Eurovision Updates!
Your hot spot for everything Eurovision! 25/3/24
Eurovision 2024 will be held on the 11th of May in Malmö Sweden, following Loreen’s win in Liverpool, 2023. Here is a quick version of all the main news:
- The contest will be held on the 7th and 9th of May for the semi-finals, and the 11th of May for the final.
- The contest will be held in Malmö Arena, Malmö.
- 37 countries have been confirmed to be in the contest, with Luxembourg being among them, returning after 30 years.
- All countries have songs! You can listen to them here: https://tinyurl.com/Eurovisonworld
- The slogan for this year, which will show up in promotional material and during the contest is ‘United by Music’.
- The stage design has been released for the upcoming contest.
- The hosts are Petra Mede and Malin Åkerman!
The way Eurovision works, for anyone wanting to get into it, is a series of semi-finals, and one grand finale. There are 2 semi-finals, which are going to be on the 7th and 9th of May. All countries besides the Big 5 (Explained later) and the host countries, participate in these semi’s, half in one and half in the other. The final then consists of the winning countries from both semi’s (Usually 10 qualify from each) as well as the Big 5 and the host country. The Big 5 are the countries who pay the most to upkeep the contest. They are the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The host country, who also qualifies automatically, is Sweden this year. However, the EBU (European Broadcasting union, who run Eurovision) has decided to let the Big 5 and host country perform in the semis to get rid of any advantage other countries may have by performing earlier. They still automatically qualify for the final but get to perform with all the other countries, so the audience gets to see them.
Eurovision has lots of countries participating every year, with the amount exceeding 40 in the years recently, but it wasn’t always like that. Eurovision back in 1956 when it first started only had 7 competing countries, who put in 2 songs each. The votes weren’t made public, so there was only a first and second place. The year later, it was taken slightly more seriously, with 10 countries as well as a Jury system. Ever since then, the contest has been growing, gaining more and more popularity every year.
All 37 songs have been released! Over the last few months, artists and songs have been slowly being released, and on Friday 15th we got the last one, the Azerbaijan entry. The link to listen to them is here: https://tinyurl.com/Eurovisonworld (Eurovision World songs list).
This year, the 37 completing countries are:
Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal
San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom
Before the contest, there are two main ways a country can pick an artist and song for Eurovision. The first way is through an internal selection, which is done in secret and scouts out upcoming music artists. The other way that songs can be selected is in national selections, which include the public voting for their favourite of a small batch of songs to send to Eurovision. These range of scale, from the smaller contests of just a few songs, to the larger celebrations such as the Melodifestivalen, which is the Swedish contest for their entrant which contains 28 different songs which get brought down by 5 Heats and 1 final. The UK used to have a national selection, but this was changed after 2019 with James Newman.
The EBU has decided that from now on, all slogans for Eurovision contests will be ‘United by Music’, the same one used in the 2022 contest held in Liverpool, UK. In past contests, since 2002, different slogans were used to refer to the contest, chosen by the host country. In 2002, this was ‘A Modern Fairytale’, but others include ‘Dare to Dream’ in 2019, ‘We are one’ in 2013, as well as more, only missing 2009. These all represented the contest for the year, so instead, a visual artwork has been released, based on the northern lights and sound equalisers.
ABBA won 50 years ago in the Eurovision Song Contest for their home country Sweden, and with Sweden hosting again for this anniversary, fans were hoping for a reunion on the stage. However, 2 of the 4 members have confirmed that they are not reuniting, this being Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, who have also confirmed that they will not be composing the entry either. While this is sad, there is a documentary releasing in 15 countries about ABBA called ‘ABBA – Against the Odds’ in the run up to the contest!
By Alice