The Eurovision Song Contest 2020

The following is a relic from long ago.

It's my website and I'll cry about Eurovision if I want to.

I'm not going to talk about what Eurovision is, it's maybe self-explanatory. This page will, however, require the unfortunate addition that yeah, it was cancelled this year, two-thousand-and-twenty being what it is.

For a cancelled event though, this year's contest did a better job of stealing my attention than any other year I'm able to remember. For most people familiar with this event, including myself, Eurovision is a strange recurring dream that happens off in my periphery vision once a year and inspires remarkably guilt-free anti-patriotic feelings as I realise I don't even want my country to win, did you see all the acts from the Nordic countries? Did you? I'm not some major fan or anything, but I seriously can't remember a year there wasn't something from up there I wanted to win.

As far as I understand it, the reason for not holding some big video-call competition this year was the totally reasonable fear it would encourage mass gatherings, as well as the fact that camera and sound and stage crews would need to be hired and paid and organised separately in almost every European country—venues organised, everything—it makes sense that Eurovision 2020 was cancelled. It's so wonderful that in-person cancellation was still no barrier to some good music getting released. Not-good music too, but even most of these songs still endlessly worthwhile for one reason or another. However that is, many countries now seem to have re-selected the same contestants for 2021! See, there's that chance for Iceland or Lithuania or Russia or Ukraine (according to your preference) to get the win it deserved this year.

Though this may be an unsuitable format—especially with my particular aversion to embedding videos on this site—I'm going to spend some time here talking about this year's Eurovision. I liked this year's Eurovision. Songs. Videos. That kind of thing. I think there was a film released about it but I haven't seen that—yeah, it sure didn't take long for this site to go elsewhere, but this page is a last-minute single-day endeavour at the end of the year/start of the next and I'll explode if I don't do it.

Listen along with me. I'll be linking each video, but it'll be so much cooler if we take it at the same pace.

France

France's entry this year is a pretty anthem. There are a lot of these, but this is still a nice one. Like most of these songs, I like it more each time I see it—it's absolutely one which would have benefited from a stage and ridiculous pyrotechnics and I'm missing all that stuff already, oh no. The video's making fun of my need for that, I swear—the singer sitting in front of an empty theatre. Stool. There must have been more performances looking like this than usual this year, all over the place.

If you've ever been in a play, a school play, anything like it—even performed on stage generally—do you know the foreboding feeling you get from dress rehearsals? Earlier in the day from the actual performance—the chairs are all empty and the room is a little too well lit for you to believe you'll actually be doing anything other than messing around when it all fills up. I'm not saying a room full of empty seats is more intimidating than a room populated by full ones, but maybe I actually am and am wrong.

Tom Leeb has such lovely range. I am going to learn French.

Czech Republic

Czech Republic's entry this year is different. There seems to be some kind of controversy about a second version going around that people don't like as much—the percussion and horns in this are a lot more fun for me, but then I collapse the moment I hear a snare drum. I had a shot with a snare drum, once, a long time ago—they really do make that noise and kapoom and alright, this is kind of a swerve, but pipe band drumming is the most intimidating kind of music for which you might be present in person. Every one of the people you see not tapping a foot here is probably going to become very unwell for not having released any of the energy built up by this.

I got sidetracked, but Benny Cristo's origami earring is worth so many imaginary Eurovision points. I am going to learn Czech.

Armenia

Armenia is my personal nul points, but I get a great mental image from imagining this as what the country typically looks like. I'd also like to know what happened with that giant glass diamond-frame she's dancing on. Probably taken apart, but let's pretend this is a mystery and come back to it some time in the future to write another page about it. Am I going to learn Armenian?

Italy

Italy. Complimentary colours! First listen through, I didn't think a lot, but then I realised this was a kind of ballad that needed to be played massively loud. So, I gave myself a little tinnitus on this one and would absolutely recommend that. There's this idea I'm used to—that Eurovision doesn't have good music, just songs that are good for Eurovision. The winner is just a tryhard or something—I like the word tryhard, I like snarling and spitting and sneering as I say it. This is one of the ones you use as a way of proving that wrong!

I don't know how this would have looked live, the video is half the reason I love it—switching from orange hand-staring to cold-blue piano-ing-ing-ing is a great look—so, I did myself a favour and listened to another song by Diodato and this video also seems to rely on the 'cutting to and from the singer waving limbs around in a void' idea a little. It really is a shame this can't be replicated on stage, though I wouldn't put it past Eurovision technicians (Eurotechnics, coining it) to figure out a way of engineering a void through fun lighting, or even having done it already and my not knowing. I am going to learn Italian.

Russia

Little Big was Russia's entry this year. This is a monumental event. We have to hope they come back. This band is one of the few I had heard of before the contest, although I hadn't realised it—I only knew them as that one Russian band that makes me very, very uncomfortable. They still do, but now I realise what it is—their music is upsetting on a level I can't explain and won't try to, but their videos are competition-winning—and visuals are really just as important as the music in Eurovision, if my talking about Eurovision on a site previously about films hadn't been an indication. The most I can say about the song is... I don't know if this would actually get the Spanish vote but it's the best attempt anyone could ever make.

List of things I have noticed after watching this video back forty-plus times at this point (no, I did not have all that spare time, but I did it anyway). His shirt is totally see-through. The pianist has these huge purple frills down the sides of his legs. And doesn't actually play anything with more than one finger at any point. Those indistinct lights on that giant rectangle read 'LITTLE BIG'. They won't stop staring at me. I don't know what this song is about. The man with the black facepaint around his mouth won't stop gurning whenever he says a Spanish number. He's wearing Adidas platform shoes.

Let's stop that list. If this were all down to video, Russia should have won this year—they somehow found a gifted genius to put their video together, it's over, it's done. There are secrets in this video and I don't have the courage to find them. Admittedly, all Little Big's videos are like this. My favourite of theirs is Hypnodancer, which even muffles the music at several points for the sake of the video and is all about an extremely rhythmic method of hypnosis and everything I'm getting at here is how they know what they're doing so well, mesmerists, all right, next one. I am going to learn Russian.

Denmark

Denmark is nice. These two are nice. This is a good song. 60% of the songs in Eurovision are like this—good, but you're not sure what else to say unless you're invested in the singers, which I'm not, unfortunately. The staging here is what I meant by the kind of pyrotechnics France might have had. I want to listen to France again now, oh no. I'm not learning Danish this time, but maybe next year.

Estonia

It's true, Estonia is just full of abandoned warehouses where the word L O V E sits up against the wall all ruined and broken and men turn up to sing love ballads and light candles. Haven't you ever visited an Estonian warehouse before? Very few wares in the place besides that. This reminds me of France for obvious reasons, I guess, but there are some differences—this song (this version) is entirely in English, for a start—although, unlike some other entries, there doesn't seem to be an American accent affected while singing, which is nice.

I'm more of a fan of the giant blue background barrels over the L O V E letters, but that's only me. Personally, I'm really looking forward to the point where Estonia goes further. I don't expect they're going to pick anything like this as long as their Eurovision entry continues being chosen by phone-in talent show, however, so it's a maybe on learning Estonian for now.

Romania

Romania. This song repeatedly used the pun, 'alcohol you when I'm drunk'. That's a good start. Many Eurovision songs—most, I say without a source—have both an English version and a version sung in the native language of its country. How did this pun work if that was the case here? More to find out. I'd like to know how this video was made too—all the swirly dark blues and cloudy shapes are very lovely. This is a good song, but it's like Denmark—no, it's like my country. A decent song every year, but then you've got something so wild to compete with it's as though you'll never have a chance. I feel Romania might have had that going. It's another one that would have looked great on a stage as well.

Eurovision 'serious songs' are risky and can sometimes go a bit wild, but this hardly feels like it would have been a bad one, not at all. Although almost every song in the contest is a love song—romantic love especially—I always find myself enjoying the ones less about that a little more. You used to get lots of save the earth songs back when that was still possible (this is a good one, I promise!) and this feels in the same vein. I'm definitely learning Romanian.

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan went for the... Egyptian vote? Unusual strategy, but it's fun, at least. I think. Is this fun? I watched this enough times to realise that it does use mummified corpses as backing dancers. That is, I assume they're corpses—why would they be mummified otherwise? It's a really brave decision to use the dead in your music video, but that's how this is. I think I need to not watch this any more. At least you can say that performing in a totally unpopulated area all at good distances from one another and in vehicles is pretty representative of the year this was made. This is starting to sound like a good song now, oh no, better learn Azeri and move on.

Albania

Albania's song doesn't have a video. Oh dear. There's not much I can say, but it's definitely still pretty sound. Maybe figuring out how to speak Albanian could be a project for later.

Greece

Greece has submitted the female equivalent of Steven Burrows Superboy and it's really great. Wherever there's trouble, Steven knows. It was another boring Sunday afternoon. Steven Burrows was at home. His mum was busy clearing up the kitchen after lunch. His brother was cleaning his car (again) and his gran was dozing on the sofa. Steven could think of nothing he wanted to do. He wandered into the garden and began poking at a line of ants with a stick. That's it! He'd build a dinosaur landscape with the new dinosaurs he bought at the car boot sale that morning! He could build a dinosaur cave above where the ants were coming from—it would make it more realistic.

Seriously, just mute the song on this one and play the Spider-Man 3 cool-walking music alongside the video instead—it fits better. Disagree, I'll put some dirt in your eye. You could make a whole short film out of just this video and I'd want to see it. Currently learning Greek and writing a script based on this music video before someone else does.

Portugal

I don't think Portugal is concerned with winning. It's this thing with always submitting songs in Portuguese. It's either that or they're better with admitting that the words to Eurovision songs—English, Portuguese, whatever and whichever—really aren't usually very important. The best Eurovision song of all time (yeah, I started this page just to link that) is almost entirely... Numbers, after all. German numbers too. That said, this singer has a really pleasant voice and impossibly sparkly trousers. It is just another love song, but I may be learning Portuguese a little.

Moldova

Moldova's entry is another victim of 'song that would be excellent anywhere else is totally forgetful in the context of Eurovision' disease. It's strange how rote the process of submitting anthems for Eurovision every year can become for many countries—it's that they're, italicising again here, anthems. If I wrote anything that might ever be described as 'anthemic', I'd rightly be pretty pleased with myself.

This video is kind of just strobing in the dark, though. I filled up this room with red light just to watch the flashes go off. That's some fun you can get out of it, at least. Let's learn! ...Romanian again? Moldovan/Romanian. Please, I'm trying my best.

Malta

Malta had the best spoken word anything in this competition, you can say that. “Free spirit”, booms the Maltan urban exploration advocate (urbexad). Their video is very outdoors, has lots of people wearing masks and jumping on abandoned buildings. There are people standing in formation in deserted places and birds of prey. Often, people raise their heads in slow motion to look slightly off-centre from the camera. They wave their arms in the air and leap from gravel piles to other gravel piles. They hug their knees to their chests while underwater. I will put learning Maltese on the to-do list—though, having actually taken a look at the history of this language for the sake of this running joke, it looks really interesting and I want to know more. Maltese language film on LUS some time soon.

Serbia

Serbia submitted this song in 2020. However, equally important is how Ireland's 2011 submission was from the brother-and-brother band, Jedward. This is a very interesting fact and bears further examination. Jedward were and supposedly still are a duo known for not winning a television talent competition in the United Kingdom because they could not sing at the time. I once had a bad dream where John and Edward were both very, very old men and now have a terrible fear this might one day come true.

I just think I've cursed Jedward to age when they might not otherwise ever have aged. You can see it now, looking at them. I'm not including a picture here in case it starts to get older the longer this page is up, Dorian Gray-style. I've never actually read that book. This is a mess, let's move on. Someone who doesn't know Serbian, go and learn it.

Poland

Poland's entry is less one of those save-the-earth songs, more of an oh-no-we-didn't-save-the-earth one. I don't want to imagine how that hyphen-monster is going to look actually on the webpage for this and I'm leaving that as a problem for future me to solve. There's just been such a good video submitted here. Though I have a favourite song, I do understand this is the one to listen to if I want to be the responsible level of reflective and miserable.

I think that Estonian warehouse burned down in this video. Really good song though, absolutely learning Polish.

San Marino

San Marino's song rhymes the words 'cray', 'fakin' and 'freakay' one line after the other and I'm understanding now how this is really far too intimidating a song to talk about. So, I turn to the video and realise that I am far too weak of a person to handle any of this whatsoever. You probably are too. Spiritually unprepared. Glitter-Leatherface is a new hero of mine. If you can work out how to receive the communication held in 'two of spades tucked between a pair of strobing buttocks', write this page instead, please! We're already learning Italian here, but I doubt that's the language they're really using in San Marino anymore.

Wait, this should have won, actually. I hate this. Ignore this paragraph.

North Macedonia

North Macedonia sent a fun dance. More people should be watching. It reminds me intensely of a song by Justin Kuritzkes, the Potion Seller guy. I'm not linking that video or anything else by him because that would mean I linked something almost every second sentence in this section and that would be overkill on a page that's already massively overkill with the links. Learn Macedonian and dance in private.

Iceland

We're finally here! Iceland had my favourite song and performers this year and I wish they could have won, although I'm sure Daði and Gagnamagnið will still do so in 2021 because they've been given the chance again, thank goodness. I've linked the live version of their song here because I prefer it, but both have the moment of dramatic hair-blowing. Look, you can make one of those cool pixelart faces on their website. On clothing, apparently? Do you need clothing? I sometimes wear clothes, actually? I understand people won't click every link in here, that would take hours—but if you click only the one for this song, it'll be the best choice, I guarantee it.

Here's another Daði song I really like. No, this site isn't going to devolve into a compilation of links to music I think sounds good—after this page, music links are getting set back to the regular 15% of content you can find on here, I promise. But you know, this is the Eurovision page and I'd be doing the wrong thing if I didn't direct as many people as I'm able to admire this man's improvised(?) dancing. Alright. I can do it. This page can move on now—what if I said we're only now nearly halfway through and have already talked about most of the best songs this year? Too late, sorry—this page and its readers are bound together now and forever—Learn Icelandic and forget about it.

Finland

Finland's entry was nice. He kind of did just stand there and sing and remind me viscerally of main character of the film Bernie, though. Yes, I just archived an image hosted elsewhere so I wouldn't have to make the only image I host for this whole page about Eurovision 2020 the poster for a totally unrelated film from nine years ago, sh. Finnish may not be a necessary language to learn this year.

Sweden

Learning Swedish may not be mandatory either—or it might be? It may be up to personal preference this time. The Swedish entry this year looks as though it would have been very fun in person. It's another video of people walking around on stage, but it might be one of my favourites from this year.

Cyprus

Cyprus? Cyprus? What? Cypriot men look in mirrors and they see dust and fade-in fires and glaciers and they just go with it every time. This is the first time I've ever heard this song and I'm going to finish this paragraph while it's playing—I don't feel like listening again—man does longing hand gestures. Prays a little. Is someone wrapping him up in clingfilm? (Note for when I'm done: link that site about Roy Orbison getting wrapped up in clingfilm there). I think there was an Audacity phaser effect applied to that very last note. Cool. Learn The Official Languages of Cyprus.

Slovenia

It's in Slovenian! This is the happiest day. Again, another singer standing on a stage—we can't all be as cool as France and get ourselves stools. The hand gestures here are fantastic, though; I swear she looks as though she's going to jump into the audience. Oh, did you see that! She took the microphone off the stand and swished her cape! Twelve points! There go the lights. I should have known this is what this page would eventually become. You can learn Slovenian if you like, but maybe just go with the bare minimum needed to understand this song.

Bulgaria

I think what's going on here is that she's singing a song. I saw the film Coraline for the first time this Halloween. It was freezing cold, midnight, I was the projectionist and it was against the wall of a log cabin somewhere near the edge of nowhere. An audience of around six people. You could have been invited but you didn't answer our messages. This video reminds me excellently of that experience.

I wish I could have had a bench to sit on and sway around like her whenever lighting struck—it was just outdoor furniture for me, unfortunately. You steal your friend's blanket and wear warm clothing during that. Layers matter. I don't really remember Coraline, more the experience of sitting outside in front of a tree and knowing that yes, I was in fact viewing this and there were other people out there too, breathing mist, sucking fog, circular motion, gazing at the wood-log wall and interpreting the projected light and the holy face of Neil Gaiman appearing in our joined imagination unbidden. We visualising him. His eyelids clicked when he blinked. I don't actually know what Neil Gaiman looks like, but I do know there's an alligator somewhere in the mix.

Learn Bulgarian or something, this is another winning song even despite all that unrelated everything.

Ireland

Ireland haven't had a great song in a long while, but they certainly have a history. I don't know if this song is a huge part of that history yet, so maybe I'll start talking about it another time so I can use the space to talk about—well, we already had that Jedward event on here, it might be time for Dustin the Turkey instead. I like Dustin the Turkey. These people are all very happy and so am I. We should already have known Irish Gaelic since 2008 at the latest.

Austria

Austria? The time of day I'm listening to this right now is midway through the afternoon on the first day of 2021—I don't know why I left this one so much longer than the rest. The video for Austria's song is making me suspect there might be something especially musical about warehouses I'm not getting. Maybe it's the good acoustics? The dance routine here is absolutely inimitable—I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but if you can figure out how to turn your movement down to half-speed while jumping in mid-air, you might have a chance at managing it as well.

Music videos are always videos are always best when they implant in you an aspiration you're never realistically going to manage. For all I'm going to forget this song, I do now want to dance about in a large warehouse full of masked dancers while I wave a lit flare around in the air. Hey, this guy has a really great voice, actually. I can't remember if we've done Germany yet, but I probably said it's worth learning, so we almost definitely have Austria covered.

Israel

Well, the crowd are definitely really into Israel's song at the very least. I once tried to put together a musical playlist of live performances where the audience upstages the performer, thinking that would be a good idea of something to spend my time assembling. It wasn't, but not only because of the time-waste aspect—it only took a day or two to realise I didn't really know enough live music to get the thing any longer than two tunes. They were both very fun choices, at least. Anyway, this song could be the third part of that playlist if it wasn't two-ish years too late.

I tried dancing along with this one but messed up when it came to the cartwheels. I'm sorry. I can do cartwheels, I swear, they're just not great to have to do without warning. Definitely the most surprising acrobatic manoeuvre I know. One up from backflips. I wish floors were trampolines still.

The Netherlands

When I'm sad said Jeangu and I sighed because this is song twenty-eight and it's yet another ballad. There are disadvantages to appearing at any point in the competition—a first performance means people will have forgotten about you by the time it comes to voting, last makes you into an afterthought and somewhere in the middle means you're... Somewhere in the middle. Apparently, performance order has the same set of effects even when the actual event is imaginary. I expected to forget about this.

When I'm sad... The whole first half of this song, no, all of it, I really didn't forget about this. I don't think lots of people would. The plan was to come back to this when I had something better to say, but I really have nothing and that's worth mentioning in itself. This is a good tune. Dutch is worth knowing.

Switzerland

He looks as though he smiles a lot. Please work out the languages to learn here.

Latvia

Finally, Latvia saves the day by by submitting another actually interesting video.

But I don't get it.

Anyway, here's a good Latvian-learning resource.

Georgia

The Georgian song would have made some more sense if it hadn't been sung in English, probably. This is actually something super different, though—turning up to the actual competition and complaining about speaking English, dressing Italian, dancing Spanish, smelling French and playing German (note: these are the lyrics) may not have gone down exceptionally well at any actual event—this tune might be a little better suited to this kind of transmission.

Or maybe I'm wrong and everyone from the countries mentioned here would have cheered the moment they were mentioned.

I really like this song and listen to it a lot! Learn Georgian!

German

Here's that German song, then. What is there to say about this? The better format here would have been talking about all the good songs from Eurovision this year but here we are, thirty-two deep anyway and my sunk costs are screaming at me. Don't learn German in 2020. It may be 2021 now, so that's not fantastically useful advice, but still, it's here however.

Conclusion

Here in 2023, however—flash forward, sound effects, whooshing—you may now consider learning German. However many songs were left here, this seems to be the point I walked off on this and did something else, promptly abandoning this site for around two years. Sorry, invisible sneering people holding me to account—it's not up to me whether I do things in material reality. Others may deal with that. I let you down here.

There's no taped-together closure here, either. Eurovision is bad but I do hope it's appropriately bad enough to demonstrate the dire straits LUS was in when I left off here. This site is going to improve rapidly. If this happens again, it will be to discuss the 2023 contest in 2030—a fate to which I have now doomed myself by even bringing it up.

I'm too good at cursing myself.

Happy New Year, 2023!