The Eurovision Song Contest

So, the Eurovision Song Contest is tomorrow. I should start out by saying that I'm basically a fan of the whole shebang. The idea of bringing together (almost) all the countries of Europe and its adjoining areas to celebrate music is, fundamentally, a good one, and I look forward to the spectacle every year.

The Song Contest has its critics. One of the more outspoken ones of recent years was British radio personality Terry Wogan. Some of his criticisms were downright idiotic, like his persistent allegations that the voting is completely fixed. This has been parroted over the years by a number of British "critics", mainly as an excuse for Britain's dismal showing at the contest. They prefer to believe that this is the consequence of some vast continental conspiracy rather than a logical outcome of the horrible rubbish they've been sending to the contest for the last decade. I talked about this earlier with quotations.

There's one of his criticisms that I sympathize with, though. Wogan has been critical of the failure of Eurovision contestants to represent their countries' music in any meaningful way, instead opting for bland, standardized Euro-dross. It's very true. Usually, the bigger countries want to send a representative who is dignified enough to represent their nation, which always means some woman singing a mortally boring song about love. These days, though, that trend is on the wane, as for the last several years, more and more countries have come around to thinking that Eurotechno is the surest route to the final. It really depresses me that the majority of the entries, even this year, are either boring ballads that are worthy of the dignity of the nation, or second-rate techno songs from the 90's bargain bin.

Of course, this year the contest itself is completely schizophrenic. After several years of using the popular vote to determine the winner, the EBU has reintroduced "expert" panels. Now each country's votes are made up from a mix of the popular vote, accounting for 50%, and the opinion of a panel of supposed experts, which accounts for another 50%.

This is stupid. The Eurovision Song Contest is now committed to sitting on the fence when it comes to one of the classic questions of art: who is it for? What is the objective of an entry to the Eurovision Song Contest? Should it be a song that people all over Europe will like enough to vote for, or a song that wows supposed experts? The two, one feels, rarely coincide; an example is Portugal's entry this year, which I'm told ranks very high on the experts' lists but very low with the bookies. I'm sure it has great artistic merit, but as a punter, I think it's plain boring and I'd never vote for it. How many "music experts" would have voted for Lordi or Ruslana, the two undisputed highlights of the 2000's?

To be entirely clear, only the latter of those two was a musical highlight. Lordi's win was a highlight because it, like Ruslana before it, gave us some hope that the Eurovision Song Contest isn't doomed to an eternity of techno and boring ballads. After Lordi, there have been at least a couple of rock bands in the contest every year, and that has to be a good thing.

This may not be fair, but I've gained the impression that the move back to panels is a result of pressure from the bigger funders of the song contest, who usually do poorly in the popular vote. It certainly makes sense. Personally, I think it doesn't do the contest any good. A win by the popular vote is as close to an honest, all-European mandate that a song is good as you can get. Why muddy the thing up with panels? Alleging a popular vote is rigged is a conspiracy theory. Rumors of deals between national panels were rife back when some countries used them; why bring all that back?

Furthermore, I find the idea that a board of experts carries equal weight with thousands of votes to be repellent. In our private lives, we all like to think that we know what's good music and what isn't far better and more objectively than the next guy, and why shouldn't we? At the end of the day, it's a question of taste. I present some very strong opinions on art in this blog every now and then, but they're the opinion of one writer only. I'd find the idea that my opinion being the equivalent of hundreds if not thousands of votes horrific. And I'm not at all convinced the people on those panels are any more entitled to it. If we're supposed to be a continent of democracies, why aren't we one at the Eurovision Song Contest?

So get rid of the damn panels already. And participating countries: for next year, please, please come up with something that isn't either techno, some X-Factor or Idol castoff or a boring ballad. Surely you can do better. Your entire national music scene cannot be summed up by bad singing, scantily clad dancing girls and a techno beat. Can it?