Originally published at: Weekend plans for Americans: Vote in Eurovision? | Boing Boing
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Sam Ryder’s win was a personal surprise. Not that I was watching, particularly, but I noticed his win and thought “Hey, he looks familiar.”
Turns out that he was the (excellent) lead singer for my friends’ band on their last album.
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I was introduced to it around 1986 by Astrid, my austrian girlfriend at the time.
She was massive Abba fan, so loved Eurovision. We sat in the couch with her and my brother to watch it.
Austria lost or was very far down that year, and the whole evening me and my brother would just keep shouting at her “null point!” in a heavy french accent to drive her nuts.
Good memories…
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I know who I’M voting for.
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Ryder didn’t actually win, he came second. The Ukranian entry won but understandably they couldn’t be expected to host the contest while a war was on. The Eurovision rules allow for a winning country to pull out of hosting and if they do one of the “Big 5” EBU nations - the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain - will host the show in their stead.
His song wasn’t bad though. All the friends I was watching it with were sure during the voting if it didn’t win it was going to come close.
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This is where ABBA got their first big international break BTW, they won in 1974.
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The massive what-if for last year is if Ukraine wasn’t invaded would that song have won? I was a great song, but we’ll never know how big of a political vote there was in the jury and audience.
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Musically, Eurovision is a lot more diverse than it was in even in the 90s. There’s usually at least one hard rock or metal act, Lordi and Maneskin both won. Amusingly the year before Lordi won an Irish metal band named Mael Mordha entered You’re A Star, the talent show that was used to select the Irish entry in the mid-2000s. They didn’t make it out of the auditions - even after quickly learning Dancing Queen to satisfy the Judges - with a sly “I just don’t see you winning” comment.
There’s even some more extreme music making its way into the contest recently. In 2019 Iceland sent Hatari and this year Germany have sent Lord of the Lost, both Industrial bands.
Yeah, I definitely think it would have been a contender and it was in my personal top 3 from last year. Though Ukraine have had really strong entries in recent years, I loved Go_A in 2021 as well.
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I was pissed off when the UK got to host. France had more Ukrainians living there and hasn’t hosted a Eurovision in decades, and I think Spain too. Either of them would have been a better choice.
Instead TERF Island gets to pinkwash itself. I think I have better things to do than watch it this weekend.
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Ugh, Americans voting will just mean a lot of undeserved votes for the UK and Ireland from teaboos and Bostonians
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Nonsense. Americans are too lazy to vote.
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Ireland didn’t make it out of the semi-finals anyway, so no votes for us in the final.
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Zelensky said that it should have been held in a neighbouring country that Ukrainians could easily reach, i.e. Poland (which would be even worse from an LGBTQ+ perspective).
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Each participating country, mostly European countries, sends one musical act to perform its song (seems to me, usually in the pop style of ABBA?), and then viewers and judges vote to crown a winner.
The most ABBA-esque of all the Eurovision contestant (without actually being ABBA)
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We only get one total vote in the “rest of the world” category. It won’t make a difference.
Eurovision votes don’t work like that.
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I didn’t pay attention and now I have to go to the theater tomorrow. And for a number of reasons I can’t really cancel. Pretty horrible situation.
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Yes , I know how it works.
The US is not a participating member in Eurovision. So our votes get lumped into the rest of world televoting, which is one single voting block/score. The jury is the multinational rest of world jury, which I don’t think we have a panelist on this year.
Source:
EDIT to add:
Given that I voted in the semi finals earlier this week, um… and it explains how it works when they charge you the 1 Euro per vote, I know how it works.
Same here. I booked an evening flight on the day. Bad planning
Honestly, it has been political since it’s inception, regardless of the quality of the music.
That doesn’t need to spoil the fun however - as Graham Norton would put it - “Who would want to spoil the Gay Olympics”?
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