Eurovision 2023 roundup Part 2: the year I cared about the bottom-half finishers

Following up on Part 1, here's Part 2 of my personal roundup of 2023's gloriously entertaining Eurovision spectacle. Yes, I'm new to this world of Eurovision fandom. Yes, I have the zeal of the converted. Nevertheless I'm attempting to describe how and why I was converted. I'll try and wrap up by explaining why this year was different, and how I'll approach Eurovision 2024. But in the meantime, let's start with my review of all the Grand Final performers. Just the bottom-half finishers to start with in Part 2, otherwise this post would be way too long.

Spoiler: 7/10 of my personal favourites finished in the bottom half!

To recap, I invented a scoring system, first for the song composition itself, incorporating the studio recording:

no stars = if I had control of the playlist I would turn it off or skip

★ wouldn't skip if it came up on shuffle

★★ on my "2023 Eurovision Favourites" playlist on Spotify

★★★ spent my own money getting a digital download; gone digging around their back catalogue for more stuff

★★★★ bought their entire back catalogue; checking out tour dates

Next, for the vocal performance in particular on the night:

No faces = out of tune or poor tone, either on average, or with a small number of mistakes so glaring the song is ruined

😮 Good enough to execute the song competently on the night without drawing attention to the mistakes that did occur.

😮😮Control and artistry was demonstrated, but not for the whole song.

😮😮😮Consistent control and artistic judgement throughout.

😮😮😮😮In control and musically well-judged, with genuinely impressive stand-out moments. 

Grand Final: in which I have many opinions

The acts in the Grand Final, in reverse order of final placings, were:

26: Germany 😮😮😮★★★ - last place, and a contender for most underrated act. The composition was slightly dull in comparison to some others: too many repetitions of the "Blood and Glitter" chorus for me. but the delivery of screamed vocals alongside well-delivered clean sections in both low and high registers was excellent. (Bonus metal points for Chris's "Scream for me, Liverpool!" line at the start.) Listen to Lord Of The Lost's cover of Cha Cha Cha if you need convincing of the band's quality but don't like this song in particular. I haven't gone out and bought all their back catalogue, yet I do have a gig ticket for their Autumn tour. Oh no, my star rating system is already compromised!

25: United Kingdom 😮★★ - a very slick house tune with a mild latin feel, some flamenco-like guitar sounds, a catchy chorus, and an even catchier bridge ("I was gonna cuss you out..."). As with lots of Eurovision EDM entries, my main gripe is that it couldn't be longer, owing to the competition's 3-minute maximum rule. Sadly, the live performance was a bit of a let-down, with very tentative lead vocals. It was disappointing that Mae Muller opted out of most of the higher, melismatic vocal line at the end, which is possibly the best bit of the studio recording. Having heard the footage of her attempting to sing it at one of the pre-party events though, I think discretion was the better part of valour on the night. To be fair, she'd obviously had a tired voice, to the extent that someone on her team had ordered her to rest her voice ahead of Grand Final day, so I do sympathise. Thanks Mae, for showing up, doing the work and representing us by co-writing a banger of a tune.

24: Serbia😮😮★★★★ - I'm so happy that such a dark, creepy-sounding chunk of EDM can make it through to the Eurovision Grand Final. Personally-speaking, this remains my 3rd favourite entry from this year's contest. I'm obviously a little disappointed it didn't get a bit more love from the juries and televoters, but I'm happy it qualified and Luke Black got to perform to hundreds of millions of people. The song expresses an idea stemming from Spring 2020, concerning the isolation forced upon us during the pandemic and trying to break free from it. It represents this with dark, creepy electronic noises, in particular a huge oppressive bass synth sound with a little bit of distortion added to make it fizz. In comparison the vocal line in this composition seems intentionally subservient, however that suits the concept, and Luke delivered the vocals competently. He doesn't seem to have an obviously complete back catalogue listed anywhere online, and he's only got one live date planned currently, but I'm on the waiting list for it, so 4 stars he gets!

23: Portugal😮😮😮😮★★ - fantastic vocal delivery of a tune that took a while to grow on me. The instrumental backing might be described as folky, but also wouldn't sound out of place in a cabaret show. I loved seeing how well Mimicat delivered the song live: it was perfectly judged, with the final contrast between quiet, breathy vocals and the subsequent full-on, lung-emptying coda being a favourite moment of mine. I got a lump in my throat just seeing how proud she was after knocking out that final note to the back of the arena and beyond into TV-land.

22: Albania😮😮★ - a pleasant tune with Balkan folk characteristics and a lead singer that can belt out a good strong vocal line with emotional ornamentation (although Blanca Paloma would show similar technique, done better). The supporting singers were pretty competent too. This somehow feels like exactly the kind of thing that Eurovision needs, even though it didn't light a fire in me personally.

21: Slovenia😮😮😮★ - a perfectly pleasant indie-rock tune, very well put across by a group of experienced performers. I didn't think there was too much excitement in the song's composition, but the band picked a style, went with it, and crucially the vocals were confident and not masked by the playback. It was also good to get another good quality band in the competition: it provides variety, I loved their attitude, and they provided some of the best social media nonsense in the run up to the competition (more on that later).

20: Switzerland😮😮- the first of several sickly ballads in the competition that I hated. Some respectable singing in there, but nothing exceptional to rave about, and some of it felt masked by the backing vocals on playback. Obviously this is a lot to do with my personal taste in composition, but I would very happily have seen this song knocked out at Semi-Final stage.

19: Poland😮 - this would have been my clearest candidate for ejecting from the Grand Final. The composition is inane to the point of annoyance, with plastic-sounding orchestration and a melody which never really gains any independence from the entirely predictable and repetitive chord changes. I really wanted to give Blanka no singy faces, but in between the Polish national final and the Grand Final, she appears to have done enough practice to avoid drawing attention to her mistakes, so I grudgingly award one face. Ugh.

18: Moldova😮😮★★ - a very solid folky-EDM fusion number of the sort that I've typically liked in previous Eurovisions (apparently the genre's got a name too: folktronica). I can feel my inner druid rising to the surface when the bass drops at the same time as the folk-y flute starts playing. Decent, confident singing throughout, but not quite living up to the standard the studio recording had set. There are a few too many repetitions of the (pre?-)chorus ("Soarele, Soarele, Soarele și Luna...") for me to really love the composition, but I'm still listening to it for that bass-flute drop and that's what counts, I'd say.

17: Spain😮😮😮😮★★★★ - for me, the most scandalously underrated entry. This is an actual proper flamenco song, in bulerias meter: a repeating rhythmic pattern of 12 quick pulses shared out into 2 groups of 3, followed by 3 groups of 2. It has backing voices and the traditional palmas (rhythmic clapping) but an otherwise synthesised accompaniment. There is extremely sparing use of other percussion, a kick drum being the only untuned instrument sound almost throughout. Blanca Paloma's vocal delivery was flawless, showing fragility, melancholic longing, pride and passion. There was no compromise on the flamenco vocal style either, with the majority of consonants inaudible, Andalucia-style, and plenty of vocal ornamentation including some purposeful pitch bends that wouldn't count as "in tune" in western classical musical theory.

Flamenco in Eurovision: estoy acá por esto.

I never expected a massive public vote for this song, but getting absolute last place on televotes was a shock. I'm more genuinely disappointed the juries didn't appreciate this a whole load more. On the other hand, what could be more gitana than pouring out your soul to hundreds of millions of people through the medium of your UNESCO-recognised intagible cultural heritage and being snubbed by public and institutions alike? Muchas gracias, Blanca Paloma, I will be first in the queue to buy your future music or tickets to hear you live (*please* announce some live dates!).

16: France★★ - probably my most disappointing moment in the whole competition, because the studio recording is a beautifully slick French disco-house track (I and others have unimaginatively described it as "Edith Piaf produced by Daft Punk") and it's obvious from media elsewhere that La Zarra is not a bad singer in general. However, in the Grand Final performance her voice was already edging pretty sharp in parts, even before the unaccompanied climax ("a chanter la grande France...") where it just went off-the-leash sharp. Fair play to her for being confident and sharp, as opposed to tentative and sharp, but this moment absolutely ruined the performance for me. Reading through some of the YouTube comments on her performance ("incredible!", "sassy!", "robbed!") really did make me wonder if I listened to the same performance as other people. It's bizarre: I can't find any criticism online of how massively out of tune it was, and I've just had a super double-check safety listen just to prove to myself I'm not going mad. It really was that awful. Although to be fair, if it were me in La Zarra's place, *I'd* probably be struggling to stay relaxed and in-tune while elevated a few metres off the ground on a narrow column...

15: Austria😮😮★★ - a fun song concept, with a well-produced studio recording and an ear-worm of a chorus. The two singers can certainly harmonise nicely in the right context, as shown in this live acoustic version of the same song. On Grand Final night though, Teya sang her lower harmony parts consistently a little sharp throughout, which prevents me from scoring them any higher, despite Salena's topmost part being confident and accurate. I think this duo were unlucky not to finish top-half, given how good their odds were a few weeks earlier, but as with many of the acts, I suspect their vote totals suffered from the focus on the Finland vs. Sweden duel at the top of the leaderboard.

14: Armenia😮😮★ - I will confess to mixing up the entries from Armenia and Georgia initially, and hence whenever I see or hear this entry I'm always mildly disappointed that it isn't Georgia's, which is my favourite of the two I think. Trying to put this aside, I think the composition is interesting enough, because of the fairly brisk tempo underlying even the quiet parts, plus the more forceful and rhythmic mid-section. Unlike Poland's, Armenia's dance break wasn't really necessary because the vocals were competently done.

The bottom half: not necessarily for losers‽

So that's the bottom half of the results covered. Halfway up the leaderboard and I've only come across 2 songs I would try and avoid, and 8 more that I've been happily listening to over the last couple of months. That's a pretty good result to my mind. Top half next in Part 3!