Eurovision 2023 — Sweden's Loreen wins nailbiter after Finland ...
Tvorchi represented Ukraine at the contest in Liverpool even as Russian missiles rained down on their home city of Ternopil
Swedish singer Loreen won the contest with ‘Tattoo’ © Aaron Chown/PA
Receive free Music updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Music news every morning.
It’s rare for history to be experienced as tragedy and farce simultaneously. The tragic element of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest was provided by the war in Ukraine, which forced the staging to be held outside the country following Ukrainian victory last year. Meanwhile, the farce lay in the usual Eurovision motley of singing warrior-queens, devilishly outfitted German heavy metallers, bearded balladeers and a Czech girl group waving their plaited ponytails like lassos.
Liverpool was the host city, a stand-in for Lviv or Kyiv. The show opened with last year’s winning song, Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania”. This hearty but forgettable folk-rap anthem benefited from a sympathy vote in 2022, casting the frontrunner, the UK’s Sam Ryder, into second place. The beaming British everyman appeared during yesterday evening’s reprise of the track, playing a guitar solo at the top of Liverpool’s Liver Building. Other Brit notables making filmed cameos as the Kalush Orchestra performed included Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, showing off her grade-three piano skills at a grand in Windsor Castle.
As with the previous weekend’s flop Coronation Concert, the BBC had been entrusted with the event. Eurovision is primarily a televisual spectacle, with 161mn people tuning in from participating countries in 2022, but its many moving parts can be a recipe for chaos. This year’s final was held at the Liverpool Arena in front of a cheerfully raucous audience of 7,000. The four-hour show felt snappier than its marathon length. It looked stylish on TV, and was well compèred by a mixed set of presenters from the UK and Ukraine.
After a week of elimination rounds, 26 countries were represented, an alphabet of high hemlines and high notes. A frisson of excitement went through Eurovision obsessives at the appearance of Austria’s first ever female duo, Teya and Salena. This minor footnote in musical history took the form of an electronic pop curio called “Who the Hell Is Edgar?”, inspired for some eccentric reason by the writer Edgar Allan Poe. “Nevermore,” quoth the raven; and so, alas for Teya and Salena, quoth the judges and voting public too. The song came 15th.
Finnish entry ‘Cha Cha Cha’ combined EDM, death metal and beerhall singalong © Martin Meissner/APLaunched in 1956, Eurovision has evolved its own style of songcraft, adjacent to but separate from the mainstream pop charts. “Who the Hell Is Edgar?” epitomises one strand, the novelty song. Other examples included Finland’s entry, Käärijä’s “Cha Cha Cha”, a lurid mash-up of EDM, death metal and beerhall singalong whose staging involved much tongue-waggling from its singer and a cheery human centipede of dancers. This monstrosity proved mystifyingly popular in the public vote.
Croatia’s Let 3 played a quirky anti-war song in their underpants, which sounded every bit as messy as its presentation suggests. The Ukraine conflict overhung proceedings, most notably during an interval rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” featuring massed ranks of singers on the Liverpool stage and more in a live feed from Kyiv. However, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request to deliver a video address was refused on the grounds of politicisation. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian entry, a duo called Tvorchi, held up a sign reading “Ternopil” as the voting results were read out. It was the name of their town, which was bombed with murderous choreography by Russian forces at the precise moment that they were performing.
The other main types of Eurovision songwriting were well represented. Emotive balladeers made imploring hand gestures in weepies that began with a drizzle of piano chords before building to fortissimo peaks of sentimentality. Italy’s Marco Mengoni was the leading example with “Due vite”, which came fourth. Turbo-folk with musicians dressed like characters from Game of Thrones was prominent, including an unusual Scandinavian variant, Alessandra from Norway’s monumental “Queen of Kings”, which won the popular vote, although not the judges’ scores. Moldova’s entry, Pasha Parfeni’s “Soarele și luna”, which incorporated Jethro Tull-style folkloric flute, scorpion-tail hairstyles and a drumbeat like the march of history gone awry, also deserves mention.
Tvorchi represented Ukraine, which won the contest last year © Martin Meissner/APEuro-dance is the other central pillar of the Eurovision sound. Israel’s singer Noa Kirel pulled out the stops with a thunderous Gaga-esque ode to the “power of a unicorn”, called (of course) “Unicorn”. “Do you want to watch me dance, Europe?” she cried, before doing just that with a maximal amount of flailing limbs and bodily contortions. The bookies’ favourite, Loreen’s “Tattoo”, found the Swedish singer performing perilous handography with her immensely long fake nails as she belted out a no less full-bore dance anthem.
For Britain, Ryder’s success in 2022 wasn’t replicated. Mae Muller’s “I Wrote a Song”, a breezy pop number with a static staging, came second last, just above the crestfallen German heavy metallers. But lightning struck twice for Loreen, a prior winner in 2012. The long nails came in for a bit of biting at a late charge from the Finnish horror show, but she was ultimately victorious. To Sweden the spoils, namely the right to host next year’s competition, on the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s famous victory. History repeats itself, Eurovision-style.
eurovision.tv
