Well thatâs a given! Always go Scandi with your Eurovision metal.
Itâs odd to me to see Ireland going from being a Eurovision powerhouse of sorts to being pretty mediocre.
Lower than mediocre even. This geography lecturer has some thoughts on it. I enjoyed the read.
Wow, that guy put a lot more thought into it than I doâŠ
Geography department is where they hide the radicals these days!
Actually, like most things, if you bring some expertise to bear and think seriously the results are interesting. I canât imagine crunching numbers or spending that time thinking about it but Iâm glad someone did.
I have really strong feelings about the whole national language v. English thing, but I feel like I really donât have a horse in the race being in the US, so I shouldnât judge. I just think something is lost when it stops being a representation of the nations as they are, now, and instead becomes âWho can best emulate the US and British Top 40â contest. Not saying I want it to be a cultural folkfest, that wouldnât be representing themselves, either.
AnyhooâŠ
WOW! I found the Wiwiblog stuff and I am really in awe. Some songs I disliked are so much better as performed on the Wiwi Jam at Home.
And then thereâs Go_A doing a countried-up version of ŃŃĐŒ as Kataryna makes pelmeni (vareniki? I canât tell what that is sheâs stuffing them with). I loved the original too much for anything to be âbetterâ, but I kept hitting replay on this and I think I experienced a lost time event. 
Italyâs is awesome too:
Go_a do a great cover of this, but the original is pretty much perfect:
