Eurovision Song Contest – how open are you, ESC?

On Saturday evening, the young Austrian countertenor JJ won the 69th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) with his song “Wasted Love” in Basel – with a lot of pathos, an incredible vocal performance and a spectacular appearance. It was not surprising, his song was a favorite among the fans of the ESC.

The German contribution »Baller« by Abor & Tynna, on the other hand, reached a stable 15th place. That came a little unexpectedly, because in the betting odds the song had not played a role until the end. This is a respect for the Austrian pair of siblings with Berlin. However, Stefan Raab, who had organized the German preliminary decision with great roar, may have scored a little more into his career. It is open whether Raab, whose show “You don’t win the million” recently, will continue to deal with the ESC. He had started quite broadly and had declared the preliminary decision he presented on the “Chefskin ESC 2025”. And announced the whole thing in pithy words: “If we only become second, you are welcome to punish me afterwards.”

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The way there is still too far. But you can see it as a success that “Baller” has been awarded twelve jury points from Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Israel and Serbia rated the song with 10 points each. That hadn’t been available for a German contribution for years. With 77 jury points and 74 audience points, the song achieved a total of more points than the German participant Isaak, but placed a little worse.

Although the German team had brilliant ideas for stage design and performance, Abor & Tynna worked compared to acts such as Erika Vikman from Finland with their orgasm donner ballad “I come”. In addition, there was bad luck. Due to a throat inflammation, the two had to do without the ESC pre-parties that are an important opportunity to present the ESC bubble. The ESC is a self -contained cosmos with its own cycles, own stars and own rituals in which the participating artists are included. Jamie-Lee Kriewitz, the German ESC participant in 2016, aptly summed it up: “The fans love the ESC-not the stars.” Contact with the outside world takes place once a year at the final.

This time the compositions were mostly weaker than in previous years, but many acts made up for this through spectacular choreographies and costumes. The glamrock ballad “Volevo Essere Un Duro” by Lucio Corsi and the British of Remember Monday with the Beatles-Queen-John-Mix “What the Hell Just Happened?” The Estonian singer Tommy Cash delivered one of the most unforgettable appearances, the legs of which are apparently made of highly elastic rubber. He enchanted the audience with his funny coffee hedgehog “Espresso Macchiato” and reached 3rd place.

The spectacular and surprisingly entertaining final show was moderated in the St. Jakobshalle in Basel by Michelle Hunziker, Sandra Studer and especially Hazel Brugger. The trio led the spectators through the long evening with a moody humor. According to the organizer of the ESC, the European Radio Union (EBU), the trio should symbolize Swiss values ​​openness, diversity, multilingualism and togetherness. However, as in the previous year, the openness of some ESC fans and some participants pushed their limits. Because the biggest tear test for the ESC doctrine “United by Music” was again the participation of Israel.

Although the audience voting catapulted the Israeli singer Yuval Raphael with her power ball “New Day Will Rise” surprisingly to second place, but whenever the singer showed up the samples, in the semi -finals or on the show, it was clearly whistled and brewed. In the evening of the event, several hundred people demonstrated. The ESC winner of the previous year, NEMO and 70 former participants had already excluded exclusion in Gaza Israel because of the war. Some EBU members and EU parliamentarians also expressed criticism. In Basel, posters appeared with the slogan “Escalate for Palestine”. Yuval Raphael narrowly survived the Hamas terrorist massacre of October 7, 2023 because it hid under the corpses in a shelter.

Israel’s partner at EBU and hosts of the Israeli preliminary decision is the public television broadcaster Kan 11, which is under strong pressure by the Netanyahu government’s legal authoritarian government. There is no space for a public service broadcast in the Israeli media landscape, said government officials. A complete privatization of the broadcasters is being aimed for. EBU supports Kan 11 and its independence.

The German cultural journalist Jens Balzer criticized the attitude of the propalestinian demonstrators in an interview with a Swiss daily newspaper: “The brave Yuval Raphael appears in front of a really hateful amount that makes her counter-cutting gesture”. There is a blatant lack of humanity. You can only pay the greatest respect to this woman. “Instead, she is identified with the current Israeli government.”

But that was not the only political issue around the ESC. Last year, the Christian-conservative splitter party EDU had tried to stop the ESC in Switzerland with an initiative-because of “propaganda for homosexuals and non-binaries”, “occult messages” and “dismissal of faith”. The advance was dismissed by the population of Basel in a referendum.

In Italy, too, the legal authoritarian meloni government screwed on the freedom of the ESC. The Meloni government replaced the preliminary decision moderator to the left with a politically more compliant conférencier, which means that the event was much good than usual.

Not only politics, the EBU was also more conservative and made life difficult for some acts. Finland’s participant Erika Vikman had to defuse her performance to the song “I come”. Miriana Conte from Malta met the most drastic. Her song “Kant” played with the ambiguity between the Maltese word for singing and the obscene English term for the female gender organ (“Cunt”). EBU forced it to a complete revision. The song is now called “serve”, the word “Kant” was replaced by a moan.