Eurovision Song Contest

Like Christmas, the Eurovision Song Contest comes to us every year with a certainty. Like Christmas, it promises us so much. Like Christmas, it usually doesn’t live up to expectation. And like Christmas, it ends with a hangover. But also like Christmas, the preparations and discussions on it start much too early.

The Eurovision Song Contest started out as a singer and songwriter contest in 1954, for people who could sing and write songs. It turned into a multimillion Euro festival with show acts from all over Europe. It is therefore debatable, if quality has anything to do with it anymore. But the important thing about it is that the viewers are giving away the crown to the winner. That also is a change from the early days, when there were juries in every country giving points to the song to find the best or whatever.

The reading out of these points, now democratically distributed, is taking longer in modern Europe than the show itself; there are so many new countries all of a sudden. And they have definitely changed the contest once again. The change this time is not in the quality of singers or song texts, though personally I think the quality has gone up over the level reached in the eighties, but in the possibilities to win this contest.

Up to the point where the eastern European countries joined in the fun, it had been a fairly even affair, with the noted tendency that countries gave points rather to their neighbours than farther off, and that the northern countries tended to give the best placements to the other northern countries. But that was small fry and everybody could win no matter if it was one of the Big Four United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Germany who defray the costs of the contest, or one of the small ones.

In recent years, the Big Four have more than once had the infamous zero points marker and western small countries more often than not didn’t even reach the finals. This has to do with the new eastern countries which have a tendency to cross-adjudge their points to each other rather than to western countries whose music must sound exceedingly dull to them.

Switzerland tried it once with taking up an eastern European band, Vanilla Ninja, and succeeded with that to 6thplace. But another year, when they sent out the biggest Swiss music export, DJ Bobo, the final was gloriously missed, even though Bobo had only just returned from an eastern tour which had been sold out.

Now Britain, after too many zeros, has taken up the big gun and asked Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the song for next year’s contest. I wouldn’t dare t doubt the tipsy Lord’s ability to write good musicals, quite apart from his beautiful Requiem. But I doubt that he can get the kind of music to paper that goes for the contest. And if he does, I doubt it will make a difference. Zero points again, let’s face it.

If the BBC would dare to get one of the eastern pop stars to perform the music of Lloyd Webber, then maybe there would be a chance of success. Instead we are looking forward to a further boring competition of indifferent singers to find the one who will perform and fail. Gloriously failing in lost causes was attributed to Oxford only; does it have to be the whole country now, year after year?

Maybe we should take the chance of the slump for a bailout, and bail out of the Eurovision Song Contest completely. Other countries are considering it, so why not we? We could put the moneys going into the contest every year perfectly well to some better programs that are less boring.