Eurovision 2025 - After Thoughts

[RedToothBrush]

Austria's JJ won with Wasted Love

This is an interesting listen

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002c3cz?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

But - I also think that other countries that got zero or very few public votes should make us feel better! Malta, Finland, Switzerland all got zero or very few.

I have very mixed feelings this year. I loved Austria so am pleased that he won. I thought his voice was beautiful, heartfelt lyrics and interesting staging. Israel winning would have been a disaster so that was very tense at the end!

But overall it felt a very middling year as after Austria there were lots that I enjoyed but didn't love (Armenia, Italy, Latvia, Germany, France).

Very interesting to see the results of the semi finals compared to the finals and I agree I think lots of people weren't voting.....me included, I picked up my phone to vote as usual but then didn't bother and it seems like this was the case for lots of people!

I love The Code but Nemo seemed to be having an emotional breakdown in the other performance. It was very weird.

I hated Malta. I couldn't understand Graham's love for it....it was really gross!

The best bit of the whole thing was definitely the Baby Lasagna/Kaarija mash up. Both would have been deserving winners in their respective years!

There was an interesting post on the previous thread which said that UK do badly because we don't play the game, and the reason Sam Ryder did do well is because he did play the game.

Apparently there are various ways to get exposure all around Europe in the run up to the ESC and if you don't do those you won't be as popular or known and won't get the votes.

We wrote Austria on our “list of ones that we like but probably will forget” in our house. The list wasn’t very long tbh. And none of us could be bothered to actually vote. I wanted Sweden to win.

UK song is not a “grower” at all imho. Quite the opposite, it gets more annoying every time you hear it. Wasted the talents of the singers.

The UK needs to get all its ducks in a row:

Find an act that already has a big following, including outside the UK
Write a song that is instantly memorable and only needs to be heard once
Write a song that captures the Eurovision zeitgeist but which isn't generic in its particular year (maybe something Celtic or sung in Welsh, anything but bland pop or ballads)
Make sure the act can sing live, has stage presence and can put on a stadium-worthy performance
Put some effort and imagination into the staging (we are always dire at this)
Make sure the act is enthusiastic and charming and promotes the hell out of it

Sam Ryder proved that there are no excuses and you can't blame it all on politics.

Remember Monday did loads. They were in Iceland recoding a song from the Eurovision movie set in Iceland. They did loads of socials with the other contestants singing together, they were interviewed on European breakfast shows. They did the pre parties. Italy did very little and did much better. Most of the viewers and voters are seeing all the songs fur the first time and What the Hell Just Happened is not immediately catchy.

Baby Lasagne were robbed last year !!!

I didn’t watch it but I have enjoyed the comments on here and watching a few based on that.
I actually quite liked Maltas song (not her voice so much). I agree that the sexualisation is pretty grim now and very distracting.

I agree we should go Welsh. Singing's in their blood and if people do hate us it is the English rather than the Welsh. Maybe a song in the Welsh language next year. English seems to have gone out of fashion. (Although having said that the top three were all mostly in English despite not many English songs this year.)

Sam Ryder came second because Europe was always going to vote with sympathy for Ukraine and post Covid none of the other countries wanted to host. It was a financial and organisational nightmare. Otherwise we'd have been given shit scores as usual.
It's the same as the year before the Abba anniversary, total fix for the country to host it to really damp up the Abba mentions.

DD and DH said the same. Sing in Welsh and throw some dragons in too.

I thought the final was a better than average year, there was certainly less dull songs. It seemed more of a song contest than previous years.
I quite liked the UK entry, but agree it was very Musical Theater. Irish entry was bad and deserved not to go through. Loved the Latvian pond witches and the wiggly Estonian.

I also agree with a PP that noted the use of ‘what the hell’ as an issue. It still makes a lot of people uncomfortable, it makes me cringe a bit and the UK is nowhere near as religious as many European countries still are. It would be seen as disrespectful.

I did - ok for the votes I did early, before finish, but the ones I tried to do after the end were just line engaged tone.

I also think a UK entry in Welsh is long overdue. Although it won’t be enough on its own to turn our fortunes around - the song/staging/singing all need to be good. Let’s not forget that France’s worst result of recent years was the year their entry was in Breton.

I liked the Austria song. The beginning is a bit meh, but when he launches into that operatic swooping voice, it’s great. It wasn’t my favourite song, but was in my top 5. I also liked Norway, Iceland, Luxembourg (surprised that didn’t do better) and Poland, but the song that was stuck in my head as I went to bed was Italy. That had a great tune and harked back to the 1970s, as well as having a nice sentiment.

The U.K. entry was competent, but I don’t think their voices were great, and it was too shouty and not very well-staged.

Only just caught up with this thread but I have fallen hopelessly in love with Lucio Corsi although am exactly twice his age.

Ooh yes. Let's put up some Celtic dragons and an instantly catchy happy hardcore tune sung in Welsh. I think we may as well throw all caution to the wind as the worst that will happen is we get zero which we're not exactly immune from.

Love "Latvian pond witches" 🤣. I did enjoy their performance. It seemed like more of a strange theatre performance than a song I'll actually listen to but I enjoyed it.

I’m not a super fan like some but my thoughts are that I loved Iceland so feel sorry for them, and also enjoyed Lithuania. Hated the hypersexualised performances. Nemo??? JFC.

A few of the songs were quite K-Poppy, and K-Pop songs often have a lot going on in a single song. I like K-Pop so that didn’t feel unusual to me.

I liked the UK song.

The problem with sending a song in Welsh is not Europe, but Britain. Far too politically divisive in Wales unfortunately.

I agree! It was really good and fully unexpected!

I loved Austria's song and I think it is a very worthy winner.

I am quite baffled with the low points Norway got.....
Same for Spain.
I think both were better than the position they got, particularly Norway. I thought Norway should have won last year.
And I hated UK's entry this year. I was quite shocked that they got so many points!

I voted for Greece and Armenia, thought Greece was going to be further up the scoreboard.

Poland surprised me but I've seen people say online it's political, I know next to nothing about Poland so not sure what that's about, but I thought she was incredible

Can’t pretend I watched much of it, but I did watch remember Monday, to be fair, maybe not the greatest song but at least they could sing. Eurovision has become a bit of a joke with the voting in all honesty

Thanks for the threads - couldn’t keep up last night! Wonder what was going on behind the scenes with Céline Dion? For all the talk of ‘rumours swirling’, everything I heard came only from the BBC - Scott Mills saying her private plane had landed and Graham Norton confidently pointing out exactly where she would appear. I wouldn’t have given it a thought if they hadn’t been over-egging it.

For those who liked Latvia, they have done a song with Vesna (Czechia 2023) that is worth a listen.