In Malmö, in southern Sweden, the final preparations are underway for the Eurovision Song Contest, the most followed European music competition, as well as one of the main international non-sporting television events. The one scheduled between 7 and 11 May will be the 68th edition of the event, which has become popular again in Italy for about ten years now. This year, however, the event is strongly influenced by the war that has been ongoing since last October in the Gaza Strip and the participation of Israel, which has already had to change its song in the competition, is strongly contested by part of public opinion, especially in Northern Europe.
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Eurovision has been organized since 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that brings together the main public TV channels of dozens of countries, mainly European. In addition to these, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Israel are also participating, as well as Australia, which was invited for the first time in 2015, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the event.
Every year the event is held in the country that won the previous edition: this year it will be in Sweden because the 2023 event in Liverpool was won by the Swedish singer Loreen, the first woman to have won the competition more than once, after victory in 2012 with “Euphoria”. It will be the seventh Eurovision organized in Sweden and the third in Malmö, together with those of 1992 and 2013, in which Mia Martini and Marco Mengoni performed for Italy respectively, finishing fourth and seventh. This time Italy will be represented by Angelina Mango, winner of the Sanremo Festival in her first participation with “La noia” and also among the favorites in Malmö.
What characterizes the Eurovision Song Contest are the usually very elaborate and pyrotechnic performances, with great production value applied to the light show, choreography, clothes and costumes and other visual effects. The vast majority of the musical offering falls within chart pop and the other most popular genres on the record market, from reggaeton to hip hop, sometimes reinterpreted in a zany key: the singers in fact often aim to get noticed more from the point of view of performance than the quality of the songs, which in fact is generally in short supply.
In short, it is more of a television show than a musical one, and for the most part the songs presented stop being taken into consideration by the general public once the competition is over. However, this is not always the case: the Italian group Måneskin, for example, began its successful international career with their victory at Eurovision in 2021.
Eurovision 2024 will be held as always over three evenings: two semi-finals on Tuesday 7 and Thursday 9 May plus the final, Saturday 11. There will be 37 participating countries, 27 of which feature solo singers, plus seven duets and three groups. The youngest in the competition will be 17-year-old Silia Kapsis, from Cyprus, and the older one María Bas of Nebulossa, the Spanish duo who made the country discuss the song called “Zorra”, like the Spanish word that indicates a “prostitute”, a “slut” is offensive. As happens practically every year, Eurovision spilled over into the politics of a country, even involving Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who defended the song’s lyrics from conservative groups who contested them.
There was also a risk that the Eurovision organizers would not accept the song, given that the very strict rules for participating in the festival prevent the use of “insults or unacceptable language” in the lyrics, as well as including political messages, under penalty of disqualification. . For the EBU, however, the song is eligible to participate, without modifications, because “zorra” is used to subvert and reappropriate a term used in sexist language (a bit like what happens in the African American community with this other one).
However, this was not the case for Israel, which had to change the title and lyrics of the song by the artist Eden Golan, initially rejected due to violation of the rules on the political neutrality of the event. Golan’s song was titled “October Rain”, that is, “October Rain”, and alluded to the October 7 attacks against Israeli civilians both in the title and in some of its verses, such as those in which the word “flowers” appears , which in Israeli army jargon is used to describe soldiers killed since the start of the war. In the end, Israel’s public television network, Kan, agreed to change the lyrics and title of the song, which will now be presented as “Hurricane” and has been stripped of direct references to the massacre.
In the past it happened that certain singers were disqualified from Eurovision for presenting songs with political content. It happened for example in 2009, when Georgia was excluded for a title that contained references to the authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin, while in 2021 Belarus was disqualified for having twice attempted to present a song with a veiled political message in favor of the regime by Alexander Lukashenko. In 2022, however, Russia was expelled due to the invasion of Ukraine: a decision that according to many critics should also have been applied to Israel for the invasion and bombing of Gaza, which have killed over 34 thousand people so far. Hundreds of musicians from several countries, including Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, have signed petitions calling on the EBU not to admit Israel to Eurovision due to the war, and boycott campaigns have spread online.
In recent days the EBU has said that criticism of Israel’s participation in the competition is “unacceptable and completely unfair”. It also said it would reserve the right to remove any Palestinian flags or symbols during the event in the Swedish city, on which protests are expected.
In the first semi-final fifteen singers will perform and in the second another sixteen, from which twenty of the twenty-six finalists will be chosen: those from the five founding countries of the event – Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom – are in fact automatically qualified for the final , together with that of the winner of the last edition, in this case Sweden. Thanks to a change in the rules, this year for the first time the singers of the so-called Big Five will also perform during the semi-finals, despite always being automatically qualified: Angelina Mango will sing on Thursday.
The public will decide who will go to the final, voting via the app or on the Eurovision website: from 2023 you can also vote from countries that do not participate in the event, but you cannot vote for your country’s song. For the final, as usual, in addition to the public vote there will also be that of the juries of experts from each of the qualified countries.
According to the site Eurovisionworld.com, at the moment the favorite to win would be Baby Lasagna, who presents the song “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” for Croatia, followed by Nemo for Switzerland with “The Code” and the Ukrainians alyona alyona & Jerry Heil with “Teresa & Maria ”. In fourth place in the site’s forecasts is Angelina Mango, followed by the Dutch Joost Klein with “Europapa”.
Tuesday and Thursday evenings will be broadcast live on Rai 2, while the final will be on Rai 1, again with commentary by Mara Maionchi and Gabriele Corsi. They can also be seen in streaming on RaiPlay, on Rainews.it and on the Eurovision YouTube channel, or listened live on Rai Radio 2.
Eurovision will be presented by the Swedish actress Malin Åkerman and the comedian and television presenter Petra Mede, who also hosted it in 2013 and 2016. Since this edition will also be the fiftieth anniversary of the first victory of the famous Swedish pop group Abba, with the equally famous “Waterloo”, there are rumors of a possible cameo: in 2023 the two men of the quartet, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, had however told the BBC to exclude a reunion on the occasion of the competition.
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