Came to mind looking at this in detail. My take is that the more popular the contest becomes, the more the battle is "what is good" vs. "what is entertaining on a Saturday night". The most concrete example is of course Switzerland this year getting very high scores from the juries and ZERO points from the televote. I don't think the scoring structure is bad per se because the winner usually appeals to both juries and public on sufficient level, but ESC being so popular and widely in the media brings extra layer to the contest. There are millions of people around the world (now that Rest of the World is a "country") that get drunk and vote for the funniest song they hear and and go to toilet when they hear a ballad lol (and there are still those who don't even watch and vote for Israel regardless but let's not go there here).

I don't know how valid this as a case, but this year there were five songs performed 18th-22nd that got only 53 points from the televote in total (Switzerland was in this bunch). Wonder what the world was doing then, definitely not watching/listening to the songs lol...

One for the comments points out that juries have their biases too, favoring ballads sung in French and not appreciating ethno stuff (like Albania this year).

Edited May 19May 19 by Sour Candy

Yeah we’ve been flip flopping like crazy lately blaming juries but now they are saving the contest from the Isrademise 😅

I do feel like the juries may have been swayed a bit too much by odds since a bunch of quality performances were snubbed by them in favor of some WTF choices. lbr Estonia did not deserve to place this high with the juries over, for example, Finland, Albania, Denmark, Spain, Poland, and yeah even Iceland - all of which delivered a far better vocal performance than Tommy Cash did. That said I am grateful for the juries now as I have been in the past too and this year reminds us exactly why they were brought in to begin with.

I’ve been grateful for juries the last few years - I see them as protecting the integrity of the competition. They help to ensure a bonafide hit can promote the competition in the longer term (Arcade, Tattoo etc)

I actually think the vitriol that was thrown Loreen’s way confirms that some people care way too much about the gimmicky entries. I want to ask the people throwing that hate what they actually want from the competition.

In the past few years Kaarija, Baby Lasagna, Tommy Cash and KAJ have been (in my opinion) the gimmicky acts. They will never win the jury vote due to their gimmick (and in most of those cases a dodgy vocal).

That being said - I do think there are instances where the juries seem to miss a polished performance. (For me Keiino is a great example of that)

I've definitely noticed that the public seem to not care about a good/bad vocal. For sure it helps with your jury score to have a great vocal, but with the public vote I'd put Sissal, Remember Monday and Zoë Më up there all in the top ten best vocals, and they were the bottom three with the public. Extend that to the whole bottom five with Miriana and Melody (and I've also just noticed the public vote bottom five was all women ☹️).

Estonia on the other hand was second on the televote, and the winner if you take out the Israel situation, and the vocal was...not good. But it doesn't matter for that kind of track. If you screw up the vocal on a ballad though, I guess you would be more exposed.

Ignoring Israel, the highest placing female was Klavdia from Greece, 6th.

Then again, Nemo won with a landslide last year and uses they as a pronoun, and this year's winner is openly gay. But I feel that larger the audience gets, the more there will be men who don't tend to vote for female artist and picks male novelty acts instead. Just a speculation of course.

I don't mind if the songs are good, but Estonia this year was not.

Edited May 19May 19 by Sour Candy

You don't really seem to get female novelty acts though?

I think this is one of those issues where it’s easy to change your mind based on what happens and if you’re satisfied

But this year really highlights a lot of issues. Last year I don’t think was too bad, The Code and Rim Tim Tagi Dim were two songs that had hype all season long and felt like the “right” top 2, so the juries and televote combination was more satisfying. Last year we did have some fan faves that underperformed (notably Kaleen) but that does always happen. That’s not so much the issue, I do always expect it because of course the fans who follow the whole season are a small percentage of the viewers, but this year it did feel worse. Kant was a song that had hype all season long, it was fun and well performed with great vocals - but it bombed the televote. And that’s just one example. Granted, it lost the “serving Kant” fun factor, but even so. The weird anomalies from semis to the final are questionable too. I don’t really mind the “fun” of novelty entries, but Espresso Macchiato was abysmal. I do wonder if it’s just a little trend that will die out, because one always comes top 3 since Cha Cha Cha, a bit like when we had lots of female ethnobops following wins from Every Way That I Can, Wild Dances and My Number One, and the flood of girl bop dance break boos following Fuego.

The juries also are not perfect, I loved Wasted Love (not as much as I loved The Code, but still) but I do worry that we end up with lots of formulaic songs crafted for the jury, particularly with so many great and/or fun pop songs underperforming from female artists. Look at Ich Komme, a pretty flawless pop song, excellent staging, great vocal, she couldn’t have done more, and wasn’t even top 10. I think they can focus too much on vocal or certain types of songs when I think it should be the whole package (in the case of Wasted Love, they were right, but not other songs).

All of this is obviously just my opinion, and maybe I’m biased that a song I adored did so badly compared to its hype and quality, but I agree that the juries are necessary to protect the integrity and maintain a balance. I just can’t fathom how Ich Komme did in particular. The sad thing for me is, I feel so disappointed in Eurovision due to the whole Israel saga that I kind of in my heart of hearts expected it. Prior to the final week, I had a niggle that Ich Komme would underperform just because female artists often do, and I know all the all the disappointment that we often face when we invest in these songs. But then she smashed the semi final performance as I knew she would, the hype was back, I thought she could do it and win or least come top 5 or even top 3.

I think it’s just sad that where Eurovision should be a highlight of the calendar, a night of joy and great music, we have instead been worn down so much that disappointment is expected and you’re not even surprised when these things happen in a way.

I don’t know if any of Croatia 2024, Finland 2023 or Sweden 2025 can necessarily be described as gimmicky, just if you take the staging into account, but that’s what makes the songs memorable. They were catchy, fresh and interesting on their own and screamed amazing memorable winners that can stand the rest of time. I’d rather them winning than the likes of Måns/Loreen 2023 with their polished forgotten in 5 years entries. Without these ‘gimmicks’ Eurovision will lose its soul and die very quickly.

8 minutes ago, pavi said:

I don’t know if any of Croatia 2024, Finland 2023 or Sweden 2025 can necessarily be described as gimmicky, just if you take the staging into account, but that’s what makes the songs memorable. They were catchy, fresh and interesting on their own and screamed amazing memorable winners that can stand the rest of time. I’d rather them winning than the likes of Måns/Loreen 2023 with their polished forgotten in 5 years entries. Without these ‘gimmicks’ Eurovision will lose its soul and die very quickly.

Definitely, I use novelty loosely in my post but I think they are seen as more novelty by viewers and that’s what gets them the votes from “casuals”. And that is the heart of Eurovision really, which is why I worry that the juries pretty much decide the winner with the televote debacle of this year and somewhat last year too. We run the risk of more and more delegations going for songs like Wasted Love or The Code, songs that whilst I personally did love them (especially The Code which is one of my favourite entries ever), don’t necessarily have that charm/fun/staying power, they are more a performance to do well at Eurovision not a song for the masses to enjoy. Tattoo is both I feel so not the best example, it was a huge post contest hit and will be very well remembered. I guess Tattoo only being a couple of years ago at least shows some hope.

I do wonder if the juries will see too many of them and tire of them, and that will be when there isn’t a strong jury winner like The Code or Wasted Love and we end up with Israel winning sooner rather than later.

13 minutes ago, pavi said:

I don’t know if any of Croatia 2024, Finland 2023 or Sweden 2025 can necessarily be described as gimmicky, just if you take the staging into account, but that’s what makes the songs memorable. They were catchy, fresh and interesting on their own and screamed amazing memorable winners that can stand the rest of time. I’d rather them winning than the likes of Måns/Loreen 2023 with their polished forgotten in 5 years entries. Without these ‘gimmicks’ Eurovision will lose its soul and die very quickly.

Not sure Tattoo can be classed as forgotten when its still getting regular streaming/downloads

We do need a good amount of 'fun for Saturday' entries, and there have been more of those since they took the juries out of the semis - before this there would so often be a section of the Grand Final that was filled with slow ballads and I'm sure it lost the contest some viewers.

I'd just like to have the juries be more transparent and more open to actually following their guidelines (originality, composition, performance quality) rather than seemingly treating it like they're just a super-voter - while I'd want and expect juror rankings to be different to an extent for the purposes of 'academic' dispute over which music is good on a professional level, they're clearly captured by personal biases, often against 'ethnic' music far too often. The amount of jurors that had Albania in their bottom 5 is actually inexcusable, no matter what you think of the song it should be scoring relatively well on most jury metrics.

The ideal juror shouldn't be biased towards any type of song. If that could happen it would be somewhat okay to have them back in the semis again.

Did you were for 100 % televoting, but changed your mind only because 1st place for Israel ?

Edited May 19May 19 by Last Dreamer

Israhell was 1st only because of purely politically driven campaigns by right-wing people who don’t watch or support Eurovision in any way. It’s not a legitimate results in any conceivable reality so your strawman attempt doesn’t really work.

Think it’s quite unfair to dismiss Käärijä and Baby Lasagna as a gimmick. Both are very serious topics, the former drinking culture and the second about croatias emigration problem. Just because it’s a well constructed pop track and not a dull ballad doesn’t mean it’s not an equally as valid song and social commentary. Both were also hits after the contest. Käärijä was the most successful Finnish language song of all time from a chart/streaming perspective, that’s not nothing.

Sometimes people I feel unfairly dismiss things as gimmicks because the singer is an entertainer and puts on a show instead of singing a dreary ballad behind a static micstand

Albania 16th with the juries and 5th with the public is wild. That should have done better with the juries than the televote if anything - the televotes were well deserved but it isn’t a super catchy gets in your head tune or anything. But on what objective metric were the juries marking it down?

Not at all surprised that Israel did well given that the anti-Israel contingent largely didn't watch or engage with the contest, as such, removing their potential diluting votes from the pool, meaning the Israel fans had essentially a clean sweep to dominate as long as they did a good performance.

6 minutes ago, J00prstar said:

Not at all surprised that Israel did well given that the anti-Israel contingent largely didn't watch or engage with the contest, as such, removing their potential diluting votes from the pool, meaning the Israel fans had essentially a clean sweep to dominate as long as they did a good performance.

It’s a lost battle trying to counteract those votes though, as it’s way too diluted just like Harve pointed out earlier in one of the threads. We would have to campaign for a small pool of contenders we would choose therefore rigging the results even further. :/ Really the only plausible way to battle the current situation is to introduce the against-vote or of course ban Israhell altogether. The latter being much more effective and fair.

1 hour ago, pavi said:

It’s a lost battle trying to counteract those votes though, as it’s way too diluted just like Harve pointed out earlier in one of the threads. We would have to campaign for a small pool of contenders we would choose therefore rigging the results even further. :/ Really the only plausible way to battle the current situation is to introduce the against-vote or of course ban Israhell altogether. The latter being much more effective and fair.

Well, could be.

Inherently I am against the concept of abstaining from a zero sum game being an effective protest.

Israel get to walk away feeling they have overwhelming public support now, which can be used to shore up the narrative that those opposing are a vocal minority, bad faith actors etc.

Hopefully casual viewers won’t pay too much attention to this result outside of Eurovision week itself and I want to believe Eurovision won’t play much of a role in their public image.

Boycotting is a powerful tool but we need much higher numbers to see any effect unfortunately.