Sixty – The event

The 60^th Eurovision Song Contest is officially over. The stage is already half taken apart, the Euro Village is nowhere to be seen anymore and my time as a volunteer has come to its end. Little sleep and exciting moments are replaced again by, well, still little sleep and university lectures. With a predictable and not particularly outstanding winner Sweden has taken home the trophy this year and is going to host the ESC for the 6^th time next year. Let us take back a step and look at the event in retrospective.

Threehundredandsixtyfive – The final

With 365 points the catchy, yet not overwhelming song with a fantastic stage performance won the show. Again the bookies were right with the winner, yet quite failed when ranking Serbia in the third place. Neither the block-voting for Russia nor three pairs of innocent looking Italian eyes could stop Sweden from going through quite easily.

I am not overly excited about this year’s winner, yet not too disappointed either. Sweden usually sends great artists and takes the ESC really seriously (which a lot of other countries don’t), so it is fair that they are highly successful in this competition. Nevertheless, I feel like the winning song is a little bit bland and sounds like quite a lot of other songs on the radio. Yes, the hook is well written, yet it wasn’t much more that a safe bet. People do get excited about it – but what about Australia’s Guy Sebastian or GB’s Electro Velvet? They have extraordinary songs that one will actually recognize a few years down the road. What will stick in our minds from Sweden is just the stick figure.

On the other hand, I am glad that none of the countless ballades of this year’s final made it. Experts claim that due to half the votes coming from a professional jury, a lot of countries tend to stick to ballads as they are not that controversial and therefore will get at least some points – yet it is not enough to win as Sweden proved this year. I want to encourage countries to send extraordinary, well-written songs that are made to be remembered, and not to blend in with all the other female singers that sing louder in the last third of their songs and are nearly blown away by the wind machine (yes, I am looking at you Russia, Greece, Spain, France, Poland – well, basically almost everyone).

Zero – The downsides

Austria, we need to talk. Yes, the Austrian act was not stunning, but seriously. Zero points? Not even a pity point? A single one for the host? After hours of endlessly boring TV-program the band “The Makemakes” was decided to represent Austria this year. And for what? For nothing. Two years ago the most embarrassing band ever tried to compete with a horrific song about tushie wiggling – which was also chosen by the Austrian TV viewers. “But what about Conchita?” you might say now! Well, she was NOT selected through a TV show but was just sent by the Austrian Broadcasting Station. Not very democratic, yes indeed, but time has shown that Austrian’s TV viewers cannot be trusted with such a choice.

There is another part I want to debate: the organisation. I know that Austria’s knowledge of organizing the ESC dates back to the sixties, yet there are some remarks I want to make. With 800 volunteers there were 300 (!) more than a few years before in Düsseldorf and unfortunately it happened that sometimes there were just too many people around which resulted in a lot of frustration, especially for those who took time off work or came from other countries. I hope Sweden with their long experience will find a better way to deal with the huge amount of people applying. Why do you need such a long casting process for example when they then help only a couple of times?

Finally

However, it was a fantastic time for me to be part of the 60^th Eurovision Song Contest, I regretted it for 0 minutes to be part and all I can say: see you in 365 days in Sweden!

Have you read Part 1 of 10999’s Inside ESC column yet? No? Well, here you go!