We have taken another trip around the sun and have completed another Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) season. Like many in the fandom, especially those that follow the annual contest starting with the yearly national selection season, I'm kind in the boat of being happy that this year's contest is over. While ESC2025 is officially over, I have a feeling that we will still see the aftermath of this contest of the next few months- in particular, questions surrounding Israel's participation in the contest (more on that later).
😆😆😆 I was going to use my previous year's entry for ESC 2024 as a template for this update. However, I realized that I started a draft to recap last year's contest and never got around to finishing it or even getting halfway through it. Why? Due to the all the drama surrounding a certain country's participation, I was just over it and ready to move on.
This year's contest brought us to Basel, Switzerland, and I thought the city were great hosts. In terms of contest itself, I was a bit underwhelmed because I felt that the Swiss pretty much did the same contest that Malmö, Sweden did last year. That's all fine and dandy because we come here for the music. With JJ's Wasted Love (1st place; 178 public votes; 258 jury votes) winning this year's contest, it looks like we will be somewhere in Austria for next year's contest.
Grand Final vs KOS's Results:
Official Results
Image courtesy of Eurovision World
I will say that the top five songs were quite diverse in terms of genres, which is something that I liked. However, Austria's JJ brought home the glass microphone with the pop-opera Wasted Love. To be honest, I assumed that Sweden's KAJ would win again with it's Finnish-, sauna-inspired Bara Bada Bastu / Just Sauna (4th place; 195 public votes; 126 jury votes). Primarily, I was basing this on how much love Bara Bada Bastu received in the months leading to the Eurovision week.
My Rankings
While I do not care too much if my top 10 ranking does not match those from the official contest. It looks like I was not too far off from what the fans and juries of the contest wanted. From the looks of things Austria, Greece and France were both in my top 10 and the official results.
Israel's participation:
I might as well rip off this bandaid. After this year, I really think Israel participation will need to be addressed at some point. In particular, the manner in which votes are acquired. If this situation is not addressed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) soon, I do not think the contest will be around for much longer. The problem here is two-fold. 1. Many feel that Israel should not be allowed to compete while engaging in a conflict with Palestine. 2. Many also feel that Israel (or other countries) should not be allow to run huge, government(allegedly)-sponsored global advertising campaigns to acquire potential votes. This year Israel sent Yuval Raphael's New Day will Rise which landed in 2nd place with 297 public votes and 60 jury votes.
For this year's contest, Israel pretty much killed in the public vote as seen in the Jury vs Public vote.
Ok, it's not a huge deal if a country receives a bunch of votes from the public. However, it looks a little bit "interesting" when you take a look at the distribution of public votes (red) in comparison with votes from the jury (blue).
Image courtesy of Eurovision World
I don't know, but I find it very interesting/odd when a country receives so many 12 points (the maximum points) from multiple countries, but does not receive comparable jury votes. It's even more odd when this happens in two consecutive years for a single country (image below - Israel 2023's point distribution).
Image courtesy of Eurovision World
While this post is not meant to be a bash Israel piece, I do think the EBU and the national broadcasters need to address the voting situation before more harm is done to the contest. Without an overhaul of the voting process (at least for the public votes) a few things probably will happen.
Other countries will start massive advertising campaigns to acquire more public votes. This practice will drastically affect countries with less economic resources. Once these countries realize that there is no hope for them to remain competitive in the contest via the public vote, they probably will leave the contest.
Since many will assume that there will be no shot to win the public vote or gain a significant amount of public vote, countries will start sending songs specifically for the juries (i.e., jury-bait songs). This probably will make things worse because instead of the strong jury-bait songs splitting the jury votes 3-4 ways, the increased number of these songs will split the juries 8+ ways thus ensuring that anyone who wins the public vote will win the contest.
It will place the juries under additional scrutiny. For this and last year, I have a feeling that the juries suspected that some sneakiness was happening behind the scenes regarding the public vote. For that reason, I think the jury tanked the Israeli songs for the last two years. I have to keep it real and say that Israel sent probably one the best female vocalists last year. However, since the public votes were "weird", the juries total score of Eden Golan's Hurricane received only 60 jury points. Had there not been controversies surrounding Israel's public votes and its participation in the contest, Hurricane probably would have received 150+ points from the juries. Note: the juries does not know how the public vote will go until the final. However, there were rumors that RAI (the Italian broadcaster) "accidentally" released the public vote percentages during the semi round, which showed a significant support for Israel's song. So, many suspect that the juries voted in a way to ensure that Israel would not have a grand sweep in both the jury and tele vote.
Ok enough of this.
Game changers via their performances:
Estonia:
Originally, I despised Tommy Cash's Espresso Macchiato (3rd place; 258 public votes; 98 jury votes). I dunno something about the performance made me fall in love with the song. Ok, fall in love might be a bit of a stretch, but it definitely became an ear worm for me. From time to time, I find myself singing or humming: Mi amore. Mi amore. Espresso macchiato, macchiato, macchiato. Por favore, por favore. Espresso macchiato, espresso macchiatoooooo. Ok so, the guy could not sing a good note to save his life, but there was something intriguing and very entertaining about the performance. Although it's an ear worm for me, I'm surprised that it did so well in the contest with an amazing 258 public votes. Ok maybe I'm not too surprised by the public votes, but I was quite surprised that the national juries gave the song/performance 98 points.
Image courtesy of Eurovision World
Other countries whose performances really elevated the songs:
Italy: Originally, I thought Lucio Corsi's Volevo Essere un Duro (5th place; 97 public votes, 159 jury votes) was boring AF. However, the chill vibe from the song's title, which translate to I wanted to be a Tough Guy, really worked for me.
Latvia: Again, I thought Bur Man Laimi / Summon Happiness (13th place; 42 public votes; 133 jury votes) song was boring and actually quite annoying. I think that I originally described it as having the sound of six cats being put to death via a garbage disposal. However, the imagery and vocal harmonies of the six ladies (or as many have called them Latvian fairies) was AMAZING! Shoot, I've even started listening to some of their non Eurovision stuff.
Results that bummed me out:
The UK receiving 0 public votes...again
I was kind of on the fence of does the contest really hate the UK and after this year, it's a resounding YES. Well maybe the contest doesn't "hates" the UK, but it LOVES the money that the UK provides ;) While the UK sent decent songs in 2023 and 2024, the performances were a hot mess, so I under stand the low public vote scores in those years (9 points in 2023 and 0 points in 2024). In this year's case, I thought Remember Monday with their pop-country song What the Hell Just Happened? (19th place; 0 public votes; 88 jury votes) was a complete package. While I didn't think the UK was going to win this year's contest, I was sure they were going to land in the top 15, which would be a good Eurovision year for the UK. At first, I was like maybe the UK received 0 public votes because its song was in the 11th to 18th position for various countries (only songs/countries in the 10 top ranking receives points). However, looking at the below infographic from Eurovisionario, that clearly was not the case.
Image courtesy of Eurovisionario's Twitter account
I am 100% shocked (and not in a good way) that their performance was ranked 20-26th in many countries. Remember there are only 26 countries that compete in the grand final. There is absolutely NO reason (IMO), beside a general hatred (or rather distain) for the UK, for What the Hell Just Happened to have a last place ranking from ANY country.
Poland struggling in the jury votes
Ok, so my girl Justyna Steczkowska's Gaja (14th place; 139 public votes; 17 jury votes) did receive some jury votes, but I expected her performance to land in the top ten. Ok, so the song and performance were a bit chaotic (in a good way, IMO). My mind was blown by Justyna holding MULTIPLE 7+ second sustained notes, while spinning around, dancing in heels, playing the violin, and even hanging from a platform . . . AT THE AGE OF 52!!! Hell, the majority of the performers from this year's contest weren't even born when she did Eurovision for the first time back in 1995. I mean, she was out-singing and out-dancing many performers that were half her age. One saving grace, I think she received one of the highest public vote scores for Poland.
Voting controversies still continue:
Right now, 7+ countries' national broadcasters (Belgium, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, San Marino, Slovenia, and Spain) are asking for an audit of the public votes, greater transparency regarding public voting in the contest, and/or a discussion regarding Israel's participation in the contest. I agree with these countries in that the EBU should provide more transparency regarding voting practices/trends for BOTH the public vote and the jury vote. I'm not saying this because of Israel's participation, but because it seems logical. If there is no funny business going on, then there should be no problem releasing these data to the public (or at least the national broadcasters). 1. It can squash rumors of collusion or cheating. 2. I think it's their right to have this information since the national broadcasters (or rather the people's taxes from the the participating countries) pay to participate in the contest. While I agree that there should be more transparency regarding the voting process and results in the contest, I do wonder if the EBU is hesitant to release this information because it might open a Pandora's box of f*ckery regarding other aspects of the contest.
Sound quality issues:
I'm sorry but the sound quality for this year's contest was kind crap. In previous year's I thought it was a Peacock thing, but I think the subpar sound quality might have something to do with the anti-booing filters they are using in the contest. Since MANY folks were upset (and that's putting it nicely) about Israel's participating, the EBU used mechanisms to filter out the audiences boos and jeers. Actually, I think they filtered out a lot of positive cheers and applause...with the exception of Israel (go figure). I don't think affected songs that had more of an instrumental tone/vibe (e.g., someone singing a ballad with a backing piano). IMO, sometimes, it was very hard to her the performers' vocals in songs with more complex sounds (e.g., instrumentals + pre-recorded playback + other sound effects). Honestly, I think some performances (e.g., Australia and Malta) suffered from the extra sound filtering because those songs somewhat relied on crowd participation.
I'll admit that I'm not expert on this matter, but something definitely was up with the sound quality this year (and last year).
Conclusion:
While I thought this season was pretty mid in terms of song quality, I thought many of the performances elevated the songs for me. Now, many songs originally were in my "I'm never listening to this after ESC 2025" category have move into my general listening and running playlists.
We'll see what will happen regarding these discussions about voting and/or Israel's participation. To be frank, I don't think anything will happen UNLESS several countries (especially those from the Big Five) decide not to participate next year. The Big Five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) provides a large chunk of the financial backing and viewership for the contest. At the end of the day the EBU is a corporation, and large corporations tend not to change their practices UNTIL their profits are affect.
Oh, if you are in the States and want to watch Eurovision, it's currently on Peacock or you can use a VPN to watch it on the Eurovision Song Contest's YouTube channel or though a national broadcaster's platform/app such as the BBC.
Playlist/Livestreams:
Spotify Playlist of the current ESC songs (in random order):
Live stream of the contest on YouTube (if you have a VPN):
