Gotta love Eurovision. Where else can you have a song contest featuring loving odes to saunas, espresso, and, uh, the joys of sex? And the song about sex got the fewest votes of the three? What the Hell Just Happened, as the U.K. entry may have sung (they did).
Apparently, unrequited love is better than sex, too, since Austria won this year’s contest with the FABULOUSLY staged and performed pop-opera Wasted Love, about a man caught in an uncontrollable storm of feelings of not being loved by the object of his desire.
The anti-sex trend carried over to Malta, an early favorite whose party anthem Serving finished 17th. What Malta was serving was a bad word playing on singer Miriana Conte’s name that had to be deleted from her performance. And despite declaring that we all want a taste, Australia’s Go-Jo failed to qualify for the final with his song Milkshake Man which featured uncomfortable double entendres in nearly every line.
Enough about what didn’t win. Here’s what also captured my attention about Eurovision 2025.
It bears repeating that Austria’s stage performance was incredible. Although they were not among my faves based on their Official Music Video, they became my #1 after their live semi-final performance.
Sweden, the big runaway favorite, failed to win, but since the betting favorite has lost 40% of the time since 2007, that was not a big upset. What was a big upset was Sweden finishing in 4th place. This was the first time the favorite had finished outside the top three since 2007. This pleased me since Sweden was dead to me this year because I believe they chose the wrong song to enter.
Likewise, Austria’s win was not an upset. Before the contest, they had the second-best odds of winning, and when the betting favorite doesn’t win, the winner is most likely to be the second or third favorite (Israel).
Shout to Germany’s free stream of the contest at eurovision.de. The US stream from Peacock sounded awful, but Germany’s “original language” stream had great sound and included the Eurovision hostesses speaking in English.
As is quite common, there was a significant difference in the professional jury votes1 and the public votes, which determined the outcome between the winner, Austria, and second-place Israel (one of my favorites). The juries voted Austria first and Israel only 14th. However, the public voted Israel first and Austria fourth, but Israel’s public vote advantage couldn’t overcome Austria’s advantage with the juries. Music professionals. What do they know, anyway? Except my votes are usually more in line with the pros than the public – the pros just screwed up this year 🙂
One of my favorites, Albania, finished 8th with their lovely folk-electronica ballad Zjerm, their third-best finish ever in the contest.
The contestant’s staging this year was incredible – the best I’ve ever seen.
My awards for best abs: Armenia’s Parg (male) and Poland’s Justyna Steczkowska (female). 🙂
P.S. About Sweden. As I have previously written, I really wanted Mans Zelmerlow’s song Revolution to represent Sweden. I love the song and his winning 2015 song, Heroes, and I wanted him to make Eurovision history as the third two-time winner. But he would not have fared well if he had been in the contest this year, as both the juries and the public rejected big, anthemic pop songs. I still would rather have heard him sing about bringing change to the world rather than three guys singing about loving saunas.
Can’t wait for Eurovision 2026. See you next year.
- Five music industry professionals from each county. ↩︎
Ray's Musings 
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