You’re welcome. Once again, I spent the month of March eagerly consuming and evaluating the release of each country’s Official Music Videos – all 37 of them. This year, I took the additional step of watching videos of many of the winning performances in each country’s national contest to get a sense of what the songs were like when performed live. Finally, I went even deeper than ever into the Eurovision rabbit hole by watching the Final of Sweden’s national contest, the Melodifestivalen, even though I had no idea what the hosts and hostesses were saying. It turns out that competition factored greatly into my faves and un-faves.
About that. In 2012, Loreen represented Sweden and won Eurovision with the second-highest point total in the contest’s history. She returned in 2023 and became the second performer to win the contest twice.
In 2015, Mans Zelmerlow won Eurovision for Sweden with one of my favorite contest songs, Heroes. This year, he returned to Melodifestivalen in an attempt to qualify for Eurovision and join Loreen as a Swedish two-time winner. As I said above, I may not have understood what anybody was saying, but I know a great song when I hear it, and I was obsessed with his song Revolution. It was an inspirational and typically Swedish anthemic pop song like his 2015 winner, Heroes.
Alas, he was defeated by the music and comedy group KAJ with their quirky song Bara bad bastu, which translates as “[Let’s] just sauna.” I know it’s the current betting favorite1, but I find it detestable, and I’m crushed that Mans didn’t get a chance to repeat, so Sweden is dead to me this year.
Fun fact for this year’s contest: a record 24 of the 37 countries will perform at least some portion of their song in their native language.
With all that as prelude, here are my Faves with grades (using US Grade Point Average scoring) and immediate reaction notes.
| Albania Zjerm | 4.0 | LOVE THIS!! Contemporary Albanian folk music. vocals, strings, dark 🙂 |
| Belgium Strobe Lights | 4.0 | Ooooh, serving rave energy |
| Greece Asteromata | 4.0 | beautiful, just beautiful, what a voice |
| Malta Serving | 4.0 | Very catchy! Top 5? |
| Montenegro Dobrodošli | 4.0 | Chills! Dramatic! Movie theme vibe |
| Poland Gaja | 4.0 | BIG DARK EDM 🙂 |
| Serbia Mila | 4.0 | Beautiful, just beautiful, what a voice |
| Israel New Day Will Rise | 3.7 | Beautiful, just beautiful |
| Spain Esa Diva | 3.7 | Banger! |
And here is the list of my un-faves.
| Australia Milk Shake Man | 1.0 | NO |
| Estonia Espresso machiato | 1.0 | Apparently I don’t have Estonian humor |
| Iceland Róa | 1.0 | I like nothing about this song |
| Italy Volevo essere un duro | 1.0 | 70s rock ballad vibes |
| UK What The Hell Just Happened | 1.0 | Yes, I asked myself what the hell just happened after hearing this |
| Sweden Bara bad bastu | 0.0 | I am protesting them for beating Mans Zelmerlow to represent Sweden |
- I’m hoping to write a blog on betting odds prior the Final. ↩︎
Ray's Musings 