Eurovision 2023 roundup Part 3: the year I had opinions about every single song

Right! Here's Part 3 of my Eurovision 2023 roundup, where I finally finish off my review of all the Grand Final performers (Part 1 was about the Semi-Finals, Part 2 dealt with the bottom-half). Now we're into the top half of the results, so let's continue in reverse order (same scoring system as before, singy faces for vocal performance on the night, stars for the song composition):

Danny Estrin, Monika Linkytė, Alex Canion

Top-half finishers: let the opinions continue

13: Croatia😮😮★ - a clear novelty entry, but fair play to Let 3: they had confidence and stagecraft, there's an anti-war message in there that steers round the "no politics" rule, and the final would have been duller without them. I'm a bit baffled by the online commenters who think this sort of thing doesn't belong in Eurovision: like, have they even *seen* previous Eurovisions?

12: Cyprus😮😮★✫✫ - a decent composition, improved so much by Voyager's metal version of it that I actually bought a copy (hence an extra 2 hollow stars). Vocals were generally good, though there was some "scooping" up to a few of the final high notes (i.e. starting on a lower pitch and sliding up to the intended note). Although definitely done on purpose, I didn't think it added much. As with several other acts on the night, the playback masked Andrew Lambrou's vocals somewhat, and counterintuitively might have made him sound less impressive by hiding his vocal capabilities.

11: Lithuania😮😮😮 - the first of my pleasant surprises from the night, where a song that I definitely would not ever listen to independently, was performed with undeniable vocal skill on the night. There wasn't much in the composition for me to love, but the delivery of live vocal harmony from the backing singers was absolutely on-point throughout and really set Monika up for success here.

10: Czechia😮😮★ - this is certainly a tune in two halves for me: I love the intro and the chorus but don't really click with the verse sections (neither the sung nor spoken bits). However, the rhythmic groove flows nicely enough to nod my head to when it comes up on shuffle.  I failed to identify what was coming through live and what was background from the playback, given that there were only 3 microphones in use on stage and the vocal sound was pretty full. Whatever actually happened, this was another win for vocal harmony though: the sound of voices in harmony over a chunky beat in the chorus pleased me greatly whether sung live or not. And the identifiably live bits sounded good to me.

9: Australia😮😮😮★★★★ - a 9th place finish and the opportunity to put 3 minutes of prog metal in front of hundreds of millions of people is a fantastic result for Voyager, the metal scene, Australia, and for the contest overall. In the interests of scrupulous fairness to the other entrants, and to prove I'm not an irredeemably uncritical fanboy, I can't give Voyager 4 singy faces for their Grand Final performance, as there was the tiniest bit of sharpness at a couple of points in Danny's vocals and a little lack of vocal oomph at the beginning of the 2 bridge sections ("I'm here tonight..."). But that really is the nerdiest of nitpicking - for this song and this occasion, I did not care one jot. In case you hadn't realised, I think this song is basically perfect, given the context, and Danny and Alex presented the vocals very well indeed.

Voyager: the reason I had to Google "parasocial relationships"

Oh sod it, back to fanboy mode... want more of this song? There's a no-vocal version perfect for karaoke! They made a house remix! There's an electric string quartet version! Someone imported it into Trombone Champ! No, this is neither the time nor place to explain what Trombone Champ is, Google it!

8: Estonia😮😮😮😮 - A lovely surprise to hear such poise, control and vocal artistry in a live performance. It's another song that I would never listen to otherwise, but I still did a mini fist pump when, at the end of the final perfect cadence, Alika resolved from the leading note up to the tonic, all the while pumping out more air to get louder and finish super-strongly. She came, she stood, she delivered.

7: Belgium😮😮😮★★ - a little banger of a house tune that sounds like it was made in the late 80s or early 90s. Zero points for originality, but who cares if the groove is this good? It was fantastic to hear Gustaph deviating from the recorded melody in places. I'm not sure how spontaneous this was, as the semi-final and final performances sounded pretty similar, but it demonstrated he was in tune, in control and truly understood the genre. This was also no fluke, as demonstrated in this emergency a cappella rendition of the same song, that Gustaph and his backing singers did when the playback temporarily failed. Speaking of backing singers, this was another entry where vocal harmony really set up the so-called "solo artist" for success - something which Gustaph rightly acknowledges. A really slick performance from all of Belgium's vocalists overall.

6: Ukraine😮😮★✫ - I wasn't a super-fan of this song originally, but TVORCHI's own remix made it on to my playlist, hence the extra hollow star. Solid performance of a good song concept, all the more interesting for having none of the eastern european folk influence that's so commonly associated with Ukraine's Eurovision entries. Decent vocals, great electronic sounds in the playback, and a really good showing for Ukraine once more.

5: Norway😮😮★ - I like this song much more in theory than in practice. To me it sounds like an electrified sea shanty, and I mean that as a compliment. Trouble is, it quickly lost its novelty after a few listens. I'm not exactly sure why (I mean, you can't explain everything about musical taste, right?) but at a guess: the intro feels somehow disconnected to the rest of the song, the harmony feels a little repetitive and obvious, the song is short and the ending is more of a whimper than a bang. Generally decent vocal performance from Alessandra though, with a gratuitous but more-or-less in-tune dog whistle of a top E.

4: Italy😮😮😮😮 - as you may have picked up on already, I really do not like saccharine pop ballads like this one. The harmony was dull, with nothing to remark on in the orchestration and no rhythmic interest. And yet on listening I was forced to respect Marco Mengoni's vocal performance and artistic judgement. Flawless vocal execution of a song concept I absolutely despise!

3: Israel😮😮😮★ - this grew on me, after I initially dismissed it as merely plastic over-produced pop trash. I mean, I wasn't entirely wrong: the lyrics are too bad to simply ignore, and the different sections seem disjointed and stylistically unrelated, particularly the last 30 seconds or so where it's just a dance break. Judging from the big shiny production on the studio recording (the kind often applied to make weak singers sound good) there was also no reason for me to think Noa Kirel's voice would be in any way remarkable live. So it was a pleasant shock to find out she can sing very respectably indeed. It was quite revealing to me that the Semi-Final performance had some minor but noticeable vocal insecurities in it, and fair play to Noa, she appears to have just gone away, worked on those moments and come back better. In contrast to some other entries, the backing track got out of the way of the singer's way pleasingly, too.

2: Finland😮★★★ - another real grower of a tune. I remember initially thinking (and saying) "that Finnish tune is great but its style is all over the place", which I can only have really said before I realised this entry's true nature. This isn't a tune swapping between two bizarre styles, it's two short, contrasting tunes, one after another. First comes an industrial-sounding techno section to accompany Käärijä's spoken word. There's plenty of distorted guitar sounds and shouting, making the first 1min38s of this song sound like it could easily be a Rammstein song. (Käärijä has a Rammstein tattoo and named his favourite song of theirs as Bück Dich , which has very similar vibes. Coincidence‽ Wake up, sheeple!).

Käärijä: infinity percent more metal umlauts than Voyager

From 1min45 onwards, we have a sung section, in a style I initially described as "Apres-Ski music" but apparently has a proper genre name: schlager. A repeated melody of nursery rhyme simplicity is backed by relentlessy bright-toned synth sounds. The 4 bars that fill the 7 seconds or so in between the two parts provide the transitional moment, during which I am incapable of *not* air guitaring the 5 chords. Before those 4 bars, there is literally no harmony or melody. After them, we are drowning in (admittedly very unsubtle) harmony and melody. Before them is anxiety and tension, after them is freedom and enjoyment. What's this song about again? Ah... getting drunk enough to overcome your social anxiety and get on the dancefloor, I see. Not psychologically healthy perhaps, but a minor stroke of musical genius.  Käärijä is clearly no great singer, but his spoken word was awesome, he carried the nursery rhyme tune well enough, and the song concept was hardly dependent on his singing prowess. This was clearly my favourite entry from amongst the bookies' favourites as we entered the Grand Final.

1: Sweden😮😮😮★ - speaking of bookies, I struggled to see why this song was so obviously the favourite, and I think overall this was a severely overrated entry. Yes, Loreen's won before, as have Sweden. Yes, she's a capable singer, and I can't deny she performed strongly on the night. However I'm not convinced by the quality of this song, and that might well be because I think it's frankly a poor imitation of Euphoria, her previous winning song. I found the chorus to be catchy but annoying ("you-hoo-hoo ...something something.. tat-too-hoo-hoo"), the lyrics were clunky enough I couldn't ignore them, and overall it just felt... fine. A decent effort, but not something that stood out for me. I'm also a sucker for a bit of underdog drama, and Loreen's dominance at the Jury voting stage almost entirely removed that possibility. Käärijä's televoting landslide was the only sliver of real competition we saw. Not that any of that is Loreen's or Sweden's issue - it was a good performance of a not-terrible song, and it won fair and square within the rules of the competition (whatever the weirdo Eurovision conspiracy theorists try and tell you!)

The results are in. What now?

Well, I've nearly written Eurovision 2023 out of my system, but I've got one more part left, where I'll try to analyse why exactly I got so obsessed this year, and discuss what I learned on my way to Eurovision fandom. Back in a bit!