Another month of May is upon us and we all know what that means – it's Eurovision season again. And yet, despite having immersed myself in the contest with near-religious piety for the past twenty years or so, I don't think I've ever been this unenthused about it. What used to be a Christmas in May for fans like me is now nothing short of a raging dumpster fire – and it hasn't even started yet!
Following two years of a certain participating country unashamedly manipulating voting outcomes for politial benefit and propaganda purposes, the EBU (the European Broadcasting Union) has in its boundless wisdom and disappointing, if not surprising, spinelessness chosen to double down on not doing anything to address the issues at hand. They even went on to ignore their own rules in order to prevent a member-requested vote on said country's participation, instead offering a vote on a much-needed rule reform, but only with the caveat that a 'yes' on the rule reform also automatically meant a 'yes' on the Israeli participation. This was all the more farcical considering the rule reform was obviously drafted as a reaction to Israel's actions in the past two editions of the contest to begin with. It's like slapping a bandaid on a leaking dam. YouTubers Stuart MacLean and ESC Gabe have excellent, informative, and well-researched videos on the matter if you're interested.
Previous Eurovision head honcho Martin Österdal was good to go after being booed off the face of the planet, it seems, but any hopes that people might have had for his successor Martin Green have been put firmly on hold over his naïve-at-best, disingenous-at-worst takes on the apoliticality of the contest and his constant unwillingess to respond to and acknowledge the outrage from the fans and national broadcasters – publically, anyway.
Consequently, a mini-exodus of sorts took place, with Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, and Iceland boycotting the contest. Yes, that's right: we lost five countries – including a seven-time winner as well as one of the Big 5 – just to keep a non-European one in. (Now, just to be perfectly clear: I do not have an issue with Israel participating in general. In fact, my first Eurovision memory that I can recall is of Dana International winning back in 1998. However, the way the country and its broadcaster have operated in the context of the show has made a mockery of it without as much as a slap on the wrist from the EBU, and that is a disgrace.) So yeah, an altogether pretty steep price. I sure hope the EBU is happy, because the ESC community is not.
And to top it all off, the powers that be decided that what the Eurovision really needed was a visual revamp that nobody asked for, so now we've even lost the iconic Eurovision logo in exchange for what looks like an AI slop take on a children's TV show title card. Not to be unnecessarily dramatic but it really feels like the Eurovision we all know and love is eroding away in front of our very eyes.
I did seriously consider boycotting the contest this year, and I was not sure if I wanted to write anything on it either. However, just like for any ESC superfan, the Eurovision is one of the highlights of my year and usually a constant source of joy and light in my life, and that is not something I want to lose. I don't want that to be taken away from me. So, let's soldier on and rate some songs.
