Eurovision Thoughts

Eurovision side blog of delphinia13, for all my unsolicited opinions. Mostly rankings and commentary, for both Eurovision itself and national selections.

[nelsonakis]

35 MILLION LESS VIEWERS

THE BOYCOTTS ARE WORKING

NEVER GIVE UP

[nelsonakis]

A second trophy return has hit Martin Green

[nelsonakis]

José Pablo López has killed Martin Green

[eurovision-del]

I expect nothing yet I’m still disappointed

[eurovision-del]

The final thing I want to talk about this year is the interval acts! It’s not usually something I comment on but I have a few thoughts I wanted to share.

The semi interval acts were decent enough. I thought Made in Switzerland was fun, but I didn’t feel the love for it the way other people seem too. The Petra cameo was spot on though, short and sweet, highlighting her without her overshadowing the new hosts. It’s really nice that Celine was able to send a message even if she couldn’t be there for the final in the end, and I loved the four 2024 singers they got to perform Ne partez pas sans moi.

The On Time dance routine in semi 2 was one of the more unique interval acts and the only one that was really specific to Switzerland without any Eurovision references, and I honestly appreciate that – not everything has to be past contests and contestants. That said, it was really nice getting to see some more 2020 songs performed at Eurovision after Diodato did Fai rumore back in 2023, and while I loved getting to see The Roop especially do On Fire, I do kind of wish it wasn’t just four acts who did Eurovision again in 2021 – sure, they all had good songs but there are 2020 artists who’ve never been back! Could they not have got people like Ulrikke, Ben Dolic, Arilena Ara?

As for the final, I think the actual acts they had were great! I won’t lie, I absolutely loved the former Swiss competitors – I got way too excited to see Peter, Sue and Marc (sans Sue) and Paola, and it let me geek out at the watch party I was at about classic Eurovision acts. The Baby Lasagna/Käärijä colab was fandom catnip but it also absolutely worked on me, I loved every second of their act.

The opening was cute, I found the jokes about Nemo breaking the trophy funny, and their performance of The Code was as fantastic as ever. However, I really want to talk about their new song – that’s a huge part of the reason I made this post. I’ve been listening to Unexplainable a lot this week. It was such a challenging performance, and the sort of song I think is perfect for an interval act – something that wouldn’t necessary be competitive at the competition but that really deserves a platform to show it off. Unexplainable is so emotionally affecting to me – it’s a stark contrast to The Code which was all about trans joy, being about trans pain, and the specific challenges of being non-binary within that, lacking the language to describe your experiences and the doubt that comes with that. It’s something so personal to Nemo but very relatable as a trans person. It's such a powerful number, and so worth seeing highlighted on a stage like this, especially given the current pushback against trans rights. I have so much respect for Nemo for their performance, being willing to lay all their pain and struggles out on stage like that.

My big issue with the final interval acts though, was their order. Whose idea was it to put the deeply challenging, painful number after the pump-up act of Käärijä and Baby Lasagna? It made for too big a tonal shift in the wrong direction, they needed to be the other way around – we could get a real moment for Nemo then we could go into the green room section to allow for some emotional recovery before hyping us back up with Käärijä and Baby Lasagna ready to go into the results.

Overall though, I thought Switzerland put on a good show. Credit to the hosts, Hazel especially was a highlight. I look forward to seeing what Austria have in store for us next year!

[eurovision-del]

It’s already been a week since the Eurovision final but I still have a couple of thoughts I want to get out before I wrap it up for the year.

First, the semi final results! It’s always interesting to see who just missed out – this year it was Cyprus and Australia. Cyprus had it rougher, only missing out by two points. Other people have done much more in-depth analysis of the results in the past week, and I’ve seen a lot of comments that Cyprus would have qualified if Italy hadn’t been voting in semi final 1 since they gave San Marino 12 points, but I’m personally much happier with San Marino qualifying. Even putting aside that I prefer Tutta l'Italia to Shh as songs, San Marino got points from 14 different countries, Cyprus only got points from 5, their score heavily boosted by 12s from Azerbaijan and Albania.

The more interesting result in semi 1 given what seems to be general fandom perception of them as shock non-qualifiers is Belgium’s score! Second last in the semi with over half those points coming from the San Marino jury – maybe a sign that it might have done better if juries were voting in the semis again? There’s no way to know, and in the end it really doesn’t matter. I do feel bad for Red Sebastian though, I like the song a lot and thought his performance was decent.

Over in semi 2, the fandom was more on-point with identifying which song just missed out – Australia was the big shock NQ and came in 11th. The difference was 10 points, so it doesn’t feel quite as painful to me as when a country just misses out by one or two points, and they still got a reasonable score with points from lots of different countries, they just weren’t anyone’s favourite. I personally thought the performance was weak and didn’t hit the energy the song really needed, then it got overshadowed by other flashy exciting songs later on. Opening a semi isn’t necessarily the best place to be in – you have to go back to 2021 for the last time both semi final openers qualified, every year since then only one has made it.

The winner of semi final 2 was expected, but the big surprise was Latvia in 2nd place!! I loved the song and performance so I’m very happy for them. Albania also managed 2nd place in the first semi, over the odds favourites Sweden, which was exciting for me to see. Both seemed to be fan favourites which people weren’t sure would live up to the hype, so maybe that drove votes – but both were also great songs and performances which I think could have connected with anyone, so I’m glad to see them be rightfully rewarded. (I’m still not over what the Juries did to Albania in the final)

It’s always interesting to compare televote results from the semis to the final, and they can vary quite a bit. I could only find voting numbers released from Belgium (which are interesting to look at for multiple reasons) but they show a huge increase in people voting in the final vs the semis. More people voting and especially more casual viewers voting can lead to different tastes coming across. Another reason is that there are more songs to vote for in the final, so a song that qualifies with lots of low to medium scores from many countries in the final can see their televote scores drop in the final off as there’s more competition – exactly what happened to Portugal this year, going from 56 semi televotes spread across 14 countries, to only 13 televotes in the final – interestingly none from countries that voted in semi 1!

The other big reason is that only half the countries can vote in each semi-final, so adding in votes from a second set in the final can change things. I did a little comparison between how countries that could vote in each semi voted in the final to look at this more closely – it doesn’t explain everything but some patterns did emerge. The most interesting one for me was Estonia’s televote results. They did much better than Sweden in the televote in the final despite Sweden beating Estonia in the televote in semi 1. Estonia got 109 televotes from semi 1 countries in the final, but 151 from semi 2 countries, a full 42 points difference (the numbers don’t add up to their total televote of 258 due to the rest of the world voters who could vote in both semis and gave Estonia 2 points in the final). Sweden’s televotes were much more even, with 101 televotes from semi 1 countries and 100 from semi 2 countries – interestingly Estonia still overtook Sweden when you just look at semi 1 televotes but the gap is much less drastic, and their televotes in semi 1 were close anyway, 118 for Sweden and 113 for Estonia, so the change in points difference from semi 1 voting countries between the semi and final is only 13 – semi 2 countries account for all the rest.

Other countries with large differences between the sets of semi final voters are Germany and Armenia who were both heavily favoured by countries from semi final 2, Germany getting 52 votes out of 74 from semi 2 countries and Armenia getting a whole 28 of their 30 televotes in the final from semi 2 countries – such a difference that I reckon Armenia would have failed to qualify from semi 1. Italy was favoured by countries from semi final 1, getting 65 out of 97 televotes from them, as were the Netherlands and Norway, (30 out of 42 and 41 out of 67 televotes respectively) both countries who competed in semi 1. The Netherlands did have a dramatic drop off in televotes from semi 1 countries though, so the lack of semi 2 countries voting for them in the final doesn’t fully explain them going from 3rd in the semi televote to 15th in the final.

Here’s a screenshot of the table I made for this if anyone wants to take a look – it’s just the full televote breakdown from Wikipedia reordered with voting countries by which semi final they could vote in – countries from semi 1 in blue, countries from semi 2 in green, with the rest of the world included in purple in both categories:

[unibrowzz]

This fandom's vendetta against pianos sure is one of the in jokes of all time.

[unibrowzz]

Anyone else noticed how the previously yellow band in the middle has been slowly turning green since 2021?

[anotherescsite]

The Good, The Bad and the Interesting of ESC Vote 2025.

The Good

75 lots of 12 points were given out last evening (37 from juries, 37 from televoters and one from ROW).

Eighteen different countries received 12 points from somewhere in the voting. The ones that didn't were Norway, Luxembourg, Spain, Iceland, the Netherlands, Malta, Portugal, and Denmark.

Israel received 15 of those; only one of those came from a jury (Azerbaijan)

The next highest lots of 12 went to Austria (8) and then Italy and Greece (7 each), France, Estonia and Sweden (5 each).

Clearly - Israel received the most 12s from the Televoters. Austria had the most 12s from the juries. Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden gave exactly these top marks.

Where juries and televoters agreed: Azerbaijan (12 - Israel), Cyprus (12- Greece), Lithuania (12- Latvia), Malta (1 - Sweden), and the most bizarre, Slovenia (12 - Italy, 10- Austria, 7 - Estonia).

The big differences in votes: Armenia to Estonia (televote 12, juries 2), Czechia to Germany (televote 1, juries 12), Greece to Albania (televote 12, juries 2), Latvia to Estonia (televote 12, juries 1), Luxembourg to Israel (televote 12, juries 1), Norway to Austria (televote 1, juries 12).

The Bad

I like to see who was rated last. Here is how that went down:

Juries and Televoters agreed in Australia, and Denmark (San Marino), Armenia (Azerbaijan).

You'll be pleased to know that there were no countries done dirty by giving 12 and getting last in the jury/televote.

The Interesting

There were three nil point this year. Some may have been expected, others not so.

The closest to breaking the duck was Switzerland. Portugal has them placed at 11th in the televote.

Iceland's best jury place was 13th from both Denmark and Finland.

The United Kingdom's best televote place was 18th from Iceland, Ireland and Malta

If you know others, pls comment.

[arabela25]

[eurovision-del]

Ok, it’s been a long night, but I want to put out some assorted thoughts from the final.

Firstly, I want to say a huge congratulations to Austria and to JJ! Wasted Love wasn’t my favourite song but it’s still a very good one – it’s technically impressive with incredible vocals and JJ absolutely delivered tonight, he should be very proud. It’s interesting to see two songs with operatic vocals win back to back, usually there’s a bit more variation between the style of the winner year on year. I wonder if that will influence the songs picked next year at all.

This is also our third winner in English in a row after the back to back non-English winners in Zitti e buoni and Stefania. I loved all the language diversity we got this year and I really hope that stays. Sweden may not have lived up to their odds favourite status (fairly in my personal opinion) but they still did very well in coming fourth, proving that they can do well sending something different from slick English-language pop, so I really hope this wasn’t a one-off from them.

After all of the ballad talk being focused on France and Switzerland, I really enjoyed seeing Greece doing so well – Klavdia continues to have beautiful vocals and sold it tonight. However, Greece and Austria aside, the big ballads really struggled with the televote – they’ve always tended to do worse but still, 50 for France felt low, and Switzerland getting a televote nil was a huge shock to me! Yes it’s a ballad and more geared towards the jury, and yes the host very rarely does well, but absolutely nothing? That was harsh.

It meant that the UK weren’t alone in our televote nil point club though! I wasn’t too surprised by that, all respect to Remember Monday but I never really vibed with the song and after seeing it live all I could think was ‘who is this for?’. Turns out the answer was juries, I really wasn’t expecting it to score quite so well there, enough to drag us out of the bottom 5 I guess, but I really want the BBC to learn something from this… they probably won’t though.

It's nice to not have a big five/host country in last place for the second year in a row though. I feel a little bad for San Marino but someone’s gotta come last and they did well to qualify, they should be proud of that at least. Italy continue an impressive top 10 streak dating back to 2017 which I was very happy about, Germany coming 15 (with a very solid score that’s a huge jump up from the songs below) it I hope they will be happy with, France maybe didn’t live up to their expectations but 7th place is still impressive. Spain are the sole big five country in the bottom five for the second year in a row – I hope they can shake that for next year.  

Looking at my personal favourites, I found it kind of funny that my top two both got the exact same score, 218 points each to Albania and Ukraine! I’m very happy to see both in the top 10, happy enough with Lithuania in 16th considering it’s not the most accessible genre, and very pleased for Latvia in 13th, left side of the scoreboard! Finland maybe slightly underperformed in 11th but it’s still a good result, I hope they can keep up their momentum next year. I am happy with Albania coming in 8th, their third best result ever, but I thought the juries were really unfair to them – I’m glad the televote made up for it, putting them top five there.

That was my only big gripe with the jury votes actually, otherwise I thought they were decent enough. They definitely have a ballad preference, but that didn’t stop them giving over 100 points to Sweden and a whole 98 points to Estonia, despite his shaky vocals, so it’s not like they won’t reward a quirky, fun entry. I liked how spread out the results were, Austria were consistently in the lead but they didn’t run away with it, and it was nice seeing the 12 points go in so many directions – 13 in total, half of the countries competing tonight, got a douze from someone!

The televote was unsurprisingly dominated by one country. They did actually get diminishing returns from last year, 297 this year compared to 323 then from the same amount of countries, but it still isn’t fun having such a huge vote sink. The conversation around their inclusion will continue and be deeply frustrating for everyone involved.

Estonia won out as the fun novelty entry, beating Sweden there! I was surprised to see them score so highly actually, but I guess it had broad appeal. A friend of mine who was at the watch party I went to tonight suggested it might have been because voting is open from the start of the show now – Estonia being so early might have benefited them as people might throw votes towards the first fun song they saw. I’ve had thoughts about how the running order may influence results before so I’m curious if open voting throughout the contest is actually the fix it seems to be, or if it may even skew results towards early entries – not that the results for Norway or Luxembourg would suggest that though. I’d be very interested to see if Estonia also beat Sweden at the semi-final – maybe there’s also Sweden fatigue among the televoters after they hosted so recently.

Ok, this ended up as a long wall of text, but that’s all my thoughts from tonight out there – as I write this I see that they’ve released the semi-final results already, but I’ll dig into them tomorrow or later in the week when I have time – I’m off to bed for tonight!

[anotherescsite]

Pointless trivia about the final draw.

First and only time Norway has opened the show was in 1987.

Last time Luxembourg sang 2nd, the song that won sung first.

Sixth time Luxembourg has sung at 2nd place: 1957, 1967, 1969, 1982, 1984.

Israel and Lithuania are singing one after the other again.

Estonia has never sung this early in a final.

Spain is singing #6 at 5th time.

UK singing at 8th for the 3rd time - last time in 1978.

Austria is singing at 9th for the fourth time. The last time they sang 9th, they won.

The UK and Austria have sang one after the other on two other occasions: 1979 and 2002. Both times the UK scored better, Austria was last in 79.

The Netherlands are at #12 for the fourth time. 1974 (5th), 1987 (5th), 2019 (W).

Finland are singing at 13th for the 3rd time - notably 2nd in 2023.

In the long history of Eurovision, Netherlands and Finland have never sung one after the other. Finland has not sung prior to Italy either.

Italy are returning to 14th for the 3rd time. So far, 1956 (?), and 1966 (last).

This is the fifth occasion of Germany at 16th. Previously, 1968 (6th), 1987 (2nd), 2007 (19th) and 2011 (10th)

Lucky #17 has fallen to Greece for the 5th time also. 1981 (8th), 1997 (12th), 2003 (17th), 2022 (8th).

Germany and Greece have never sung one after the other either.

Armenia sang at 18th last year.

1981 was the only time the Swiss have sung 19th and they were 4th.

Malta has two occurrences at 20th: 1999 and 2002.

20th is the place of last years winner. 1975-6, 1977-8, 1985-6, and 2006-7 are the occasions the same slot has seen the winner back to back.

Very late draw for Portugal - never sung here. Latest drawn for Portugal is 23rd in 2010.

Last time Sweden sang at 23rd they were third, but it was also the last in the 1996 draw.

Denmark and Sweden in draw - 1962 1980 2005.

The third visit to 24th in the draw for France: 2005 and 2024 are the others.

Sweden-France in the draw: 1965, 1991, 2007, 2014.

[anotherescsite]

The Final Draw

[eurovision-del]

Everyone’s saying Czechia is gonna be a shock NQ tonight to the point where it won’t actually even be a shock if it does NQ

[eurovision-del]

I was spot on about Czechia - turns out the real shock NQ of the night was Australia!

My guess is a combination of lower than expected energy performance, first in the running order, and Finland and Malta sweeping up the innuendo crazy fun televote

[eurotastic]

for the first time since the semi finals were introduced (21 years ago!), all five nordic countries and all three baltic countries are competing in the grand final! major historic moment for eurovision statistics nerds such as myself

[eurovision-del]

Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Luxembourg, Greece, I stay winning!!!

[eurovision-del]

Everyone’s saying Czechia is gonna be a shock NQ tonight to the point where it won’t actually even be a shock if it does NQ