Nul points
Our relationship with Eurovision is lost in translation
Israel will probably win this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. It’s mad enough. A demented woman clucks like a chicken, screaming: “I am not your toy.” Is it a joke or a rallying cry for vegetarianism? And how are we supposed to compete with this nonsense?
The United Kingdom can only look on in wonder. If we send a serious song, the Europeans declare it boring; if we send a man dressed as a duck, they say we’re taking the mick. Our relationship with Eurovision is lost in translation – just like our relationship with, well, just about every other aspect of European life.
Tonight’s event will be the last time we compete in the Eurovision Song Contest as a member of the EU, and many Brits probably assume the contest is itself run by Brussels. It’s not. It’s not even exclusively European: participants have to be active members of the European Broadcasting Union, which stretches from the sands of Morocco to the mountains of Azerbaijan.
Nevertheless, the contest was created out of the same pancontinental idealism as the Common Market. In 1956, seven countries met in Lugano, Switzerland, for what was first called the Eurovision Grand Prix, an experiment in live TV, a dream of uniting Europe in song. Britain joined in 1957. Our first entry was All, sung by a girl called Patricia Bredin from Hull.
Those were our glory years of the contest because we sent serious artists (Sandie Shaw, Cliff Richard) and we sometimes won: five times before 2000. The reason? Because, like our early membership of the Common Market, we understood what we were getting into.
Even back then, it all looked daft. The costumes were pure Buck Rogers; the lyrics bridged the language gap by using sounds rather than words. In 1977, Austria spoke for millions when it sang: “Boom, boom boomerang / Snadderydang / Kangaroo, boogaloo, didgeridoo.” But the contest was cosily small and overwhelmingly west European, because everyone else was stuck behind the Berlin Wall, singing songs about tractors. French yé-yé music – upbeat bubblegum pop with a hint of self-awareness – was popular. It’s a testament to the sheer class of early Eurovision that, in 1965, it was won by France Gall singing Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, a Serge Gainsbourg composition. Nothing in Eurovision nowadays comes close in terms of musical quality or cultural significance.
Against Europeans doing their best to be the next Beatles, we stood a chance. But things changed. Eurovision, like the EU, got bigger, and the new participants altered the character of the contest. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 gave several former Soviet states the chance to compete.
It’s actually not true, as Terry Wogan used to complain, that East European countries only vote for their neighbours – or to placate countries they fear might invade them. In fact, Scandinavia seems to be the overall beneficiary of Eurovision expansion because it writes good tunes and casts them well.
This year, Norway is sending back Alexander Rybak, a cute-as-a-button boy with a violin who won before, and it can’t hurt that he’s a migrant from Belarus. Scandinavia’s repeated success is, however, almost the exception that proves the rule among the original participants. France has not triumphed since 1977, Italy since 1990. That Britain is the biggest casualty of this trend is all the more painful considering that nowadays almost everyone speaks in English: the dominance of our language is nothing to do with our popularity as a country but the emergence of a new, bland pan-european identity with which we have little in common. I have viewed all 43 entries in this year’s Eurovision (don’t worry: just 26 will perform in tonight’s Grand Final), and they mostly fall into one of two categories: noisy disco and war tribunal.
Nova Deca, Serbia’s entry, is one of those grim ethnic ballads that sounds so agonising in its native language that you really don’t want to know what the lyrics actually mean. Old man on a flute? Check. Sad lady wearing a dead albatross across her shoulders? Check.
This all speaks to a European history of tragedy the UK doesn’t share – thank heavens – while the eurodisco speaks to a European present we cannot abide. This is the noise one has to ring down to reception to complain about when holidaying two-star. Nightclub music that seems to cater exclusively to drunk men in red tracksuits is composed precisely so that it will sell in every country in Europe, and thus is specific to none.
In recent years, the UK has thrown everything at this contest in the vain hope of just making it to the left-hand side of the leaderboard: rap numbers, singers dressed as schoolgirls, even Andrew Lloyd Webber. It doesn’t work. It’ll never work – because, like the EU, the reality is that we’re taking part in something that’s moved beyond our comfort zone, towards a cultural consensus that we don’t quite share.
Ultimately, Eurovision is political. Consider the last time we won it, 21 years ago: Katrina and the Waves, in 1997. Love Shine a Light was a good tune, yes, but it helped that we’d just voted in New Labour and the Europeans wanted to say “bravo”. Indeed, Eurovision is often won by a song with a quirk or a message or, preferably, a quirky message. Hence, 2014 was won by an Austrian lady with a beard, and 2016 by a Ukrainian ballad about ethnic cleansing. That’s why my “one to watch” this year is Ireland, which has sent a sweet song backed by a pair of fellas dancing romantically. Chinese broadcasters have censored it, so you know it’s good.
The obvious question is, why don’t we do that? Can’t we put a reality TV star on stilts and get him to sing about the Falklands? No. Because one thing we British have in spades that this engorged Eurovision community is lacking is an ironic sense of humour.
Satire. Sarcasm. For years, Brits tuned in not simply to watch the Europeans make fools of themselves, but to hear Sir Terry rib them mercilessly for it. Graham Norton has filled his shoes well and, while the UK officially insists that we take this contest jolly seriously, the reality is that we absolutely do not. The selection of Scooch as the UK’S entry in 2007 – dressed as air stewards in tight-fitting uniforms who asked the audience “Would you like something to suck on for landing, sir?” – was the musical equivalent of sending Ukip to the European Parliament.
That’s what we really think of you, Europe, with your silly selfimportance, bizarre rules and underlying hint of rigged elections. Never forget the outrageous treatment of 2014’s Polish soft-porn song – the TV audience gave the buxom farm girls churning butter a whopping 162 points; the unelected judges gave them just 23 points, bumping them out of the top five.
Perhaps it’s time, says MP Michael Fabricant, to pull out of Eurovision at the same time as Brexit? No! On the contrary: once outside the EU, we will need to keep in touch with what’s going on across the Channel and show goodwill to our neighbours.
This week, a study by Imperial College London found that entry into the contest is linked with an increased life satisfaction, whether one reaches the top of the board or the bottom. It’s the taking part that counts – if not for edification then for laughs. Not every European sees the joke, but Eurovision is irresistibly funny.
The Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final 2018 is on BBC One tonight at 8pm