The Eurovision Song Contest finally ended, the discussion on social media has been quite emotional, and now it’s time to look back and sort out what has happened to Eurovision and why it’s not the same as it was back in time.

After Sweden won jury votes and reached a big gap compared to the other place, they won the whole competition, even though the popularity from the public wasn’t that numerous. As always, the results, jury votes and live shows cause a lot of discussion. Why does the jury have so much power? Why do neighbouring countries always get the highest points? 

Eurovision was created because of the idea to unite countries through music. This same slogan has been used from the very beginning to these days. But is it united by music? What Eurovision was then and what is it about now? 

On the 24th of May in 1956, Switzerland won with a live orchestra and a simple live performance. After 42 years they changed the rules, and live orchestra wasn’t allowed anymore. There were other rules as well: the song has to be sung in the country’s own language and performed with a soloist. When the time passed, they started to change the rules because they wanted to modernize it. 

Modernizing is understandable, and it’s just not possible to host contestants with exactly the same form that it was 70 years ago. But is Eurovision music a contest anymore? Nowadays people make their opinion about countries’ songs by considering the whole ‘packet’. That includes song, performer, live performance, costume, popularity on social media and for someone, even the country that they are representing. And immediately after the winner has been released, people start to talk about what was right and what wasn’t, and usually it’s not about the songs. Did the jury give 12 points to Sweden because Abba won 50 years ago? Did the jury ignore Croatia, because it was too political? There is even speculation that the reason why Finland didn’t get so many jury votes this year is because the biggest Arena in Helsinki is owned by people from Russia. 

Can you see the similarities between these comments and thoughts? They are not related to music at all. All are about politics, conspiracy theories or just simple frustration. I have heard a lot of comments that the reason why people are not interested in Eurovision is its ‘fakeness’. The competition is too politicized. And personally, I understand their frustration.

For me, Eurovision is one of the biggest events of the whole year. Every year, I start to wait for it since the first national final, which is already in December. And yes, I’m also frustrated about the political side, but the sad fact is that whatever we are doing, politics is always somehow part of it. That’s why, in my opinion, the best medicine to ignore politics is just trying to focus on the part that actually matters, which obviously is music. From the start to these days it has been the keypoint, or at least it should be! 

On the other hand, can we even assume that competition between different countries is not related to politics at all? Is it even possible, if competitors are not only representing themselves but also their own country? Also, we can’t make a real conclusion, how political this year’s Eurovision was, but if we think about the history, not the craziest one. The main problem is that people focus on the political part. I’m used to it, because when I actually started to follow Eurovision, it was already like this. Even though the geopolitical side of the contestant has been part of it since the beginning, social media has increased it.

It’s not possible to time travel and go back to ‘good old time’. And personally, I don’t even want that. There has happened a lot of good things as well. Good example is remarkable work to improve the knowledge and rights of LGBTQ+ community. 

World is changing fast, and so is Eurovision. It seems like the contest has reached some kind of turning point and only the future can show us in which direction it’s going to go. Can we finally come to an understanding of what is important and what is not? 

Katariina Weijo

Sources: 

The Guardian – This year’s Eurovison was a political statement