Eurovision 2023 Grand Final - thread 4

[GrandTheftWalrus]

Just incase anyone wants to carry on the chat.

I always think that nowadays, there's a tendency for quite camp acts to win the public vote too.

Remember when there was only jury voting??

I think that the reason you can't vote in your own country's semi-finals is to stop gamesmanship: deliberately not voting for your strongest competitor and sending weaker acts through - I can't see that changing.
You can only vote in the semifinal your country is in. We could vote in Ireland on Tuesday but not Thursday.

The jury vote really screwed Finland out of that win. From the public votes - 18! countries gave Finland 12 points. Zero countries gave Sweden 12 points.
But 15 juries gave Sweden 12 points and only 2 juries gave Finland 12 points. So even though Finland got the most 12 points, they didn't win because the juries scored them so low. It really does feel rigged.

I’ve just come and showed my husband videos I took of some of the performances. He said that the sound quality on Mae and Austria’s is better on my iPhone than on the TV and shows a much better performance.

I always wonder about the identites of members of the juries. All very mysterious and they have fifty per cent of the vote.

identities

But the juries were never going to go for Finland. Can you honestly see twelve music professionals who fancy themselves as a cut above the general public sitting down and deciding "yes Cha Cha Cha is definitely the best song musically and lyrically on offer this year".

I loved Finland (albeit not as much as Austria) but honestly if I'd accidentally ended up on a jury through some mixup I'm not sure I could have argued for it in good faith. I'd have vetoed Sweden on the basis of the ChatGPT-meets-rhyming dictionary lyrics mind you.

Kooky songs like Finland can win Eurovision, (eg Toy, Hard Rock Hallelujah) but only if the juries' darling is relatively unpopular with the public. Sweden was a strong second place with the public.

Someone did read out the list of members of the UK jury. It included Heidi Range, but I'd not heard of any of the others.

Well done to Sweden for getting to host on ABBA's 50th anniversary though. Lucky coincidence eh?

They shouldn't have so much power over the outcome though because at the end of the day it is the thousands at home who are watching and taking their time to vote. What is the point if a panel of people can pretty much override what the majority chooses.

Europe don't hate the UK, the UK just doesn't normally have a good enough song and performance. When the act was genuinely very good, like last year, the votes reflected that. In fact, while I do genuinely like Stefania, Spaceman would almost certainly have won if not for the Russian invasion.

And in fact, "Europe" generally likes Ireland, if you can say that a continent likes or dislikes one of it's countries. And Ireland has been doing really, really shit for 25 years. I think it's as simple as that as Anglo-sphere countries, our version of European is too Americanised and that we don't really get the prevailing Euro-culture. It wasn't so obvious when the Eurovision was mainly made up of a western Europe influenced by the cold war. When we try to join in on the camp/fun thing, we either miss the mark and are too cringe because we're not being natural to ourselves. Or we come off as sarcastic or mean partly because our humour is more piss-taking and partly because we do kind of look down on the Eurovision and that aspect of European culture. Most of the time we're just boring and bland because our best acts don't want to do the Eurovision because, again, we do kind of look down on it. Australia manages to get it better than we do, because they don't look down on it so they manage to join in the fun better.

The performance needs to be really flamboyant and memorable. I think that's where a lot of the UK entries fall down (Sam Ryder being a recent exception). Mae Muller in a pretty non-descript, black outfit didn't even look the part, did she?

People were saying last year that Sam Ryder really went to town promoting his song, and that made a difference to the result. I'm completely out of touch with contemporary music normally so I don't know if Mae's song was promoted.

I actually thought Mae's song was OK and deserved to do better, but ultimately as hosts and almost-winners from last year, we were always going to be on then back foot.

To a casual viewer, it does feel as if there's a bit of a disconnect between the competition we see on the television (36? countries doing a 3 minute song with pyrotechnics and varying degrees of choreo) and the massive, months-long campaign of touring, internet marketing blitzes, personal appearances across Europe, radio play, etc, etc, etc that the successful acts apparently undertake to build that support across the board.

Is it possible to win without doing all that, if you've got a great song and great staging? I don't know. I'm too old to be listening to the sort of radio stations/streaming platforms that play songs like Tattoo or Unicorn (apparently already successful across European charts), but on the other hand I am middle-aged enough to be sitting at home with a glass of wine on Saturday night, ready to vote for Australia.

Mae's was okay, but Sam Ryder sparkled.
Yes to Wanderingowl's comments. Ireland's most recent success was Jedward many years ago.

You're forgetting Ryan O'Shaughnessy Fuzzy

Finland were really robbed of the win. I think if Sweden had been a different singer who hadn't won a previous year it wouldn't have got so high on the board. I really liked her last winning song Euphoria but this year was a totally forgettable song to me.

Our UK entry was better than a lot of the others but I found with hers and also some of the others it was as if their mics were not working properly. I could barely hear her. I think Germany could have been good but it didn't seem to get going enough, it had a lot of flat parts.

I don't count him Jane because* *the reason for him qualifying was the two gay lads that he had as dancers. There was some publicity about it. The song wasn't good.

I couldn't hum you last night's winner; I didn't even realise she was singing in English until I put the subtitles on. But I will have that bloody cha cha cha cha CHA in my head for the rest of my life probably.

Well I sat and watched the whole thing, and as you all know we saw the actual performances and heard numerous clips of them all too.
Two things to say.
1: For the life of me I cannot remember anything about Sweden’s song, literally I have totally forgotten it.
2: There seemed to definitely something wrong with the sound quality of Mae’s song, she was drowned out by the music. But also I wasn’t sure about her vocals, sounded a bit flat once or twice.

All I remember of Sweden is her horrible outfit, hair and nails. I think the UK song was better but they didn't stage it well probably because they can't afford to host again next year.

Completely agree. If it's still going to be a song contest, it can't be left completely to the public, who often have shit taste, fall for chants and novelty and probably don't fully appreciate why one song is "better" than another.

Oh the nails!! We were calling her Edward scissor hands 😂

But Sweden came second in the popular vote, it’s not like they were 6th or anything.

Anyway I'm enjoying this love story