Post-Eurovision "Depression" (PED) - Then & Now

Word on the street is that we are supposed to be deep into Post-Eurovision Depression (PED).

 
 

What is PED?

Post Eurovision Depression, or PED, is the annual disorder that manifests hours after the winner is announced, and tends to strike in the warm evenings of June. The experience can contrast from person to person, but the cause seems to be universal: the Eurovision bubble has popped for another year. No rehearsal footage to catch up on, no mid-week national final for musical nutrients. Not even a sea of flags to soothe the soul. After months of build-up, an abundance of songs to rate and a fantastic show, the anti-climax of starting again can be a lot to process. We are in a strange state where next year’s contest feels too far ahead in the future, yet this year’s freshly finished contest is concluded.

-ESC XTRA

Maybe we did Eurovision wrong this year, but my PED is not as bad as it was last year around this time. A couple of factors:

  • There were not as many dance and uptempo bops in ESC22 compared to ESC21.

  • Because ESC20 was canceled because of the pandemic, I think ESC21 songs on a whole were exceptional. I think that extra year really helped with the quality of the songs.

  • This was the first year that I followed ESC during the national selections and the pre-parties, which typically run from late December to early May. By the time Eurovision week rolled around (2nd week of May), I think that I was over the contest. I was kinda like could y'all just pick the darn winner?

  • (Slightly controversial factor): Because of Russia invading Ukraine, I felt that the focus of this year's contest was more about supporting Ukraine (which was fine) than the contest itself. Folks always say that politics are not allowed in Eurovision, but I think politics this year played a huge role in the contest . . . especially with the number of televotes Ukraine received.

I figure that I would make a quick now and then post reflecting my top ten songs right before ESC22 week and during the 1st week of July. My full rankings are near the end of this post.

Aside from the number 1 spot, it looks like my top ten remained unchanged for the most part. While I do not speak a lick of Dutch, I probably listen to S10's De Diepte at least once a day. I guess Belgium, Estonia, and Lithuania left my top ten and were replaced with Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus. Note that my Now Top Ten has nothing to do with the artists' ESC22 performances, it's primarily based on the number of my regular playlists that the songs have slipped into.

My ESC2022 Top Ten Songs

ESC22 Now: Complete Rankings

ESC22 Then: Complete Rankings

Voting in Eurovision - Jury Vote vs Televote

A few weeks ago an op-ed, Opinion: It’s time to abolish the jury vote for Eurovision semi-finals, was published in ESCxta (Link to the article: ***).

 
 

The topic of voting has been brought up in many forms probably throughout the history of the contest. Question: Do we know the voting results of the first Eurovision in 1956? ;)

A quick rundown of voting:

For the two semifinal and final rounds, juries from each participating country rank songs from 1 to how many participants in that round, then the top ten songs are given one of the following points - 12, 10, 8 - 1 based on their final rankings. Note that there is an exponential weight model that gives more weight to higher-ranked songs, which (in a way) prevents the severe impact of one juror killing a song with his/her ranking. The other piece of the puzzle is the televote/public vote, in which the viewing audience vote for their favorite songs. For the two semifinal rounds, the songs with the top ten combined jury and public votes advance to the final round.

Since this seems like a pretty easy system, why the controversy? During this year's Eurovision (ESC22), Azerbaijan's Nadir Rustmali managed to advance to the final round with 96 jury votes, but with ZERO televotes. I don't think that has ever happened before, but I have to look it up to be sure.

 
 

Several folks in the fandom were shocked that a song receiving zero televotes advanced to the final. Note: the semifinal scores are not released until a day or two after the final round. Thus, folks have been suggesting/implying/demanding that changes be made to the scoring system.

While the author of this op-ed piece suggested removing the jury vote in the semifinal rounds, I actually have another idea. Note: I have not really researched the ramifications of this idea (i.e., I'm just talking out of my a**). I think the jury vote should be used ONLY for the semifinal rounds, and the televote should be used only for the final. However, this comes with a couple of considerations.

Consideration 1 - Expand the number of jury members for each country: Right now, each national jury has 5 members. Perhaps, this number can be increased to ensure more diversity in musical tastes from the jury so more unique entries could advance. Typically, ballads showing off strong vocals tend to get ranked higher by the juries than those that do not. I mean while a strong vocal is a great thing to have, it is not the only thing that makes a song good or great. For instance, Konstrakta's In Corpore Sano (Serbia) was one of my favorite songs from ESC22 primarily because of its uniqueness. However, I would imagine that most jury members simply thought this was just some performer talk-singing while washing her hands on a stage for three minutes.

 
 

In the second semifinal round, she received 174 televotes but only 68 from the juries. I think having larger national juries consisting of folks from various musical backgrounds would have improved her jury vote. Then again, this might be a tough ask because I do not think that the European Broadcasting Union has any say over which people are on the national juries. Even if the number of folks in the national juries increased from 5 to 10 or so, a country could have 10 folks who primarily like ballads.

Also, expanding the jury might reduce cheating in the contest since it's harder to get 10 folks to cheat than five. There was a little drama regarding jury votes for ESC22. Allegations have been made that Azerbaijan, Romania, Georgia, Poland, Montenegro, and San Marino were in cahoots to get their entries into the final round by giving high scores to each other entries. Here's the funny thing. Based on the performances Poland, Azerbaijan, and maaaaybe Romania more than likely would have advanced to the final round without allegedly cheating. FYI: this chart from Eurovision World shows how the juries from these six countries, compared to the other 15 national juries, ranked the songs in the second semifinal. To be perfectly honest, I don't think they did a very good job with their trickery. The folks at the EBU noticed this strange trend and did not use their scores for the second semifinal and final rounds.

 

Image courtesy of Eurovision World (Link ***)

 

Consideration 2 - Open semifinal voting to all participating countries: As the contest stands now, only countries that are competing (or presenting their songs, the Big 5 and the host country) in a semifinal round can vote in that round. Since the Big Five (France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the UK) and the hosting country automatically advance to the final round, they present their songs by showing clips. This does not make too much sense to me because all of the participating countries vote in the final round (even those countries that did not advance). Because all participating countries vote in the final, why not have them vote in the semifinals too? Yes, we know that certain countries will always give the max 12 points to certain countries (e.g., Greece and Cyprus), but that already happens in the final anyway.

For these types of contests, I'm always like once a jury does their job, it should be left up to the public so have the jury do its job in the semifinal rounds, and let the public take it from there. Using American Idol as an example (sorry, it was the first thing that came to mind), the judges select who is going to the on the show, but the public votes on the folks who will advance during the contest.

Also, I'm assuming that the public vote during the semifinal rounds is not really reflective of what the public thinks. For instance, which is my theory, only the hard-core fans of the contest will watch the semifinal rounds AND actually vote. Whereas, both hard-core and casual fans will watch the final with some casual fans voting in the final. It makes sense (at least to me) that the televote is not really necessary for the semifinal rounds. Several people that grew up watching the contest have told me that they really do not care about Eurovision until the grand final. They might watch the semifinal round in which their country is competing. Even if a very causal fan watches the semifinal rounds (typically held on Wednesdays and Thursdays) they probably will prefer to vote for the final since they have to pay to vote. Unless you are Azerbaijan, then you pay people to vote for you . . . allegedly.

Finally, I think my idea would be easier on the performers. Assuming they advance to the final round, performers from a non-Big Five or hosting country advances to the final would have to perform four times during ESC week. Here's the run down of the week: Monday - jury show for semifinal #1, Tuesday - televised show for semifinal #1, Wednesday - jury show for semifinal #2, Thursday - televised show for semifinal #2, Friday - jury show for the final, Saturday - televised show for the final. There is a theory that it's very rare for an ESC performer from the second semifinal to win the contest. I mean if they have to perform every day from Wednesday to Saturday, I can understand. Yes, everyone probably rehearses every day during ESC week, but it is one thing to rehearse and another thing to be "on" and get everything right for the jury and televote performances. Also, it is a bit annoying to see the results of the contest, but not viewing half the performances because the jury shows typically are not televised. That's why I like the idea of having the jury only vote in the semifinal rounds . . . the public would see those performances during ESC week instead of after.

Eurovision - My Thoughts on Improving the Contest

Another quick entry about Eurovision, which includes my thoughts on how to improve the contest. Keep in mind this is me just randomly throwing out thoughts without care if these recommendations/suggestions are actually feasible. I guess I should have named this entry what would make Eurovision better KOS, Ph.D. ;) Gotta play up my only child syndrome whenever I get a chance.

Let's do it. Errr. Like Effendi said: LET'S GO

 
 

Get rid of prerecorded backing vocals. From my understanding, the use of the prerecorded tracks was brought in for ESC21 as a COVID-precautionary measure. Sometimes, I get the feeling that some artists might rely too much on the prerecorded vocals. Ok, I get the prerecorded vocals will give artists more opportunities to elevate their performances. For instance, with prerecorded vocals, you can do more intricate/intense choreography and/or have more backup dancers instead of the backup singers. This brings me to my next point . . .

Increase the maximum number of folks on the stage. BTW, I do not mean an increase in the style of the American Song Contest where there are 50 million d*mn folks on the stage.

 
 

Instead, I mean increase the maximum number from 6 to like 8 or 9. That way, an artist can still elevate their performances with dancers and still have a decent number of folks who can do LIVE backing vocals.

Take note of artists' mental health. I'm not sure if this would depend on a country's budget for ESC, but I think the EBU should strongly suggest that delegations have at least one mental health specialist on call for their artists. This year, I noticed a lot of toxicity in the fandom and from general haters. Maybe it always has been there, and I hadn't noticed. These folks send negative comments to the artists about their vocals, staging, personalities, weight, clothing, singing ability, etc. For some artists, ESC might be their first time performing on such a large, international platform. While the artist is the main performer, they are representing their country, which can be a huge weight to bear on one's shoulders. I think many artists would greatly benefit from having someone to speak to about navigating potential mental issues that may occur during ESC season.

Press access. While I'll never have direct access to artists or exclusive ESC content, I think EBU should close the 1st and 2nd rehearsals to the press. I get that folks nowadays expect to have access to anything they want, but I kind of see the 1st two rehearsals as sacred ground. Maybe, I'm being too dramatic with the sacred piece. Most artists prefer folks/fans/hater to see their final products rather than observing the process. In the case of ESC, I have read reports/blogs/tweets saying things like Country X struggled vocal during their rehearsal; Country Y really needs to get their staging together; or there is no way Country Z is going to qualify. I'm like let the artists work through their acts before you report on it as if it's the final product. I'm not saying all reporters report on rehearsals as if they are the final performance. Now if the artist wants to release spoilers from their own performance, then I think that's fine.

Bloc voting. Not sure if there's anything EBU can do about this. On one hand, I get certain countries might vote for each other because they identify with the style/language of the songs from their neighboring countries (ex. the ex-Yugoslavia countries). But on the other hand, it's clear that certain countries always vote for each regardless of the quality of performance (eg. Greece and Cyprus). By voting for, I mean the national juries (who are supposed to be professionals in the music industry) awarding the maximum 12 points to their "friends".

Below is a cool infographic that shows Eurovision's strongest international bonds in terms of voting.

 
 

While I have not fully investigated the research methods from this infographic, it does offer some interesting preliminary information. From this infographic, you can see that there has been a significant exchange of points between Greece and Cyprus; Romania and Moldova; Estonia and Latvia; and Russia and Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. While the range of data is from 1975 to 2022, I wonder if these data have been normalized to the number of years that these countries participated in the contest. For instance, the number of participating countries from 1975 to 2022 has increased from 18 to 40 (keep in mind to some countries have left and returned to the contest over the past 47 years).

Songwriters (Buying locally). Over the past couple of years, I have noticed that the primary songwriters/composers are from different countries. For instance, Country X hiring songwriters from Country Y to work on its submission. I do not know why but I think it takes away from the authenticity of the song. One of the cool things about Eurovision is having the opportunity to hear culturally diverse music. For me, it's not that much fun when many of the songs sound the same especially when they are from different regions of the continent (+ Australia and Israel). In my case, if an artist is from E. Europe, I want to be able to recognize the region from which the song originates without looking up the artist's country. Actually, E. Europe was a bad example because many of these countries tend to send folk-based songs where one can identify the region. For me, I think that I would have a stronger sense of pride if the artist representing my country was singing a song that was created by folks from my country. Then again, I get that some delegations want to submit the best songs possible (or that they can afford). Also, maybe to the delegations, it does not matter because citizens of their own country cannot vote for their own countries' songs. Also (again), this does not make much sense because many countries hold national finals for the song selection, which involve public voting.

Language requirement. Back in the day, countries had to submit songs in one of their official languages. There has been some information suggesting that this rule gave many of the English-speaking countries an unfair advantage. In the future, I would love to see more countries incorporate an official language into the songs. I don't mean that the song should 100% be in the official language, but maybe at least 20% should be in an official language. In terms of the English-speaking countries, I would not mind seeing more non-English components in their songs (eg Ireland sending something in Irish).

Some trends of English vs non-English songs that finished in the top ten.

Top Ten Results of ESC 2022

Six out of ten songs were non-English songs (Ukraine, Spain, Serbia, Italy, Moldova, and Portugal)

Top Ten Results of ESC 2021

Five out of ten songs were non-English songs (Italy, France, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia)

Top Ten Results of ESC 2019

Two out of ten songs were non-English songs (Italy and Iceland).

Top Ten Results of ESC 2018

Two out of ten songs were non-English songs (Italy and Estonia)

Top Ten Results of ESC 2017

Two out of ten songs were non-English songs (Portugal and Hungary)

Shucks, I was hoping for more of a trend of more top ten songs being sung in non-English languages. At least, during the last two ESC contests, at least one-half of the songs and both winning songs were not in English. However, three out of the winning five songs primarily were sung in a language other than English.

Let’s see if any of these changes are incorporated into future ESCs.