Concentrate on the music!

When the Eurovision Song Contest finally ended and the discussion on social media has been quite emotional, 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 on 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 jury has so much power? Why neighbour countries gets always the highest points?

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

24 of May in 1956, Switzerland won with a live orchestra and a simple live performance. After 42 years they change 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 contestant 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 jury gave 12 point to Sweden because Abba won 50 years ago? Did the jury ignore Croatia, because it was too politic? There is even speculation, that the reason why Finland didn’t get jury votes this year so much 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. Sometimes it seems like all is about politics, conspiracy theory 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, politic is always somehow part of it. That’s why for me best medicine to ignore politics is just trying to focus on the part that actually matter, which obviously is music. From the start to these days it has been the keypoint, or at least it should be!

In the other hand, can we even assume, that competition between different countries is not related to politic at all? Is it even possible, if competitors are not only representing themselves but also their own country? Also, we cannot 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 are focusing to political part. I’m used to, because when I actually started to like Eurovision, it was already like this. Even though geopolitical side of contenstant has been part of it since the beginning, social media has increase it.

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

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

Katariina Weijo

Sources:

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