Eurovision 2018

This past Saturday afternoon, I popped into Twitter and noticed a frenzy of tweets about #Eurovision. It’s a songwriting contest that happens in “Europe” (the definition of which includes such countries as Australia and Russia) every year which turns into a Superbowl-like extravaganza for most of the Europeans in my timeline. I started to back away slowly, feeling quite out-of-place, but then I decided that I would finally buckle down and see if I could find it somewhere on my television to watch along with the rest of the world. This was my first viewing of it.

I managed to find a broadcast of it on a German-language cable channel way up in the thousands on my cable provider. The emcees at the event were speaking in English, but a German voiceover would occasionally break in and comment. The pre-recorded pieces (where the people walked out of Doctor Who TARDIS-style doors in the middle of nowhere) were all in German, and there was a bit of German commentary after every performance.

I’m not sure exactly what the rules are for the stage performances. I read that the singing has to be live, and most of it sounded like live singing. I’m not clear about the backing tracks, though. A lot of times it looked like the people you saw with instruments (guitars, drums, etc.) weren’t really playing them. Not to mention the fact that many of the performers didn’t even have bands around them. So it looked like very elaborate karaoke performances as opposed to musical performances. (It’s possible that people were playing live off-stage, but I kind of doubt it.)

Admittedly I missed about the first eight performances (I think the United Kingdom was the first complete performance I saw). But I found the vast majority of the entries to be uncreative, uninspiring, and unmemorable. Not necessarily bad, but more like painfully average or even more insulting: Inoffensive. Something you hear in the background that has no impact on you whatsoever, like (gasp) elevator music. Basically, the worst examples of pop music. Many of the songs quite literally sounded like small 3- or 4-note riffs from popular hits were copied verbatim and shuffled around in a different order to avoid copyright infringement (see: Cyprus). If artificial intelligence could write songs, these are what they would sound like.

But occasionally something stood out to me, as I’ll detail below.

Note that I link to the “official music videos” on YouTube below for reference, but those are not what I saw to make my judgments. In every case, the music video sounds quite different from the live performance I saw in the finals, and certainly looks entirely different. It doesn’t look like Eurovision has posted videos of the finals performances yet. You can find the “national finals” videos, but it isn’t the same performance that I saw.

France (Madame Monsieur, Mercy)

Finished 13th

I will mention the French entry only because it was the song with the most aggravating earworm that I couldn’t get out of my head later in the day. (Which would probably be a compliment to a music executive.) I also thought it had an interesting muted sort of sound in the backing tracks.

There was also a very nice moment during the voting when, after France cast their vote for Israel, the Israel folks started singing the song “Mercy.”

Sweden (Benjamin Ingrosso, Dance You Off)

Finished 7th

I highlight this entry because it was so very obviously inspired by early Michael Jackson going way back to the Jackson Five. I thought it was a pretty good imitation of late 70s, early 80s R&B. It stood out as “something different” among the other songs. The backdrops for the stage show were pretty cool, too.

I could not remember the country for this song so I had to listen to a lot of entries again to find it.

Czech Republic (Mikolas Josef, Lie To Me)

Finished 6th

I didn’t really care for it, but this was the first entry I saw that even tried to break out of the “typical derivative pop music” mold, so kudos for that. I liked the jazz riffs throughout. I also laughed when the German language channel voiceover guy mentioned “dee zeksy zeksy backpack” after the performance.

Hungary (AWS, Viszlát nyár)

Finished 21st

Yes, I had to copy and paste that song title from Wikipedia. Hungary’s high-energy metal entry was by far and away the most “authentic” performance I saw in the entire contest. I admired them so much for just putting everything out there and going for it as a straight-up band performance, which is what music is supposed to be. That singer just killed it, if you ask me. (It ain’t easy to sing like that, kiddos.) Unfortunately it didn’t really belong in a “pop music” contest and as such didn’t fare very well with the judges.

Here is their national final performance, to get an idea of their stage show. I thought their finals performance was even better.

I have no idea what the song is actually about, by the way, since it’s in Hungarian. Now that I’ve complimented it, I hope it isn’t about murdering puppies or something. :)

The Netherlands (Waylon, Outlaw In ‘Em)

Finished 18th

Another one that stood out to me, of course, was the “outlaw country” song from The Netherlands. How could it not? When the guitar riff started, my very first thought was: “That sounds like one of those copies of popular songs that is changed just enough to avoid copyright issues but is obviously meant to be a copy of a popular song.” Then they started singing and I started laughing.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with country music. I don’t particularly care for it, but I don’t hate it. (It’s hard to live in Virginia without developing at least a tolerance for it.) But what I saw and heard seemed more like a parody of country music than real country music. It was so over-the-top that I just couldn’t take it seriously.

It was doubly funny as a European song contest entry. It sounded so far away from what I think of as European pop music that I just died laughing. It had to be a joke entry, right? It was almost like Europe saying “F U” to America. It sounded like a complete mockery of American music.

In retrospect, it was a decent imitation of country, or at least a decent imitation of a rock group playing country (sort of like Nickelback’s Rockstar or Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive). If I’d heard the song on a country station, it’s possible I might not have even recognized it as coming from The Netherlands. But up on that stage during Eurovision, it was hilarious. Especially with that one guy just dancing like a maniac, which was so not country.

Israel (Netta, TOY)

Finished 1st

I guess I have no choice but to talk about the winning entry. When I saw Israel’s entry, I went to Twitter and started to type something along the lines of, “Well this is dumb.” But before I could type that, I saw a million tweets scrolling by yelling, “THIS IS THE GREATEST THIS IS THE WINNER OMG THIS OMG IT’S THE BEST.” So I slunk away again.

It certainly stood out to me as the silliest most juvenile song to me. And I will give them credit for the complex series of mouth-sounds and nonsense syllables that I have no doubt was technically difficult to sing. But as a “pop song” it’s not something I would ever listen to more than once. The backing music didn’t really impress me. The presentation was, well, I said it already, silly.

The one thing that stood out to me about the song was the lyrics: I mean, I’m sure I didn’t get all the nuances of it, but the chorus sure sounded like it was about a pretentious mean girl calling a boy stupid for trying to talk to her. I rarely even pay attention to the lyrics of a song when I’m deciding whether I like it or not, but in this case it was thrown in your face so hard you couldn’t not hear it. It was the entire hook (“you stupid boy”).

So in summary, the fact that the song was petty and mean was the most memorable thing about it to me. It was in fact one of the few songs that actually managed to not be inoffensive. I guess Israel is the face of punk rock now. Kids today! And that’s all I have to say about that.

Moldova (DeReDos, My Lucky Day)

Finished 10th

In my mind, Moldova was the clear winner. It could not have been more obvious to me. That they ended up in 10th place makes me question all of European culture along with the entire nature of life, the universe, and existence.

I can’t find a video of the finals performance that I saw, but here is a video of a rehearsal. You need to see it from the front first:

Their stage performance was certainly among the most creative, and I thought it was the most creative. It had almost a vaudevillian look to it, not to mention the obvious technical prowess of pulling off effectively an illusion act with that backdrop while singing the song at the same time. That was pretty cool.

Here is a video showing their performance from the front and the side simultaneously:

And just because it was so damn cool, here is another behind-the-scenes view of a rehearsal:

I couldn’t have told you what the song was about at the time, but after further review, it’s a pure, uncomplicated dance pop song about (surprise) people dancing, that appeals to either gender (unlike Israel’s song).

The music seemed bolder than any of the other songs. Most of the backing music for most of the songs sounded “thin” to me. I can only assume Eurovision intentionally mixed the music to feature the vocals prominently, while dropping everything else, including bass, rhythm, and high frequencies, way into the background. (Either that, or pop music today only exists within the tiny midrange frequencies that phone speakers can reproduce.) The Moldova song was the only one I noticed that seemed “full.” I think it was the inclusion of the horn riffs throughout, and that syncopated percussive rhythm synth.

I also felt the song held onto the identity of their source country, something that seemed completely lacking from Israel’s song and most of the rest. It sounded very much like a dance pop song from Eastern Europe, which I thought was really cool.

I’m embarrassed to say that I could not have located Moldova on a map before Saturday. It sounds like one of those made-up country names that’s not a real place. In case you’re wondering, it’s a small former Soviet Union state on the far eastern side of Europe.

After Eurovision 2018, I think it’s safe to say I just don’t understand the world anymore.