Eurovision 2022 Recap
This weekend was the 2022 Eurovision finals and as a fan of the song contest, I made all my friends (none of whom have ever watched Eurovision before) get together to watch it with me. They had no idea what to expect, but because prime time television in Europe is about 2:00 pm in the Midwest, it was a good excuse to get some day drinking in on a beautiful summer day. By song number two of the competition, we were all extremely invested.
For those of you also not in the loop, Eurovision is a singing competition that’s been around since 1956 where each country that is part of the Eurovision Broadcasting Network delegate a musical act to represent them in the contest. This year there were 40 participating countries, and they all had to perform in a semi-final competition, since only 25 countries are able to perform in the finals. Five countries (France, Spain, the U.K., Italy, and Germany) don’t have to participate in the semi-finals and just get a straight shot into the main event. Historically, Eurovision has brought some artists into the mainstream, the most famous group to win was definitely ABBA. Even that band that had that one song that played on the radio all the time last summer (but felt like a song from 2006 in my opinion) were the 2021 winners, Måneskin. The winner is determined by a vote, half by a committee from each country who delegate their points (they rank their favorite six countries going by 12, 10, 8, etc. points), and half by popular vote through text message (also done by this point ranking system). You also are not allowed to vote for your country to make it fair. The voting system is very complicated, and since the delegates vote first, there can be some major upsets when the popular votes come in (almost like every election on the planet—makes you think!).
As an American watching from the outside, Eurovision is incredibly non-American. All of the musical acts are pretty amateur groups who may have a following in their home country, but are not big names by any means. There’s really no prize to winning except for bragging rights and the privilege to host next year’s song contest. Some of the singers are there to belt out a beautiful ballad, but some of the songs are a bit quirky. Sure, everyone wants to win, but it’s always the most important to have fun, be yourself, and do something really fucking weird on a stage that millions of people will be watching live. (Just Google “Ukraine Eurovision 2007” for context.) Unfortunately this year there weren’t any black metal bands competing, but we still had a lot of bangers. I’m not going to go through each of the 25 countries, but just the highlights.
Norway (“Give that Wolf a Banana” - Subwoolfer)
Immediately as Norway took the stage I was like, “Now THIS is what Eurovision is about.” The group consists of two guys in fetish gear-type yellow wolf masks while wearing suits, with three other guys in yellow zentai suits dancing in the back. On the screen the words “Grandma,” “Yum Yum,” and “Banana” kept popping up on screen. At first I was wondering what the heck is happening, but then I figured out that this is a song about the Big Bad Wolf wanting to eat Grandma, but to give him a banana instead! They ended up in 10th place. Incredible work.
Serbia (“In Corpore Sano” - Konstrakta)
This performance from the start was just weird, but I fucking loved it. Konstrakta was in an all-white outfit just washing her hands while singing an eerie-sounding song. There were people behind her in strange Pilgrim-looking outfits. There also were weird subtitles on screen during the performance about health. Someone in my friend group said that this song is about Meghan Markle, and I’m not going to look it up to see if that’s true. If true, very odd. What I love about this weird-ass performance is that it still made 5th place in the end, as it should.
United Kingdom (“Space Man” - Sam Ryder)
Those of my friends who spend more time on TikTok than me (which is spending literally any time on TikTok) knew who this guy was right off the bat. I guess he’s famous on there for singing covers and stuff. Sam Ryder is a very talented singer, and “Space Man” was a fine song, but I wasn’t very impressed, especially compared to some of the other performances of the night. The stage was designed beautifully for his song, but he didn’t move or anything and it just felt boring. That being said, I was pretty annoyed that the country delegates rated the U.K. so high in their votes. We all cheered once the popular votes came in and the U.K. no longer made first place, just runner up. It just felt right.
Spain (“SloMo” - Channel)
This song was a bop from start to finish. There wasn’t much to the set design, but the costumes were incredible. They were dancing, they were all sexy, especially Chanel. And she keeps saying, “Booty hypnotic,” which are important lyrics. They won third this year, which is the highest ranking Spain has had in 27 years.
France (“Fulenn” - Alvan & Ahez)
France is one of the Big Five, so they don’t need to participate in pre-qualifiers to be in Eurovision, and this year it feels like a mistake. The song had some interesting visuals but the song fell flat completely. I was just not impressed at all, and neither was anyone else because they were second to last place, with Germany at the bottom (another pretty lackluster performance).
Sweden (“Hold Me Closer” - Cornelia Jakobs)
We were excited for Sweden (as my friend is of Swedish heritage and for no other reason, I’m not even going to go into my own mother country of Poland in the recap because that performance was just fine) and Cornelia Jakobs did a good job, but again we were just not feeling the beautiful ballads. She was hot and had a great voice, but the song was okay. That’s pretty much my review for every ballad song of the night.
Finland (“Jezebel” - The Rasmus)
I knew I was forgetting something, and then had to go back to talk about Finland. The singer started off his performance holding a yellow balloon, really capturing some Pennywise vibes. Then the band comes out and they’re rocking and rolling and all wearing a lot of leather. We love to see it.
Moldova (“Trenulețul” - Zdob şi Zdub & Advahov Brothers)
I have personally never had a bad time watching Moldova perform at Eurovision—let’s not forget Epic Sax Guy. This performance was absolute chaos, just five guys pretending to play instruments like an accordion, violin, and symbols (I loved Symbols Guy). Fun fact: you aren’t actually allowed to play live instruments for Eurovision, but all vocals must be live! They also had incredible outfits that fit in with their incredibly fun and fast-paced folk song. I just found out that the song is about trains (as “trenulețul” translates to “train”), and I fucking love trains. During voting, the country panels absolutely did Moldova dirty. They were almost at the bottom until the popular vote came in and bumped them up with 200 points. The way my friends and I cheered when this happened. Sure, it was just 7th place but at least they got some of the respect they deserved from a great performance.
Ukraine (“Stefania” - Kalush Orchestra)
Talking about instruments people were fake playing, Kalush Orchestra had plenty of them. The song started out with all of them in sparkly traditional Ukrainian outfits with a kind of somber folk tune, but suddenly a guy with a pink bucket hat jumps out and starts rapping. An incredible turn. But it just gets better. Someone starts playing the flute. Now there’s a guy breakdancing. In the background another guy is spinning an upright bass. There was so much going on. During voting, they were ranked pretty high during the first half, but then managed to make their way to number one with the popular vote. Now, I’m no expert in European geopolitics, but I feel like there might be one reason why people were voting for Ukraine. Not that I don’t think the win was undeserved—this song and performance slapped so hard. It was so weird, had so many moving parts, but still captured the culture of the country they were representing.
There is so much more I have to say, but if I don’t stop writing this now, I will end up with a list of all 25 countries and I have a rehearsal to go to in a few hours. This may be my sign to prepare my time better so I can write a full review of every country next year.