Various Artists: Eurovision 2020 The Album

- COVID-19 could be subtitled “The Great Canceller”, similar to the way that The Black Death, was known as “The Great Dying” in the middle ages. For the first time since it stepped into the cultural spotlight in 1956 at the ‎Teatro Kursaal‎, Lugano, Switzerland, the world’s biggest international televised music event did not happen. Forty-one national delegations did not travel to the AHOY Arena in Rotterdam, The Netherlands this May; the twenty-six finalists were never determined, beyond the five permanent qualifiers (France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom) and the host nation; and the famous call of the maximum score “douze point!” per song was not uttered twenty-six times by one of the beaming television presenters from the multi-million Euro stage and witnessed by approximately 180 million folk around the globe. 
And I did not get to experience my sixth ESC from the somewhat surreal surrounds of the Press Centre embedded in that multi-million Euro staging. It’s absolutely fine for anyone to sneer about this massive cheese-fest, however, until you’ve been and witnessed what actually goes into this massive undertaking, I will take your disdain with a large slice of Gouda (or Emmental or Brie or Gorgonzola). First experiencing this event in 2011 at the rather perfectly run contest in Düsseldorf (German efficiency and technology combined) which was prior to Australia’s brazen entry to the contest in 2015, then going headlong into the chaos, the drama, the bizarro in successive years from Vienna to Stockholm to Kyiv to Lisbon (skipping last year’s Madonna headlined schmozzle in Tel Aviv) perhaps this review will be my most personal.

The annual compilation album was held back from formal release by over a month on usual timings and arrived this year to coincide with the various televised replacement events on the weekend the contest should have been reaching its zenith. This year’s collection might not have reached the heights of recent years in terms of quality and variety, however, there appears to be a perceptible shift in the types of songs and acts being either submitted or chosen in a public contest by each national broadcaster who stumps up the entry fee (which is considerable) and hopes their entrant can actually sing live in the same key as the song is written and heard on the pre-recorded backing track. Not all of them achieve this and there are some infamous examples where the wheels are off the cart well before the maximum three minutes of song time is up. (UK 2003 being the “best” example.)

Another thing noticed is the lessening of the batshit crazy entries, seeing as just on a decade ago the decision was made to revert to at least fifty-percent jury scores counting toward the final tally and not the one-hundred-percent televote free-for-all that plagued the contest in the first decade of this century. To be fair, when you have only three minutes on television and most people are only seeing and hearing your song for the first time, you need to make an impression – especially when you’ve got twenty-five other entrants doing the same.

This year seems to be the year that the more “independent” sounding artist, or song, was grabbing the frontrunning, and no more so than with Australia’s entrant, Montaigne. Don’t Break Me co-written by Montaigne with Anthony Egizii and David Musumeci (aka DNA Songs) who have given Australia its best result (Dami Im, second in 2016) and, perversely, its worst result (Jessica Mauboy 20th in 2018). Several other entries showed a similar move to that almost unidentifiable “indie” sound – Bulgaria’s Victoria Tears Getting Sober (the pre-contest bookies’ favourite), Romania’s Roxen Alcohol You, Czech Republic’s Benny Cristo with Kemama and the strong Icelandic entry Think About Things by Daði Freyr (decked out in daggy green trackies) which won the Australian “SBS Eurovision: Big Night In” vote. However, for me the standout this year is the moody, anthemic Swiss entry Répondez-moi (Answer Me) by a first generation Kosovo-Albanian lad who goes by the performing name Gjorn’s Tears – he, and Switzerland, get my “douze-point”.

- Blair Martin.
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