United By Music Hatred Of The Jury
Eurovision has been dogged by allegations of cheating, corruption, bad judging calls, and hatred of the jury for many years. This year brought that to a head with Sweden’s win over the public favourite Finland, in an allocation of points that shocked Europe.
Sweden received only 243 points from the public vote, without a single “douze points” from any country. Finland received 376 votes from the public, the second highest amount ever, including the coveted 12 points from eighteen different nation-states. How, then, did Sweden manage to win? Finland was only awarded 150 points by the professional jury, while Sweden was given 340, sailing their singer Loreen, a previous Eurovision winner, to victory.
Understandably, people are upset.
One reason that Finns have said it hurt to lose to Sweden is due to their history. Finland was colonised by Sweden for over 600 years, after Sweden annexed them (a long process lasting between the 1150s and 1350s at least). Sweden is still seen as superior in a number of ways. The Finnish language is often considered weird and ugly. Käärijä, the singer representing Finland, went to Eurovision to prove that a song sung in Finnish could win.
The professional jury clearly shows bias against songs sung in native and minority languages and not English. Time and time again, they vote for the most generic pop songs instead of performances laced with languages and culture from the performing countries. Last year in 2022, France sent a song in Breton, a language with a long history of oppression in France, with Celtic iconography. They received only 9 points from the jury. Meanwhile, audiences enjoyed the performance, and were happy that France finally sent something other than a modern chanson song, French audiences included. Keiino included aspects of Sami culture and language in their song in 2019, and lost out to the Netherlands, falling several places due to the jury vote. The Eurovision Song Contest exists to showcase and celebrate the full cultural richness of the competing countries, and it is wholly wrong for the jury to penalise that.
This argument is unhelped by those that often complain about the amount of Anglophone pop songs, yet then vote for the same due to loyalty, or the attractiveness of the singer, or politics. There is nothing wrong with voting for an English language pop song if you think it is the best song that year, but one way to help these non-English language songs is to allocate them a smaller amount of votes and save the rest for your favourite. This way these countries know that other people did enjoy their performances, and that they would like to see more of the same.
During its occupation by Sweden, Swedish became the dominant language in Finland, spoken by the upper class, administration, and education. It was only under Russian rule that the Finnish language started to gain traction and recognition, finally achieving equal status as Swedish legally in 1892. This is part of why it was so important to Finns to have a winning song sung in Finnish, their only previous win being in English. To show that their language is not rough and ugly sounding, and to demonstrate what it means to sing in your native language. The crowd sang along to Käärijä’s performance in Finnish; people who are not Finnish and have never spoken a word of Finnish. I cannot imagine that feeling. Käärijä also performed topless, with a perfectly normal body, unlike the heavily chiselled bodies favoured by Hollywood, which are, only produced by extreme diets, workout regimes, and dangerous levels of dehydration. It is no surprise he became a national treasure. Finland redecorated statues and had green shrines in their libraries and supermarkets. The country was so excited. Then they lost to Sweden over the jury vote.
Norway got the third highest votes this year from the public. They also won the televoting in 2019 too, but lost because of the professional jury votes that propelled Netherlands to the win. It was said that Norway may have had some voice trouble during the finals week, including her jury performance. The BBC praised her jury performance, but Swedish newspapers allegedly said it was very rough, and that she missed nearly every note.
The professional jury doesn’t judge the same Grand Final performance that everyone else sees. The jury judges the final jury performance, a separate show where the public is not allowed and only press accredited people can attend. Performers will obviously give it their best, but that does not guarantee it will be their best performance. It is also reasonable to assume that some singers might have a lower energy performance during the jury performance due to exhaustion, or in order to save up for the grand final, among other possibilities.
It is clear that everyone needs to be voting on the same show – anything else is just blatantly unfair. Votes cannot be accurately distributed if people are voting on two different shows.
If the juries are unbiased, we have a huge problem. Even if Finland got 12 points from everyone voting in the grand final, they would have only scraped a win with 11 points. They scored the second highest votes in Eurovision history, second only to Ukraine last year, a win that itself was mired in allegations of cheating and corruption. And yet Finland still lost.
The weighting of the votes is undoubtedly tilted towards the jury. As mentioned earlier, Finland received the second highest amount of televotes in Eurovision history, and won the public vote, yet lost to Sweden based on the professional jury. This is a kick in the face to members of the public that watched and voted. It sends a clear message that the public and their opinion clearly does not matter at all and they might as well have not voted. The public pay for Eurovision, the public stream and download and buy the songs, and as such, the publics vote should count, otherwise why bother? Why have a competition?
As it stands right now, the Eurovision Song Contest is essentially voted on like a US Presidential Election. The professional jury vote is essentially the Electoral College, capable of snatching the victory from the clear public winner that secured the majority of public votes. If we are going to complain about this system being used for American elections, then there is no reason that it should be acceptable here.
One way to fix this is to change the weighting of the jury versus public votes. The professional jury was established to prevent nations from simply voting for their neighbours or allies, yet it is remarkable how often the professional juries’ votes reflect these politics anyway. A 30/70 split to the public votes will allow the jury to make clear who they think should win while also not holding enough sway to alter the public results.
An overhaul also needs to be made to the professional jury itself. It is no secret that corruption is present within Eurovision. Keeping the names of the jury secret to prevent this from happening is only going to make it impossible to know when it has happened. Instead, the jury list should be transparent, and the juries themselves should be diverse, with a number of musical styles represented. Eurovision has a wide range of musical styles perform, and having a jury compiled of industry professionals from only one or two genres will only harm these entries, especially those that draw on traditional music styles. Many fan favourites were cheated by the voting system because their songs and performances weren’t “normal” or “palatable” enough for the jury. As mentioned earlier, these trend towards songs that have considerable influence from the culture of the country, including native and minority languages. It was also caused by the “war” between the juries, as evidenced by the graphic put out by Eurovision showing the difference between the jury favourites and the public favourites. Sweden and Finland sat in the middle of each half, essentially causing a fight over who would win by each half voting only for that one country.
Worldwide voting should also be removed. There should be a return to form when it comes to who can vote, as it was last year. Those that did not pay for Eurovision should not be able to vote, and worldwide politics could tip a win or loss by a considerable amount. The US has a population of almost 332 million people. India has a population of 1.408 billion. Imagine if any country with a population like this had even a fraction of its people cast a vote based on socio-political reasons.
Even within the voting process itself, there are problems. Votes should cost the equivalent amount everywhere. It ranges from 15p/17ct up to over a euro to vote, depending on where you are. This is going to have an impact on who can vote, and therefore who will win. Even on the app, it costs money to vote. This will not be a fair competition until everyone can vote equally and the organisers need to get on top of this rapidly.
Equality is the basis of every democratic vote, but Eurovision does not treat all of its competitors equally. The Eurovision Song Contest explicitly acknowledged the war in Ukraine and the need for another nation to host because of it. They sanctioned Russia by banning them from entering, this year being the second year in a row after their initial ban last year. This is considered the right thing to do, but it has raised several questions. The Eurovision Song Contest declined to let Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy address the audience at the grand final, saying that it would politicise the event, ignoring the fact that they had already politicised it by acknowledging the very real events happening in the world that caused something as drastic as a change of host nation. They also politicised it by denying Russia entry. The politics are even implied in the theme. While seen as the correct thing to do, it means they have, to an extent, been hypocritical. They have then taken it one step further though, with the inclusion of Israel.
Israel’s participation has long been debated due to geographical location and politics. However, to ban Russia for the invasion and war against Ukraine while allowing Israel to compete is hypocrisy at its finest. Israel has carried out the same actions against Palestine as Russia has against Ukraine, yet they have not been banned. Instead, they have hosted in recent years, often receive a decent amount of points, and this year had a previous winner featured during the interval act. Many people with the job of awarding points made statements in support of “peace and unity!” only to immediately award points to Israel.
This disparity of treatment is most obvious at two previous competitions. Israel hosted in 2019 when the Icelandic group Hatari famously waved Palestinian flags during the grand final, causing them to be deported and banned from the country. They were later fined for breaking the no politics rule.
In 2021, the Israeli entry was a song called ‘Set Me Free’, a song title that was mocked and by many for its irony. The day before the grand final, Israel launched a missile strike against Palestine (reminiscent of the harrowing news that the hometown of the Ukrainian entry was bombed moments before they took to the stage this year simply from the other perspective) as part of a series of escalations that included threatening to evict Palestinian families from East Jerusalem and nightly clashes between Palestinians and the police during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Many people felt that it was wrong for the performance to go ahead. For a considerable time, YouTube searches for Israel’s grand final performance only returned results for the semi-final.
Despite all this, Israel faced no sanctions at Eurovision. Contrasted with Russia, who has faced sanctions for their actions in Ukraine, fans are understandably angry and upset with Eurovision’s lack of consistent positioning on this issue, calling for the end of the hypocrisy. The double standard shown here, in the disparity of Eurovision’s treatment of Russia and Israel, is a symptom of racialised Eurocentrism – something which remains a massive problem in Europe and a subject which deserves its own post.
Speaking of the war, the UK did not utilise enough Ukrainian talent, or songs. The UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine, yet little of Ukraine was represented. Previous performers Verka, Go_A, and Jamala (who herself faced controversy for her entry at the time, it being an allegory to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the same year as the title under the excuse of “allying with Nazis”) returned to sing their Eurovision entries, and last year’s winners Kalush Orchestra returned with an extended opening sequence. Beyond this, and one Ukrainian presenter, Ukrainian representation was far below what it should have been. Other Ukrainian groups or previous entries should have been invited to perform, and the three previous groups that performed should have had the option to sing additional songs if they wanted to. This was a serious let-down by the UK, especially given the interval performance. Famous songs of Ukraine could have been sung instead, or even some of those Liverpudlian songs translated into Ukrainian and sung by Ukrainian performers.
Moving on from those who didn’t perform to those who did: Loreen, too, is facing accusations of rudeness and arrogance. She has already won Eurovision once before and has returned to try and win again. The popular opinion is that those who have won Eurovision before should be allowed to return and perform as part of interval acts, but should not be allowed to enter again. It is unfair to the other contestants; they have already had their moment, and should move on to allow the new competitors a fair chance under the spotlight.
Viewers noticed that it was strange that the hosts kept mentioning Abba, and that a member of Abba even made a recorded appearance. Eurovision has nothing to do with Abba’s 50th anniversary next year. Abba won Eurovision for Sweden in 1974 when the UK hosted on behalf of Luxembourg. Now, 50 years later, Sweden wins Eurovision again, in the UK hosted on behalf of Ukraine, just in time for Abba’s big anniversary. No-one can deny that this coincidence seems suspicious, especially considering the jury versus public votes Sweden received and the landslide amount of votes won by Finland.
And that brings us to the plagiarism. Many fans say Loreen’s song this year, “Tattoo” is very similar to her previous winner ‘Euphoria’. An even more common accusation is that her song is very similar, or even identical to ‘Flying Free’ by Pont Aeri. Indeed, the openings are almost a complete match. It seems hard to believe that she could compose an identical opening without having heard the original at all. Sections of the instrumentals are also similar to Loreen’s entry.
Having not heard about this controversy before the grand final, the comparison this blog draws is with Abba’s ‘Winner Takes It All’. Perhaps this is why Sweden scored so many points from the jury this year? After all, Abba constructs very enjoyable, musically excellent songs. This was only noticed when my own father heard Sweden’s entry and began singing along with Abba’s lyrics, only realising that something was different when his lyrics didn’t match Loreen’s. He has been a fan of Abba since they won Eurovision and owns several records and CDs. And even he thought it was a dance remix of Abba.
During the judging section of the competition where the points are awarded, the crowd kept booing, and chanting Käärijä’s name and “cha cha cha” while the hosts were trying to announce Sweden’s victory. This chanting continued during Loreen’s victory song, as well as many other competitors immediately making their way to Käärijä to chant and support him. It was very clear who people thought the winner should be, and it was not Loreen.
No-one remembers who won the year Verka performed. They remember Verka. That’s what’s going to happen this year. This won’t be remembered as the year Loreen won Eurovision for the second time. This will be remembered as the year the juries finally went too far, and the year Finland was robbed.
Next year we should all just send our previous winners. And maybe question if Israel has a place in this competition anymore.
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Yeah, so overall I have mixed - mostly annoyed - feelings about how the UK’s been handling this Eurovision.
On the one hand we have some positives: They acknowledged Ukraine’s win several times, they let Julia Sanina (the only Ukrainian host) do the opening speech almost by herself, she and the others said the word “war” several times and they explicitly stated that Eurovision’s not being hosted in Ukraine because of the war. No sugarcoating there, no calling it a “conflict” instead of a war, no making Eurovision having to be held in the UK sound like a good thing. Also that intervall performance with Alyosha (Ukraine’s ESC contestant from 2010) was a well-done, heartbreaking reminder of why we’re in Liverpool and not in Ukraine.
But then there are the negatives, mainly that I’m not sold on this whole concept of the UK hosting “on behalf” of Ukraine. I really think it should have been “Ukraine hosts in the UK” instead. The UK should have just provided the venue (and the technology, security etc. that comes with it) and then taken a backseat and let Ukraine do their thing. Don’t host it for them, just give them a safe place to do so themselves and then be quiet.
I get that stuff like that opening clip or the postcards switching between locations in Ukraine and the UK are meant to be sweet, but honestly... could have just cut the UK out of those alltogether. And it’s so freaking cringe to hear Graham Norton do what’s supposed to be a summary of Ukraine’s (remarkable!) Eurovision history, only for him to go on about the UK’s failures and Sam Ryder’s 5th 2nd place instead. Shut uppp no one cares!!! You didn’t win, this isn’t your party!!
All of that being said, I’m not Ukrainian and I don’t want to speak over Ukrainian people on this or decide for them whether the UK’s doing a good job here or not. (For example, I was going to severely roll my eyes at that opening clip until I saw a bunch of Ukrainian people on Youtube comment that they loved it and found it touching and sweet. So, you know - in my opinion the UK is making this way too much about themselves, but at the end of the day, that’s up for Ukrainian people to decide.)
And for Ukrainians, if it’s any consolation at all: Knowing you guys’ amazing Eurovision track record (3 wins in 20 years! never failed to qualify for the final!), you will win again in the future and we will one day have Eurovision hosted in a peaceful, free, sovereign Ukraine. That I believe. Слава Україні.
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