Eurosong

We’re nearing the 2 months until the ESC final mark, and luckily, things are really shaping up, to the extent where I can begin to permit myself to get somewhat excited. Within a week, if all goes to plan, I can begin to work on the first maps containing data on all of this year’s participants. I was happy to see the UK declare their participant earlier than expected, leaving us with just three slowcoaches: Azerbaijan, which supposedly decides tomorrow; Moldova, on the 16th of March, and Italy, who are taking “casually late” to ridiculous extremes by waiting until the 18th. 

Has anyone early favourites? I’m currently located in China where youtube is blocked, and as such, haven’t heard the majority of this year’s songs, something which I’m hoping to remedy soon in order to start reviewing them.

The move towards internal selection from countries that once allowed their people to get engaged in the selection process is something that I find very regrettable indeed. Over the course of the last ten years, seven out of the ten national representatives who went on to win the Eurovision were selected after some public televote, and six out of ten were chosen in a vote that gave at least 50% weight to a public vote.

Is it any surprise that the five countries that went on to win the ESC by the biggest margin over the last 10 years (in descending order: Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Russia) all had incorporated public votes into their selection process; or that, since the beginning of the ESC, out of the five participants with the largest winning margins (Rybak, Loreen, Lena, Katrina and the Waves, and Nicole), four were chosen by public voting (and one by random sampling)?

A well-executed, well-publicised public song selection process is of immense benefit to its eventual winner. It is perhaps the best preparation for the ESC proper that a would-be national representative can have, testing their mettle and giving them a chance to get the country fully behind them before the European final. Thus, it seems counter-intuitive and a little sad that a swathe of nations have moved away from the public approach over the course of the last few years.

Hello there folks! We’re just under three months away from the 2013 Eurovision, and already things are beginning to take shape for the upcomign contest. A fair swathe of Europe has decided the song and the person or group that will represent them in Malmö, and the majority of participants have at least decided their representative. Special kudos is due to Albania, Belgium, Lithuania, Switzerland and Ukraine for being proactive and deciding their representative and song long before other nations, back in December.

Only 10 nations, just over 25%, have neither decided upon their representative in ESC 2013 nor upon their song. Some of these countries that are holding out are doing so because of an admirably thorough selection process (here’s looking at you, Sweden); others because of an unadmirably negligent and lax process (here’s looking at you, UK.) It’d be better if every nation had both a song and a representative by this stage, so that they could fully use the three month build-up to the concert to publicise their entry and get it recognised across Europe.

As more information for this year’s concert becomes available over the course of the next few months, we’ll be providing more statistical maps here.

Eurovision entries this year, by theme. As expected, love/lust/friendship/break-ups constitute the biggest group of lyrics, as seems to be the case every year. But we had everything from 3 minute political manifestos to pure boasting, songs about crying and the aviation of one’s soul to odes to strip joints and bread (not in the same song, of course. Unless they’ve mistranslated the grandmothers’ Udmurt.)

Sweden was a much less divisive winner than last year, where huge swathes of Europe didn’t give Azerbaijan points. Something interesting to note is the Mediterranean indifference to “Euphoria” though.

Second Chance Eurovision 2012 - The Results

Thanks to everyone who took part in this year’s Second Chance Eurovision. I’ve collected all the votes - through replies, messages and mails on here and on Facebook - and the result is such: The Netherlands ekes out the narrowest of victories over Israel, with 62 points over 61. Finland, in third, were also close behind, with 58. Austria and Switzerland close the top 5.

It’s a funny feeling to look at the top 5 of non-qualifiers and think, this list would be better than the top 5 in the actual final, but I feel this this year! With 5 countries all having a chance to win for most of the votes, the voting would have been far more gripping too!

Complete results:

Netherlands 62

Israel  61

Finland 58

Switzerland 53

Austria 48

Belarus 41

Montenegro 40

Belgium 38

San Marino 37

Portugal 33

Bulgaria 31

Slovakia 30

Slovenia 29

Croatia 27

Georgia 25

Latvia 25

This image shows nations who got to the finals in 2011 and 2012 - and whether they did better or worse this year. 

I’m still fresh from the shock of some of these votes, and that doesn’t happen very often. My word. Here’s an attempt to make sense of them. What stands out is how badly non-Swedish Nordic countries fared (despite some lovely songs), and the huge disparity between parts of the Big 5, with Germany, Italy and Spain breaking into the Top 10 and the UK and France languishing in the bottom five.