The countdown has begun. This Friday marks 40 days until Eurovision week kicks off with a “turquoise carpet” opening ceremony in Liverpool.
All 37 songs have now been submitted, with lyrics addressing everything from demonic possession to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As always, the quality’s about as consistent as a vat of jelly, but there are some gems amongst the inevitable onslaught of power ballads.
What follows is a highly subjective attempt to rank them all. You’ll undoubtedly disagree, and I’ve inevitably snubbed someone’s favourite. But that’s the beauty of Eurovision: Everyone gets a say, and my opinion is no more important than anyone else’s. (Also, I have a terrible track record in predicting the winner, so there’s that.)
In a quirk of typographical synchronicity, Albina is Albania’s representative for 2023.
A former runner-up on The Voice, she’s performing Duje, a dramatic ballad about families being separated, and the impact that has on children. The performance typically ends with Albina collapsing to her knees in tears.
Albina’s impassioned verses build to an appealing chorus, featuring background vocals from her family – but overall, it’s pretty heavy-going.
Prediction: Bottom half of the leaderboard
Brunette is the stage name of 21-year-old Elen Yeremyan, whose got a huge following in Armenia. She wrote this yearning ballad, about a lover she has yet to meet, specifically for Eurovision.
Pairing a pretty, lilting chorus with an anxiety-stricken rap verse, it’s strangely compelling.
This could be Australia’s final year in Eurovision – as the country’s participation agreement runs out after May.
For their last roll of the dice, they’ve gone with pop-metal quintet Voyager, who have been campaigning to represent their country since 2015.
Their song gives off unmistakable Duran Duran vibes, with an anthemic “woah-oh” chorus, and a wibbly guitar solo that sounds like the theme to Beverly Hills 90210 – which is either a blessing or a curse, depending on your feelings about Jason Priestley.
It should go down well in the arena, as Voyager draw on their two decades of live experience to get the crowd pumped.
The best song you’ll ever hear about being possessed by the ghost of 19th Century horror writer Edgar Allen Poe.
Daft as it sounds, the song is a pointed commentary on how hard it is for female songwriters to be taken seriously. Claiming demonic possession, Teya & Salena suggest, would gain them more kudos than just being themselves.
The mid-section, meanwhile, is directed at Spotify’s royalty rate of $0.003 per song. “Give me two years and your dinner will be free“.
A wildly inventive Trojan horse of a pop song. What’s not to love?
TuralTuranX are twin brothers Tural and Turan Bağmanov, who’ve been making music ever since they discovered a piano at school and skipped lessons to practise songwriting.
Their entry takes the form of a voicemail, left on an old lover’s phone, reminiscing about their time together and hoping for a reunion. “Just call me back when you get this message,” the brothers sing over a delicate chord sequence that recalls Sixpence None The Richer’s Kiss Me.
It’s all very sweet until they decide to explore their feelings via the medium of clumsy white-boy rap. Ed Sheeran has a lot to answer for.
Fasten your seatbelts tight, we’re going back to the 90s.
Gustaph’s joyous club stomper Because Of You is festooned with chunky piano chords and wobbly synth lines that reference house classics like Kym Sims’ Too Blind To See It and Crystal Waters’ Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee).
The 42-year-old dedicates his song to the friends and allies who constitute his “chosen family, which happens a lot in the queer world”. And while Eurovision is awash with songs about overcoming derision and stereotyping, Gustaph sings it like he means it.
His outfit, meanwhile, will please anyone who’s a fan of frills and oversized hats.
Shock-rock band Let 3 are incredibly famous across the Balkans for their provocative, avant-garde performances. For Eurovision, they’ve entered a thinly-veiled attack on Vladimir Putin, which surely tests Eurovision’s ban on political lyrics to the limit.
The “mama” of the title refers to Mother Russia and moustachioed frontman Damir Martinović repeatedly sings “Mama kissed a moron“, an apparent criticism of Russia’s political class for their continued support of Putin’s regime.
Musically, though, it’s a travesty. The first minute is essentially the Macarena stripped of any charm or guile. That’s followed by a bewildering cod-operatic section, and a cacophonous finale that sounds like 10 songs being played at once while someone has their chest hairs plucked out one by one.
Twenty-four-year-old Andrew Lambrou previously entered Australia’s selection contest in 2022, coming in seventh place. But his Eurovision journey didn’t end there.
Lambrou’s performance made such an impression on Cypriot broadcaster CyBC that they offered him the chance to go to Liverpool in May.
He arrives in the UK with Break A Broken Heart, a profoundly vanilla ballad about “rising from the ashes” of a break-up.
Full of unnecessarily busy production flourishes, it’s rescued only by Lambrou’s soaring multi-octave vocal.
Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic, has a poor track record at Eurovision, only qualifying for the final four times since they joined in 2007. My Sister’s Crown should change that.
Performed by the all-female Czech-Bulgarian-Russian band Vesna, it’s a song about sexual equality and female empowerment, with frontwoman Patricie Fuxová declaring: “We are not your dolls.”
Immediate and intense with a strong Balkan flavour, it stiches together at least three (maybe more) ludicrously catchy hooks in its all-too-brief run-time.
Its success will ultimately be determined by the staging: During Czechia/Czech Republic’s selection process the band kept things fairly simple but, with a decent budget, you could imagine their marionette dance routine being one of the night’s highlights.
Breaking My Heart has a chequered history.
Reiley, a 25-year-old Danish singer who’s signed to US record label Atlantic, first wrote the song a couple of years ago in the midst of a toxic relationship. But it languished on a hard drive until his manager suggested he enter Eurovision, at which point it was dusted off, spruced up and put forward for Denmark’s selection process.
But in the run-up to the show, it was discovered he’d performed the song before (specifically at a concert in South Korea last year) – which is against the rules.
In the end, an exception was made, and Reiley went on to win the contest. You can see why they were keen to keep him in. Breaking My Heart is a robust, modern pop song – the sort of thing you could imagine the Jonas Brothers having a crack at.
But it falters through over-repetition of the chorus and, crucially, the 25-year-old’s wobbly live vocals.
There’s a moment in this song where Alika Milova sighs, and it feels like the most despondent moment in the whole of Eurovision 2023.
I love it.
Why does every song have to be a bold statement of self-actualisation? She sounds exhausted and, honestly, that’s the sort of content I can get on board with.
Predictably, though, it builds to a rousing final chorus about “building bridges” and becoming “strong enough” to overcome your demons. Shame, because for a moment there I had a kindred spirit.
The song that answers the question: “What if Gangnam Style, but Finnish?”
Performed by 29-year-old Jere Pöyhönen, dressed as Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, it took me on quite a journey. Here are the verbatim notes from the first time I played it.
“Sounds like a spoon in a blender, only less melodic: A cacophony of thrash guitars, offensively cheap synths and unintentionally hilarious Euro-rap.
“Sudden handbrake turn into catchy J-pop melody. This would be amazing on Dance Dance Revolution.
“Oh God, I like it now. What is going on?”
This has been going down a storm with live audiences, particularly with the audience-participation cha, cha, chanting. And therefore….
Could La Zarra be the person to break France’s 45-year losing streak? Maybe, just maybe…
The 25-year-old has conjured an intoxicating blend of smoky jazz vocals and subdued disco beats for her Eurovision entry. It’s quietly gorgeous, like a sort of Sunday morning Dua Lipa.
Iru Khechanovi won the fifth season of The Voice Georgia after performing Loreen’s 2012 Eurovision song Euphoria.
Now, she gets her own shot at Eurovision, and comes up against…. Loreen, who’s doing a victory lap for Sweden. Ooops!
Iru describes her song a “fight for love”, but the lyrics seem to have been written by an AI chatbot. “Love is a wordless”? “I feel I’m progressed”?? “Thing is known”???
The production is crammed full of military drums, EDM synth blurts and James Bond strings. But ultimately, it’s as hollow as a Kinder egg (other chocolate eggs are available).
A dreary thrash metal dirge that’s presumably intended to subvert Eurovision’s shiny, happy aesthetic. It was fun when Lordi did it 2006 but surely things have moved on since?
That said, Lord Of The Lost are seasoned live performers who recently toured with Iron Maiden; and their most recent album – also called Blood And Glitter – topped the German album charts in January.
That experience and exposure, coupled with their ability to stand out from the endless windswept ballads, could tip the scales in their favour.
Greece’s Victor Vernicos has adopted the odd vocal tics of Dermot Kennedy and Tom Walker, where it sounds like you’re chewing vowels for breakfast.
But hey, those singers are wildly successful, and this song lands squarely in their ballpark: Drums crash, vocals crack, and emotions meet sleeves upon which they are worn.
Annoyingly, Vernicos flubs the final chorus, cutting the rhythm track for what I guess is supposed to be a hands-in-the-air, “Radio Gaga” moment. Instead, it sucks the energy out of what could have been a thrilling finale.
Throbbing with a Scandi-pop synth pulse, Diljá’s song is about the realisation that you, and no-one but you, has power over your life. Or, in her own words: “Don’t let the trauma take the wheel”.
The chorus is precision-tooled to stick in your head with its insistent “p-p-p-pick up a Penguin” refrain*; but, alas, it’s very much Eurovision by numbers.
Prediction: I can’t see this being a strong vote-winner. Could finish in the low
The sort of music they put in banking commercials: A grasping, aspirational hymn to togetherness, with lyrics Coldplay would have rejected for being too twee.
Wild Youth? They’re about as rowdy and unpredictable as a facecloth.
Noa Kirel has been called Israel’s biggest pop star – she’s scored four number one singles, won five MTV Awards and been a judge on Israel’s Got Talent, all while serving a compulsory two-year stint in the Israeli army.
Her selection comes after Israel failed to qualify for last year’s Eurovision final – an embarrassing turn of events for a country that’s won four times.
The state broadcaster was so keen to get her on board that they announced Noa’s name before she’d fully signed up, leading to an awkward four-week period where her participation hung in the balance.
The 21-year-old eventually accepted, with a song that sounds like Katy Perry after one too many vodka & Red Bulls.
Bonus points for including a drumbeat that sounds like a galloping unicorn. Bonus bonus points for inventing the word “femininal” (rhymes with “phenomenal”). A fun distraction.
Marco Mengoni is a big deal in Italy. Since winning The X Factor in 2009, he’s topped the album charts seven times, and scored 29 top 40 singles.
But for all the success, he’s a reflective, thoughtful musician, who’s spoken openly about his struggles with mental health and body dysmorphia.
His Eurovision entry is called Due Vite (Two Lives) and it explores the power of dreams to nourish our day-to-day lives.
“It is a tribute to life and an invitation to enjoy even the most boring moments, those that seem to teach us nothing but hide ideas for the future,” he told Vanity Fair.
Sung with searing sincerity, it’s one of this year’s standout ballads.
Aijā is the Latvian word for “lullaby” – and this song is supposed to be a soothing remedy to the horrors of modern life.
Now, maybe I’m missing some important cultural context here but, in my experience, lullabies aren’t stuffed full of guitar feedback and glitchy, jumbled drumbeats that sound like someone pushing a cupboard of saucepans over a cliff.
The quiet-verse/loud-chorus dynamic suggests Sudden Lights are students of the Nirvana/Pixies school of songwriting, but they lack either band’s ferocity or bite.
Prediction: Good enough to make the final, but poor chances thereafter.
Those of you who pay attention to the lyrics will discover that Monika Linkyte has been through a lot. She’s carried sadness with her since she was 16. She’s tasted failure and had her dreams broken. The fire that burned inside her has been extinguished.
But she’s reaching out for help, pleading with her loved ones to stay by her side while acknowledging “it ain’t easy to love someone like me“.
It ends with the repeated phrase “čiūto tūto” – an old Lithuanian folk mantra that’s supposed to help people reconnect with nature and their true selves.
Monika, who previously entered Eurovision in 2015, says the song is based on “a time when I didn’t feel comfortable in my body”, and you can hear the desperation in her delivery. Only a stony heart would be unmoved.
Taking its cue from 2020 Eurovision icon Daði Freyr, this is a slab of socially-awkward disco funk, featuring the iconic line: “I feel better/in my sweater“.
Delightfully bonkers, and cheesier than a wheel of brie.
Prediction: Unloved by fans and bookmakers, this may drop out after the semi-finals. A real shame.
Source – BBC News
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