Serious people love Eurovision
It’s not just camp fun – Eurovision has always been an early warning system for what’s next for Britain, says Fraser Nelson
When asked, Theresa May had a line ready: no, Brexit does not mean Britain withdrawing from the Eurovision Song Contest. But, she added with a grimace, she’s not sure how many votes we’ll get this year, given the circumstances.
She was repeating a common myth: that Britain does badly in Eurovision because of a bias against us. So if we flop this year, we can just blame it on Brexit. The truth is rather different.
We keep getting nul points because we keep sending insipid acts, little realising that Eurovision has grown into the world’s most-watched nonsporting event. I’ve always been fascinated by it, and what it says about Europe. But over the years, I’ve noticed the reaction becomes ever more incredulous. You like Eurovision? Is that still happening? The bearded drag queens, yodellers, dancers on hamster wheels: isn’t that the worst kind of trash?
But to me, it’s best kind of trash. A chance to invite friends over, serve dishes from around the world, issue scorecards, line up the vodka. It is camp and hammy – but a party, which an extraordinary 200 million people now join. Eurovision unites so many because it is so hopelessly, tragically and comically uncool. It’s reviled in polite British circles, written off as a festival of trash. But for those with an eye for it, tonight will be a spectacular collision of politics, culture and music. And it will tell you more about what’s happening on the Continent than a year of debate in the European Parliament.
If you’re interested in politics, then Eurovision is your early warning system. Its voting patterns anticipate trade patterns, marking the changing relations between peoples (as opposed to governments). Turkey’s victory in 2003 marked the peak of its interest in becoming European. It has since turned East and doesn’t bother to compete. Ukraine’s victory in 2004, a massive audition to be seen as Western, presaged its subsequent Orange Revolution. Russia then upped its game, and its triumph in 2008 was hailed by Vladimir
Putin as “one more triumph for all of
Russia”. How much effort a country puts in reflects how much it wants to be seen as European.
This is why any Eurovision fan could have predicted Brexit some time ago. A slow
British disengagement has been played out on Eurovision stages for almost
20 years. We are a musical superpower, the nation of the Beatles and
Adele, overflowing with singing and songwriting talent.
But the acts we send to Eurovision have been so lame as to be an insult to an entire continent. To dispatch
‘The effort a country puts in reflects how much it wants to be seen as European’
Engelbert Humperdinck to the world’s biggest talent contest (as we did a few years ago) is an act of almost contemptuous indifference. You need an act capable of crossing 43 national boundaries and far more linguistic boundaries. Decent choreography, because most people watching won’t understand a word. You can compete on sheer musical professionalism (Sweden), nod to folk tradition (those Russian grannies) or field an ethnic minority singer to demonstrate inclusivity (Hungarian gypsies). You can do all of the above. Or, if you can’t do any of it, then just be rude to the Russians.
This is what Ukraine did last year. After having lost Crimea to Russia in 2014, it decided to fire a musical missile towards Moscow: a Crimean singer to deplore Stalin’s deportation of her fellow Tatars. The song was called 1944, to dodge the Eurovision ban on political lyrics, but no one had any doubt who the singer, Jamala, was aiming for. As she cheerfully reminded interviewers, her native Crimea was under occupation yet again. Her song
was a shrieking j’accuse. And it won. Russia was furious, and threatened to boycott the Kiev contest. But it then had a far better idea: it found an act good enough to win.
Yulia Samoylova, Russia’s 2017 nominee, is a singer-songwriter with a supermodel’s looks and a catchy, uplifting tune. This would normally be enough to guarantee a top 10 position, but what makes Samoylova so potent is that she’s severely disabled and is singing from a wheelchair. Eurovision has never seen anything like her. The theme of the Kiev contest is “celebrating diversity” and the Russians were serving up someone who fitted the theme perfectly.
Eurovision also loves sending messages, crowning champions. Forget Samoylova’s nationality: if a woman with the use of only one limb could beat all comers, it would be an inspiration. Who could resist, on voting night, making history by voting for her?
For a brief moment it looked like Russia would win in Kiev as surely as its army had won in Crimea. The Ukrainians panicked, and in an unprecedented act, banned Samoylova, saying she had once visited Russianoccupied Crimea, in defiance of Ukrainian law. Rather than send a new act, Russia pulled out, while taunting Ukraine for being afraid of a girl in a wheelchair. For good measure, Samoylova was sent to sing in Russian-occupied Sevastopol, a few hundred miles down the road, when Eurovision opened.
So tonight, as so often, Eurovision sets the stage of European politics before the music begins. Other trends will be on display – such as the return of the nation state, for example, and a shift away from the Euro-homogeneity of recent years. The bookmakers’ favourite sings in Italian: audacious because for 19 of the last 20 years winners have sung in English. Portugal’s entry, another tip, is a gorgeous and very un-eurovision ballad in Portuguese by a dishevelled singer who could not look less like a Europop star.
And our act? To ask if a song stands any chance of winning Eurovision, you need to ask: how well did it do at home? The entries for Belgium, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Portugal and Sweden have all made the top 10 in their native countries. Britain’s entry peaked at number 84 in the UK charts. If our song flops at home, why should it should do well abroad?
And it’s not the quality of the singer. Lucie Jones, our entry this year, is talented but has been given too little training, no chance to shine. Most of her rivals have run the gauntlet of widely televised semi-finals in their home countries. They arrive having had the chance to hone their act. The BBC gives so much money to Eurovision that our act skips the semi-finals and goes straight in. A curse, rather than a blessing. Lucie Jones knows she is at a disadvantage: her aim, she says, is not to come last. There’s no mystery to our Eurovision misery. Until Britain puts as much effort into finding and training a contestant as, say, Azerbaijan, we stand no chance of winning.
Katrina Leskanich, who won Eurovision for Britain in 1997 by the largest margin in the contest’s history, told this newspaper yesterday that the remedy is simple: the BBC needs to try harder. There’s no substitute for a series of Saturday night talent shows decided by mass voters because popular music is a democracy. Eurovision is the biggest, widest and most colourful manifestation of that democracy, a single show for the most diverse continent on earth. Something that is watched, laughed at and voted on from Stockholm to Sydney. The same drinking game being played at the same time from Reykjavik to Tel Aviv.
There can, surely, be no better definition of an “ever-closer union of peoples” – an aim the EU dangled, but struggled to deliver. There are, admittedly, some people to whom the word ‘volare’ means nothing.
But for the rest, the fun starts at 8pm tonight.
Eurovision 2017: The Grand Final Live! starts tonight at 8pm on BBC One
‘Her aim is not to come last. There’s no mystery to our Eurovision misery’