24/05/2021
What a fantastic Eurovision week! Now that we have had a chance to recover, its time to look back at the week and prepare ourselves for the upcoming 2022 season. That’s right folks it’s the weekly update.
The First Semi-Final took place on Tuesday 18th May and saw Malta (jury and overall winner), Ukraine (televote winner), Russia, Lithuania, Israel, Cyprus and Sweden advance to the final having done well enough with both voting components. Joining them also were Azerbaijan, Belgium and Norway – who qualified after scoring high enough in just one voting section. This meant we said goodbye to the songs from Croatia (who was a low qualifier for both the jury and televote), Romania (who the juries wanted to advance), Slovenia, Australia, North Macedonia and Ireland. As you can imagine – a jury and televote qualifier non-qualifying is an unprecedented result, which we will cover soon in our analysis of the results. In the meantime, if you want to read my reaction to the qualifiers, click below!
After the drama of such a close semi-final on the Tuesday, Thursday 22nd’s Second Semi-Final was arguably a bit more by the script, with jurors and televoters only disagreeing on one song. Switzerland (jury and overall winner), Iceland (televote winner), Bulgaria, Portugal, Finland, Greece, Moldova, Serbia and San Marino – all seemingly had wide-spread appeal and advanced to the final. The last spot was taken by Albania (saved by the juries), as they only awarded televote qualifier Denmark 9 points. Austria, Estonia, Poland, Czechia (who got no televote points sadly), Georgia and Latvia also failed to advance. Again, there is plenty for us to discuss in the coming days so stay tuned but my reaction to this semi’s qualifiers in the lead up to the final can be found here.
Friday of Eurovision week doesn’t normally have much to report on but unfortunately technical difficulties were experienced during the jury show. A few of the delegations had opted to use rotating platforms as a part of their stagings, however somehow, somewhere, something went wrong. Instead of the platforms coming to a halt at the correct moments in the song and allowing the participants to safely climb down and progress to the next part of the performance, the platforms did not stop. Consequently performers were left putting themselves in potentially risky situations to dismount from their platforms and deliver their performances. These performances being worth half the contestant’s grand final score and the risk to participant’s health and safety lead to some angry delegations. The broadcaster from San Marino, San Marino Radio Televisione (SMRTV), took to filing an official complaint to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) about this matter. SMRTV also gave Senhit the opportunity to withdraw from the contest had she felt unsafe performing in the final. Thankfully no one was hurt and all issues with stopping the turntable platforms were resolved by the final, where Senhit did decide she wanted to perform. It remains to be seen however, how this will play out.
Of course the Grand Final came on Saturday! The 26 finalists delivered stellar performances and hosts the Netherlands gave us a great show. Footage originally recorded pre-pandemic for the 2020 contest was incorporated into the new show seamlessly and whilst the pandemic meant that Iceland’s delegation and previous champion Duncan Laurence were in quarantine the show ran smoothly and efficiently. The most newsworthy moments of the night of course came from the results themselves with a record number of countries receiving 0 points (from a component of the result). The United Kingdom received no points at all, whilst Germany, Spain and the Netherlands all received their zeroes from the televote. On the flip side this also reflects the massive televote success of other countries. Switzerland won the title of jury winner with 267 jury points, while televote winners Italy had 318 televote points. Italy would go on to win overall with the combined system, jury winners Switzerland having to settle for third behind France. This is pretty reflective of how much more emphasis the televote points ended up putting on their top table songs when compared to the jury vote (which was more evenly distributed).
The final top 10 of ESC 2021 was therefore:
- Italy – 524 pts
- France – 499 – pts
- Switzerland – 432 pts
- Iceland (using rehearsal footage) – 378 pts
- Ukraine – 364 pts
- Finland – 301 pts
- Malta – 255 pts
- Lithuania – 220 pts
- Russia – 204 pts
- Greece (winning a tie-break against Bulgaria) – 170 pts
Måneskin’s victory is only the second rock song to have ever won the contest, following in the footsteps of Lordi (Finland, 2006). This takes Italy’s win count to three (1964, 1990, 2021) and will return the contest to Italy for hosting purposes (with many cities already placing bids). A side note in the Italian victory is the rumours of drug use during the Eurovision final by the champions, causing a stir in the media. However, this appears to be based off of some out of context screenshots taken during the contest and I do not wish to add fuel to the fire of what is very likely to be a false and sensationalised rumour. The band strongly refute these allegations and other Eurovision contestants (including runner-up Barbara Pravi) have rallied behind the band supporting each other and music, in the spirit of Eurovision.
Update: The innocence of the band has now also been officially confirmed by the EBU
Upon victory the band were very emotional in their celebrations and had a message for Europe and the wider world:
Rock and roll never dies!
Damiano David
With now a second rock winner and importantly occurring within an era where jurors have also played a roll, we could well see more rock songs coming to Eurovision and hopefully doing well. I can only see this win as a positive thing for the contest and I certainly hope you enjoyed it and your favourites did relatively well.
Eurovision 2021 season is sort of over then… Well it would be if it wasn’t for another quirk caused by the pandemic. We still have the reveal of the backup performances the delegations recorded earlier this year, in case they were unable to attend. Things thankfully are improving in the world and only Australia was required to use theirs – so the EBU have made a show with them! The ‘Eurovision Song Celebration’ to be broadcast online on Saturday 29th May at Eurovision.tv
Beyond that, well hopefully we will have some concerts to look forward to as the world slowly begins to #OpenUp. New music will of course be coming out from Eurovision artists to look out for and discuss. Beyond that Eurofans will continue doing what Eurofans do best – making our own content to entertain ourselves in the downtime. You can bet your bottom dollar that there will be plenty of just that going on at ESC Essence too. For starters this coming week we will have loads more to say about what the results reveal about the 2021 contest.
TV scheduling leads us to believe the first national final of the new season will take place sometime around November for the contest’s smallest nation, San Marino and then after that we only have to wait until December for Albania’s Festivali I Këngës. That’s without even mentioning that Junior Eurovision is set to be hosted in Paris in November this year as well.
But phew, let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Summer is approaching (at least in the Northern Hemisphere – sorry Australia) and I hope you all get the chance to unwind, enjoy your favourite music and more generally enjoy life. But if you want to consume more Eurovision – there will always be more here!
Let the Italian celebrations begin!
How did you find Eurovision week? What surprised you the most and are you chewing at the bit to get your bags packed for Italy 2022? Let us know – as always comments are always open (stay respectful) and discussion is always encouraged. Have a great week!