Eurovision: KOS’ Top 10s (2013 – 2023)

Yikes, I just realized that I have not posted anything Eurovision related since May 2023’s contest. Then again, it has been a busy year starting a new career and moving to a new state. 😉 Since we are still in the “quiet” season, I was wondering if I could do something to satisfy my Eurovision itch until ESC 2024.

Yes, I know that we have entered the new year of the Eurovision calendar. In other words, any songs released from now until March could be a potential song for Eurovision 2024. However, I don’t really follow the participating countries’ national or internal selections until the representative is announced. Also, I don’t really mess with Jr. Eurovision. I take that back, I’ll watch Jr. Eurovision but I do not give much thought to it.

So what am I planning to?

Image courtesy of Eurovision World

For my latest challenge, I’m going to rank the placement of songs from the last 10 contests for each place. What does that mean? For each contest from 2013 to 2023, I’m going to re-review the grand final songs that landed in each position from 26th to 1st place. Yes, I know that every year did not have 26th songs. I’m going with that number because most of the grand finals had 26th songs. In my first post (when/if I start this project), I’m going to look at all of the songs (technically, the performances) that landed in the 26th place from 2013 to 2023 and rank them according to my “standards”, “tastes”, and “biases”. 😉

A few things that I need to take into consideration.

• There has been some advancements technology over the past decade. I have to make sure that I don’t unfairly judge a performance for staging that didn’t exist in 2013.

• I have fight with all of my might to compare the songs in a specific place to other songs in the same place. For instance, comparing performances that came in 11th place from 2013 to 2023 and not comparing the performance that came in 11th place in 2013 to other songs in 2013.

• Ignoring the fact that the many of the performances in 2021, 2022, and 2023 were not 100% live.

• Figure out how to use HTML to make “complex” tables.

• Crap, there was something else that I wanted to take into consideration.

Eurovision 2018 – A Walk Down Memory Lane

Preface:

Since we are more or less in the quiet season, I can soothe my Eurovision itch by watching some of the previous contests. Since I’m at my computer all day and my workstation has three monitors, I figure that I could devote one monitor to ESCs while working on the other two. Yes, I know there is a Junior Eurovision, but I’m not a huge fan of children-based competitions.

Over the last couple of weeks, I managed to watch Eurovision 2018. Why?

1. Fake reason: I realized that we have not been using our VPN subscription. Of course, I signed up for a year’s subscription right after ESC22 without really thinking because I was slightly inebriated. I’m not sure why but all of the Eurovision contests after 2014 are not available on YouTube in the States.

2. EurovisioNYC (an NYC-based Eurovision group . . . as the name would suggest) is hosting a party where EyeCue, a North Macedonian group from ESC2018, will perform. I guess the country technically was the Former Yugoslavic Republic (FYR) of Macedonia back in 2018.

Image courtesy of EurovisioNYC (***)

While I half-assed watched ESC2018 years ago, I had no idea who EyeCue was or what the duo performed in the contest. Then I learned that they did not qualify for the final so that’s probably why I didn’t know about them. Until recently, I have only watched the finals for Eurovision and not the semifinal rounds so I missed the group’s performance. I was like let me put my VPN subscription to work and watch the semifinals of previous ESCs. Actually, I did not think the song (or the performance) was that bad, but 2018 was a strong year so I can see why the duo did not qualify.

EUROVISION 2018: QUICK INFO

Because of Salvador Sobral’s ESC2017 win in Kyiv with his song, Amar Pelos Dois, Portugal had the honor of hosting ESC2018.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia (***)

The contest was hosted by Silvia Alberto, Daniela Ruah, Catarina Furtado, and Filomena Cautela. Overall, I thought all four women did a great job. However, I did find that one of the hostesses was trying too hard to land jokes, but it could have been a language thing since English is not her first language. That said, I have to give many props to anyone that can host an international show in their non-primary language for 3+ hours. Once I asked the hubby who he thought would host Eurovision if Spain were to win. Jokingly, he was like I don’t know if there is anyone in Spain who can speak English consistently for four hours live in front of an international audience.

ESC2018 – MY THOUGHTS

Overall, I thought the Portuguese did an AMAZING job with the contest, especially with the video postcard segments, which are one of my favorite things about Eurovision. The video postcards give the audience a brief introduction to the artists and the hosting country before they perform. Also, it gives production a chance to set up the stage behind the scenes. For ESC2018’s postcards, the artists stepped into a door from their home country and ended up somewhere in Portugal. Here’s the postcard for Netta (Israel’s contestant) the winner of ESC2018.

Random thought: I wonder who determines what the ESC contestants will do in the postcards? My evil ass would be pissed if they had me herding cattle while another contestant does something fun like hang gliding, ziplining, scuba diving, etc.

The rankings

Once again, Europe and I did not really agree on the artists’ positions.

Here are the official results for the Big Five, the qualifying, and hosting countries.

Note the EyeCue from (FYR of Macedonia), the group that will perform at the EurovisioNYC party came in 2nd to last out of the entire contest. While the nonqualifying countries do not compete in the final, all the countries are ranked by each country’s points divided by the total points given in the semi-final.

Here are my results for ESC2018

While I obviously knew who won the contest, it was kind of interesting to rank the countries after the contest. To be perfectly honest, I remembered the top three artists prior to this rewatch. Before rewatching ESC2108, I actually listened to the Spotify playlist, and I’ll say that it was weird listening to the songs without knowing which countries submitted which songs. Of course, this is not a foolproof approach because clearly, songs submitted in Italian would be from Italy, those in Spanish from Spain, those in Portuguese from Portugal, etc. Actually, I wish there was a way to rank the songs in future contests WITHOUT knowing which country submitted them. Of course, this would only work if all of the songs are submitted in the same language, which is pretty impossible. I say this because I think that certain countries get preferential treatment (e.g. Sweden and Italy) even if they were to send a song with someone farting into a microphone for three minutes.

Of my top ten, I agreed with Europe with only five entries. Yes, I already knew about the top three (Israel, Cyprus, and Austria), but I did not really remember the ranking of the rest of the countries. While Israel won the contest, Cyprus was my winner, and Israel was in the sixth spot for me.

KOS-ranked songs from the final (songs 1-26)

Next up . . . Eurovision 2007