How the world’s wackiest song contest went woke
Once bursting with camp and colour, this year’s Eurovision has been dogged by violence, boycotts… and Brexit. Ahead of tonight’s final, Charlotte Lytton reports from Tel Aviv
How do you solve a problem like Brexit, the Middle East, Madonna’s three-quarter life crisis and a group of latex-clad Icelanders determined to “bring our socio-economic system to its knees”? Answers on the back of a postcard, please, to Tel Aviv, where, as hosts of the 64th Eurovision Song Contest, answers have proven elusive.
With the competition’s “Dare to Dream” tag-line splashed on banners all around Israel’s second city this week, fans were hopeful that, during tonight’s grand final at least, the music would be all that mattered.
Which has always been Eurovision’s intention: a no-strings-attached celebration of global harmony full of camp and colour. In the United Kingdom, which takes the affair much less seriously than other competitors (Sweden, for example, decides its entrant via a six-week televised search), it is our annual opportunity to indulge our guiltiest, gaudiest pleasures.
But this year, times have changed. Raging political fires have been happening off-screen. A fortnight ago, more than 20 people were killed after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “massive attacks” on Gaza. Days of fighting had already resulted in dozens of deaths; a pregnant woman and toddler were among the fatalities.
Eurovision itself has been under attack. Calls for a boycott began as soon as Israel was crowned winner last May: artists including Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel suggested an international boycott, with a petition amassing tens of thousands of signatures.
Then, during the first semi-final on Tuesday, viewers were warned via a flashing message about a fictitious attack on Tel Aviv, after the contest’s live webcast was interrupted by an “attempted Hamas cyber-offensive”. And, of course, over a (mainly) pan-european contest there still hangs the unresolved question of Britain’s
departure from the EU. Even among the performers, the sense of pageant has been dialled all the way down. It could be an attempt to differentiate themselves from last year’s winner – Netta, a self-proclaimed “fat” woman in tight outfits – but the promise of a spectacle in tonight’s final now rests on the shoulders of a select few.
They are Iceland’s Hatari, notable for their gimp masks and antipathy towards host country Israel, and Bilal Hassani, France’s wig-loving 19-year-old entry who, according to a source, has ramped up his gender-fluidity, as well as enlisting backing dancers who are deaf and plus-sized, for maximum appeal to millennial televoters.
Wacky, it appears, has been replaced by woke, with acts opting to go either fully “on-message”, or steer clear of one entirely.
France’s entry has enlisted deaf and plussize dancers to appeal to millennial voters
Is fear of falling foul of the virtue-signalling masses to blame for turning Eurovision into just another television song contest?
“I’ve heard rumblings from fans here that this year’s competition isn’t as exciting, as wild or wack-a-doodle,” says William Lee Adams, who will present the BBC World Service’s Arts Hour from Tel Aviv tonight, and founded Eurovision fan site wiwibloggs. The 2019 line-up does feature “many quality songs”, he says – “the issue is that people don’t find them as interesting”.
And then there’s Madonna. After it was announced last month that she would perform during the interval – seen, at the time, as a major coup – it was not until Thursday night that her appearance was confirmed, amid calls for her to join the artist boycott of Israel; in recent years, singers such as Annie Lennox, Lorde and Lana Del Rey have declined to perform here.
“The spotlight’s on Israel at the moment,” says Shelley Lester, an NHS manager who has flown to Tel Aviv with her daughter, Daniella. She believes the attention drawn by the competition has reignited hostilities between the two countries, but is quick to point out that “this has been going on for years, and it’s never going to sort itself out overnight”.
Here in the city, revellers are intent on making this competition a celebration. Even if there’s no place for politics amid the partying, a devastating punch or two could yet be delivered by the dreaded leaderboard.
Certainly, the UK is expected to be punished, in our annual reminder of where we sit in our European neighbours’ estimations. The contest was supposed to have been the first following our departure from the EU; this week, a Yougov poll asking Britons how they would vote in a referendum on competing in the contest was, naturally, split – 52 per cent Leave versus 48 per cent Remain.
“People always talk about political voting,” says Clark Devlin, 32, for whom Tel Aviv is his sixth consecutive Eurovision trip. “Brexit probably will affect our chances, but what can you do? It’s not a political thing.”
That sentiment is at odds with Hatari’s shtick – their song, Hatrið Mun Sigra (Hate Will Prevail), is a “reflection on power and powerlessness, hope and hopelessness”. Which hardly feels like the anthem to lift the global mood.
“Some may say [our song] doesn’t fit into the Eurovision vibe,” Klemens Hannigan tells me over the phone – midday being too early for him to get into the band’s trademark BDSM attire. Tearing social constructs limb from limb – especially via the medium of a ditty at a corporatesponsored music contest held in a country he believes should not exist – is a confusing enterprise for Hannigan, who repeatedly finds himself at a loss for words during our conversation, conflicted between the duelling narratives of the contest’s value as a clap-happy international singalong (one which he acknowledges Icelandic viewers are “massively excited” about, because “there’s always a place in the world for Eurovision”) and his belief that “art is political”. His band’s performance tonight is, he says, a necessary vehicle through which to “break the cage”. Competition rules state that “no lyrics, speeches, gestures of a political, commercial or similar nature shall be permitted”, though enforcement has apparently been lacklustre.
Try to conjure memories of a similarly strident British equivalent and you’d be hard-pressed; our default position, Adams says, is to view “anything Eurovision as cheesy or cheap”. We’ve made our own attempts to grab the spangled bull by the horns with acts like Scooch in 2007, but without troubling the leaderboard.
It used to be a different story, of course: between 1967 and 1997, the UK won five times, most recently with Katrina and the Waves’s Love Shine a Light, and took runner-up spot 15 times. But since 2000, our contestants have mostly been sourced from singing reality shows, landing us in last place three times, most memorably in 2003, when Jemini earned “nul points”.
Whether it’s the music or the moves, audiences need something. “It’s really about the three-minute spectacle,” says Adams. The idea that Michael Rice, 21, from Hartlepool, will be the man to reverse our fortunes, having previously won singing show All Together Now and auditioned for – you guessed it – The X Factor, seems unlikely. In a year in which an unholy trinity of pre-leaderboard politics has dogged the show before it has even begun, an onstage spectacle unlike any other is needed more than ever.