Rock and Roll Never Dies: A Few (OK More Than a Few) Thoughts on Eurovision 2021 (Patreon)

I gotta be straight with you guys. 

Well, as straight as I can be.

I’m still not quite over Eurovision being over.

WHAT a year.

It was always going to be an interesting one, but I didn’t expect it to go so hard on my heart. We had the Devil, a PUA angel, Mata Hari, Ukrainian techno-saint spring planting song with green feathers, a giant dancing middle finger, Maltese Lizzo, sad Bulgarian dirt, a radical feminist Russian icon in a massive dress-cage, Serbian Pussycat Dolls, angry Finnish boyz, wifi-accessible Israeli hair, a nine-foot tall Lithuanian man in a yellow suit dancing like David Byrne got electrocuted, Britain opting to not even buy their man clothes that fit, the return of Icelandic fuzzy sweaters and domestic love, and an absolute tactical bombardment of furious fiery omnisexual leather-bound Italian energy in god-tier eyeliner.

Someone get me a cigarette.

Coming back from the first cancellation in 64 years of the planet’s greatest battle of the bands, the world not-quite-but-almost-sort-of emerging from the COVID dungeon, that huge memory hole into which 2020 dove like Scrooge McDuck removing the usual impulse to copy what won last time, the craziness with Belorus, the COVID outbreak AT the Grand Final, the hype for so many different countries, the fact that, due to the Fire Saga movie and Peacock airing it in full for free, tons of Americans were watching for the first time…it was always going to be A Lot.

But in addition to A Lot…you guys, I don’t want to oversell it, but it might have been the best year ever? At least the most exciting and unpredictable. And, ahem. Definitely tops in terms of pure undeniable hotness. And it was all the more incredible for having followed 2019, itself one of the best years of Eurovision ever in terms of consistently quality songs and high drama.

OH MY GOD ARE WE IN A GOLDEN AGE OF EUROVISION?

Calm down, Cat, calm down, it’s too early to say. 2018 was so-so barring the winner and Fuego, you can’t just declare a Golden Age over two years, no matter how excited you are that your favorite ACTUALLY FUCKING WON FOR ONCE and WASN’T ROBBED LIKE AUSTRALIA LAST TIME I WILL NEVER BE OVER IT.

BUT REAL TALK SHIT IS GETTING VERY FABULOUS VERY FAST.

If you have no idea what I’m babbling on about, welcome to my Euro Talk, I’m Cat Valente, nice to meet you, I’ve written a few books, no big deal. Have you heard the good news? The Eurovision Song Contest is here to bless and raise us all into the light.

As a side note, this will likely be a pretty rambly and way into the weeds on David S. Pumpkins-y Monday morning quarterback session. Just think of this as an ESPN analysis show. You know, the Eurovision Song Post-Game Network.

But I realize just how much there is to know here, so if you have any questions about the rules, behind the scenes stuff, controversies, individual acts or countries’ processes, trends, gossip or anything I reference, ask and I’ll answer. Eurovision is a geek’s dream—numbers (so many numbers), infighting, cosplay, poetry, and there is SO MUCH backstory and deep lore it’s impossible to get you up to date in a review of one year’s Grand Final. But I know A LOT, and I’ll share anything you’re curious about in the comment section.

THIS WILL ALSO BE LONG. MY DUDES, THE SHOW ITSELF IS FOUR DANG HOURS AND 26 PERFORMANCES, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU. YOU WANTED THIS. YOU CAN’T GET MAD.

LET’S GOOOOO.

Since I starting writing Space Opera in 2017, I have had to explain to many, many Americans what Eurovision is and why they should care. I have also had to explain myself to not a few Europeans, Australians, and other EBU-participating nationalities why it is actually not the worst but possibly the best and yes I am serious and also admittedly American but I didn’t do it on purpose and please do not roll your eyes yet. I assume that if you are here and reading this, you probably know what’s up, but in case you don’t, I will try to keep it brief.

The Eurovision Song Contest is a combination of X-Factor, Miss Universe, the Olympics, and WWI. It started in 1956, quite literally as a way to heal the continent after the brutality of the early 20th century. Every (almost) country in Europe, and a few outside Europe (why and who qualifies for these exceptions? Well, as Facebook says, it’s complicated) send a singer or band (usually, though not always, up and coming artists rather than established legends) each year (almost, 2020 was the first cancellation ever) to the country of the previous year’s winner and they all have a giant battle of the bands. The key is that both a jury of professionals and the viewing audience at home vote for the winner, and neither group can vote for their own country.

Thus, it isn’t always, or, arguably, ever, just about the music, but the Eurovision results are essentially a snapshot of European politics every year. A snapshot full of ridiculous music, costumes, staging, trends, goofy comedy, awkward hosts, nail-biting scoring, and an endless sushi-river of gimmicks going in and out of style.

It’s amazing. It’s dumb as fuck. It’s so human. It’s super shiny. It’s glorious. As some midlist hack once said, it’s beautiful and stupid.

It’s my Super Bowl, and I obsess about it every year.

But damn, this year was EXTRA obsessable.

I can’t help but say, as I imagine I will say about many things for many years to come, that it had a lot to do with COVID.

I don’t think this year’s winner would have won in 2020 if 2020 hadn’t been so goddamned 2020 at us. If you look at the acts for The Eurovision That Wasn’t, none of them are anything like Måneskin in style or content. In fact, this subgenre of glam rock has never won Eurovision. This wasn’t Sweden’s schtick of reverse-engineering a perfect slick-but-safe pop song that’s gotten them all the way up to tying with poor Ireland for most wins. It was a bunch of passionate kids doing a song so pissed off they had to remove the f-bombs from it to make it Eurovision-approved.

The favorite to win in 2020 was Daði Freyr of Iceland with a cozy song performed in cozy sweaters about how much he loved his new baby daughter. The line-up was chock-full of ballads, because a ballad won in 2019 and everyone always rushes to copy the most recent winner, despite the patently obvious fact that Netta (insane techno pop weird chicken golden cats Pokemon song) won right after Salvador Sobral (soulful ballad sung at a single piano in a black suit and no stage effects) so it’s really pretty pointless to try to copy off last year’s homework. The other favorites were Lithuania goofy dancing and rhyming fire with desire and Bulgaria being super sad about alcoholism.

It was just a very different vibe.

And it was cancelled because of COVID, and we all went into lockdown, and suffered and lived in fear and didn’t know what was going to happen to any of us and we lost people we loved and death was everywhere and we were all deprived of human contact and emotional release and visual stimulation apart from four new television shows and however we’d decided to decorate our houses years ago and from that position had to witness political and social fuckery around the globe that we couldn’t do anything about and it went on so long we all started feeling horribly numb and grey and psychologically flatlined and on top of it all, pretty damn relevantly to this particular event, weren’t allowed to go to concerts or experience live music in any way.

COVID won Eurovision 2020 with a song called Death.

So it just felt so fucking cathartic for Eurovision to come back, even though it was probably a little too early for that to actually happen given how many people got COVID there in the run-up to the final. There were far fewer ballads, most songs were up-tempo and jittery with pent-up energy. This is part of why everyone started getting so deep in their feels when it looked like the Swiss ballad was going to win. THE FUCK IS THIS, THIS SONG IS NOT HOW I FEEL RIGHT NOW AT ALL I DON’T WANNA CROON FLUFFILY I WANNA YELL LEATHERLY.

But I get ahead of myself.

So the way this works is that there’s two semifinals in the week leading up to the Grand Final. Each semifinal had 16 countries this year. This number varies a little each year as some countries bow out or in. VERY notably this year, the EBU yeeted Belorus from the line-up for sending a song that was a slobbery love-hymn to its new dictator, upon which they were admonished to knock it the fuck off as they know Eurovision songs aren’t supposed to be political unless it’s Jamala in 2016 and everyone and their choreographer is big mad at Russia so let’s go, at which point they sent another please-tread-on-me-daddy sonnet to Dear Leader and got firmly yote.

Which semifinal a country ends up in is supposed to be random but…well. You know that whole thing about human institutions and how they are allergic to actual fairness. Each semi narrows it down to ten by the same voting mechanism the GF uses and those twenty go on to compete in the Grand Final along with the “Big Five,” which is: France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Italy, plus the host country. These six get in every year without having to risk getting flushed in the semis because they pay for the show and also, as I said before, big world war geopolitics energy.

THAT’S NUMBERWANG.

Arguably this is actually a disadvantage though, and I back that up by pointing out it’s been 44, 39, a whopping 52 and it was a FOUR WAY TIE, 24, and 31 years respectively since any of those nations won.

Two theories, other than no one likes pay-to-win whales.

1: The Big Five don’t get to be part of the hype machine run-up to the semis. People haven’t usually seen their staging or even heard their song before the GF so the home voters come in with other favorites. 2: It can make those countries pretty fucking lazy about what they send. Looking at you, UK. There’s no way the wet dough-ball of a song would have made it if the UK weren’t guaranteed their slot. The country generally doesn’t take it seriously and sneers at the whole process, which doesn’t make for a riveting show—on top of which, you know, the ignorant bloviating elephant in the room of jungle creatures trying to get along for five seconds means if they had any hope of getting even one sad trombone of a vote, they probably should have made even the smallest effort NOT THAT I’M ANNOYED OR ANYTHING. God, just TRY. It won’t kill you.

I don’t know what’s going on with Germany lately but the system isn’t exactly working in their favor, either. However, in foreshadowing news: Italy has pulled in more televote points in the last decade than all the other B5 combined and it’s not close.

Ahem.

This is the way it works right now. Please note that Eurovision rules are like the weather in London. If you don’t like them, wait five minutes. They change all the time. Remember when I said this beast is a geek’s dream? SUPER COMPLICATED RULES AND POINT SYSTEMS THAT CHANGE EVERY YEAR IN ORDER TO ARRIVE AT A MORE PERFECT EDITION OF D & D (DRUMS & DRAGONS) EUROVISION THAT EVERYONE CONSTANTLY DEBATES AND GETS REAL MAD ABOUT UNTIL ULTIMATELY DECIDING SOME OLD VERSION THAT GOT BINNED FOR BEING OPAQUE AND UNFAIR WAS ACTUALLY PERFECT SO BRING IT BACK, YOU SHILLS.

So.

Anyway.

No, they can’t change their songs or staging at any point between being chosen by their country and the Grand Final, so yes, we are watching the same songs three times in a row in the same week. DEAL WITH IT.

This year, the first semifinal was so top-heavy with awesomeness I honestly had no idea who would get cut, and remain stunned that one of them was Australia, with a song I literally have stuck in my head right now and also it has lyrics about lasers. STILL MAD? YOU BET. Also mad about North Macedonia’s big Broadway belter song about not letting the world break you in which the guy hits the high note and busts open his coat to reveal a huge-ass mirrorball cuirass/chestplate armor that literally exploded with light?

WELP. GUESS HE SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT TWICE ABOUT NOT BEING A SEXY LADY, HUH?

There were a lot of sexy ladies. The whole contest was very lady-heavy in general this year. Ladies in silver glitter dresses, specifically. It’s kind of like Armageddon and Deep Impact. No one necessarily intended to do the same thing over and over in one year, it just happened, and now there’s asteroid junk everywhere.

But actually it turns out literally no one but me cared about Australia and North Macedonia. They came in one shy of dead last in the voting. Easily the biggest controversy in the semifinals was Denmark and Croatia not getting through but…I get it.

There was clearly some kind of zeitgeist this year, or else somebody pulled a Bring It On and sold the same lighting and costume design to like twelve different countries and bounced in a puff of spirit fingers. Denmark would have stood out in another year, but unfortunately, they turned up with the same 80s vibe, goofy dancing, bisexual neon lighting (seriously I swear 85% of the acts had this meme as their lighting designer it was SO WEIRD) and vaguely upbeat sound. Unfortunately, they forgot that God made a rule this year that since we’ve all been locked up in horny jail due to COVID, you must be at least this hot to qualify for the Grand Final in 2021, and Denmark’s lead singer looked like a substitute teacher who tries to win the kids over by letting them call him by his first name. They just faded into the background, so many of their components were done better by other people.

Croatia got the Must Be a Whole Snack This Time memo, but they had the same problem. Sexy lady in a spangly silver outfit in front of blue/purple/pink neon lights was VERY hard to differentiate from many, many other sexy ladies in spangly silver outfits in front of blue/purple/pink neon lights. At least her backup dancers looked like rejected He-Man villains and her song sounded like an exercise video? It was pretty awkward that Serbia got in with an arguably worse song basically because…there were three sexy ladies and they wore black?

So the upshot is a lot of quality acts got cut in the first semifinal, and then the second semifinal felt like a club for everyone who did their paper the night before it was due, and we all knew some of the countries cut would absolutely have made it if they’d been in the second semi, so side-eyes were had all around.

Then everyone got COVID.

You guys it was fucking TENSE that week. Sixteen cases of COVID sprang up before the final, and I don’t know that there is a final count for how many ultimately came out of the event. Among the infected was a member of Iceland’s delegation and horribly unfortunately, the previous winner, Duncan Lawrence, who would have a had a big role in the show otherwise and had to miss it. It sucks so much for all of them—Iceland had to use a pre-recorded rehearsal which undoubtedly affected their ranking (Australia wasn’t even there because the Australian government has different rules for cricketers and actors but somehow their singer didn’t qualify for the rich people exception to NOBODY COMES IN OR GOES OUT EVER rule, and I’m positive that’s part of why they didn’t qualify for the first time since they joined) and poor precious cinnamon roll Duncan didn’t get his moment.

And everyone was pretty rattled heading into a Grand Final that had a live audience of about 3500 people.

Before I get into the Big Game, I will point out that another significant factor in the Not Normalness of this year was that Will Farrell came out with a Eurovision movie that was among the only original, new content to stream in 2021, so a whole fucking bunch of Americans saw it and tuned in to the actual show. I thought the Netherlands handled it very well. They interviewed Molly Sanden, the woman who sang Rachel McAdams’ songs in Fire Saga and herself came third in Junior Eurovision (yes there is a Eurovision for kids, no, I’ve never watched it, but you know how to make me if you want that to happen) rather than make the movie itself the focus of the actual contest. Finland made a Jaja Ding Dong joke and we all went back to focusing on the musicians for whom this is Real Shit and Once In a Lifetime. I loved the movie and obviously I am uniquely positioned to approve of the ESC embracing fiction based on it and hope that continues, but I thought this was the right way to honor a love letter to Eurovision without pandering to Hollywood by having Farrell and Co perform during the interval or something of that nature. I think we all learned something from Madonna’s god-awful cringegasmic performance in 2019 and that something was yikes.

What this meant for me personally, though, was having to guide WAY more newbies through the process on Twitter than I ever have before. And it was PRETTY DELIGHTFUL. In part because, unlike almost every other year in which I have cried ROBBED like a Cleveland Browns fan during the playoffs, I NAILED this year in terms of my own predictions and favorites. I looked VERY SMART in public BY TOTAL LUCK and THAT IS ALWAYS QUITE NICE.

I’m not going to go over every song individually because I kind of already did that on Twitter, but I am going to gush about some of the highlights. And lowlights. A lot, but not all, of these performers were meant to be in 2020 and got to come back because COVID wasn’t their fault. UNLESS? No.

Probably.

Oh! Oh! And also the running order of the final is NOT random, they don’t even pretend, the EBU just decides in some smoky room filled with Ouija Boards and track lighting and hors d’oeuvres served on the naked trembling bodies of one-hit-wonders from the early 90s and Skeksies and CRYSTAL SHARDS and this remains one of the most controversial bits because the running order SUPER effects the results, to the point where going second is known as the “death slot” because no country who’s gone second has ever won. The later you go, the better, usually, because people forget the early acts and go get drinks and talk in the kitchen and hit the bathroom in the middle, so the back-half is usually groaning with favorites like Santa after all those cookies.

OKAY.

BULGARIA! Bulgaria came not to conquer but to be FUCKING COZY and it showed. She wore sneakers and a blue denim jumpsuit right out of Laverne & Shirley’s weekend wear collection. Don’t worry, though, she put on a rhinestone hodgepodge scrapbook applique from Michaels to jazz it up. And then dirt poured down from the ceiling to represent her sadness and it was glorious PANDEMIC FASHION REALNESS. I hope she didn’t even bother with a bra. She messed around with what appears to be an iPad halfway through and I just hope she was playing Animal Crossing on it. For all of us.

RUSSIA! Oh god I loved Russia. But I do feel like it suffered a bit for…well, being Russia, and Russia treating Eurovision as it (and America) treated Olympic ice skating during the Cold War (taking it way too seriously as a proxy war to prove its own cultural superiority when everyone else everyone just wanted to skate pretty and wear sparkles) is still mad as bearshit about that whole EVERYTHING THAT’S HAPPENED THIS DECADE thing and not getting over it or interested in sitting through an ESC in Moscow any time soon but ALSO the song wasn’t quite as powerful if you didn’t know the whole backstory. And speak a little Russian.

Which story is that Manizha is a pretty controversial feminist figure in Russia, and no one thought she’d win her national final to go to Eurovision, or that Putin would let her go if she did, and in additon, she is Tajik, so a whole bunch of Internet wharrgarble-brains went after her hard for not being “really Russian” and it was a whole mess. So here comes my girl in this GIANT-ASS OLD SCHOOL FOLKART DRESS they have to ROLL onto the stage and she sings this AMAZE song about fuck everyone who tries to tell you how to be a woman while quoting some bullshit Russian (and most other) women hear A LOT, then cracks the dress like THE GATE-GUARDIAN AT THE END OF LABYRINTH and steps out in full Rosie the Riveter gear and the dress just sits there like a GHOST OF DEAD LADYHOOD for the REST OF THE SONG while Manizha casually throws up a bunch of photos of feminist and LGBTQ activists on the big screen and no Americans watching for the first time realize how brave it really was for her to do any of this but probably does get the power of her and her dancers all screaming don’t be afraid/it’s time for change to the world. God. It was so much and so good.

CYPRUS! Cyprus brought the club-pop mashup of Bad Romance and The VVitch we all didn’t know we wanted. Literally up there shaking her sparkly silver groove thing singing about how cool it is to sell your soul to the devil and live deliciously while girls in skintight red devil costumes WITH TAILS boogie around her and many, many Cypriot priests grab their smelling salts and have very public not-at-all-performative coronaries about it because yes, she definitely is actually promoting Satanic worship and metaphors don’t real. (Not a euphemism, they did.) Probably shouldn’t have blown your pop-music-is-demonic wad several decades ago if you beardy boyz wanted that to stick.

Seriously, though, there might be some Bad Romance copyright hellfire on the way because if Toy can get sued and lose for being too similar to Seven Nation Army (what the actual) then Cyprus better hold onto her very lovely butt.

NORWAY! Ugh, gross. I hated Norway and I don’t care what anyone says. Keiino should have done got chosen, they were robbed in 2019 (more on that ANON) and god, this douche who replaced them…look, I’ve heard the backstory that he’s very famous in Norway and has Tourette’s and feels super bad about all his older super rapey music, but I was unmoved. The song sucks, the staging was basically the end of This Is the End where all the Backstreet Boys are in heaven it looked cheap and tacky and the singer oozed skeevy privileged vibes and thanks, I hated it. I also found it pretty gross that the entire rehabilitation of this singer is based in the idea that it’s okay for him to build a career on music about women as objects and doing things without their consent because he himself was bullied before he got rich and famous. Being bullied or non-neurotypical does not absolve you of bullying others. Misogyny is not actually a symptom of Tourette’s. And him yelling you are not alone at the end as though he’s some champion of the preyed-upon and hurt when he only is where he is because he promoted preying upon and hurting women just felt so…how do you do, fellow woke people? Like what he was (and is, his aesthetic modeled on sterotypical “pimp” fashion hasn’t changed) is okay because lol it’s just women, who cares, boys will be boys, learn to take a joke. But now that the vibe in the world’s room has changed a little, he wants to hop over the fence and spackle over any criticism with praise for being brave and talking about his mental health issues. But…I just can’t, my man. If the choice is between hanging out with a guy who got rich off of singing about peeping at women and dragging them into the bushes and being alone, I would rather be alone, TIX. I really would. Where is Keiino, please. I do not want the worst bits of the American Pie movies incarnated into the body of a Norwegian bro in Dollar Store angel wings.

UGH. MY SOUL’S BURDEN IS LIGHTENED. MOVING ON TO NICER COLD COUNTRIES.

ICELAND! You have to feel bad for these wonderful people. Runaway favorite to win…the first year Eurovision is EVER cancelled. Iconic song never to be forgotten that will take its place beside Dancing Lasha Tumbai in the ranks of constantly-referenced non-winners…and in the same year a movie comes out that will be many people’s touchstone for Eurovision, which lampoons the idea that Iceland could ever win or afford to host if it did. Came back the next year! New wholesome song people love! And one of the band gets COVID so they never get to perform on the stage they worked so hard for. It’s just brutal, and they seem like the nicest imaginable people for all that to happen to. Still! Fourth place ain’t bad! But…I do think they were kind of screwed by their own success. Think About Things was SO ubiquitous and popular that it spread far beyond the Eurovision fandom—a feat in itself. Most of the 2020 artists who returned weren’t particularly associated with their cancelled songs and staging. But not Dadi. Everyone knows the sweaters and the sound and the hair. And coming back this year with Ten Years…which is just so similar, in the same costumes and dance moves…it didn’t feel as fresh as it did when it was fresh, and that’s not their fault, it’s just how it is. There was a new hotness this year, as trends will do. And no one was feeling particularly cozy and sweet this time around. People were looking for catharsis, not comfort. Everyone felt terrible for this band we all love…but it just wasn’t the aesthetic for the moment.

Doesn’t really matter. They’ll be Eurovision’s house band for the rest of their lives, and the love will never run out. You don’t have to win to get your place in the firmament.

LITHHUANIA! Oh you beautiful flagpole of a man. I love The Roop, they were my second favorite in 2020 and I respect the big expressions and unselfconscious dancing. It’s like a loose, fun David Byrne without the insistence on being a Serious Artiste. But Discotheque was another one where On Fire, their cancelled song, was stronger, they just kind of did it in yellow this time, and thus it didn’t differentiate itself enough to feel as exciting. But you gotta love those moves!

MALTA! This one had so much hype heading in but…ultimately I suspected it wouldn’t do well. It just sounded SO American to me, and if San Marino couldn’t get anyone onside by importing an actual famous American to sing the breakaway (Flo Rida, which…what even was that? What a weird choice! Senhit was so awesome on her own, she didn’t need that, and I think it alienated voters who maybe already didn’t want to hear any more rich Americans doing Eurovision Karaoke this year after the movie) then a song that had so very little of the Maltese about it wasn’t going to resonate. Eurovision always has trends, and for a long time the trend was everyone singing a song that would appeal to Anglophone audiences in English. That trend is pretty clearly over now. Chalk it up to Brexit or #ownvoices or whatever else you please, but four of the top five this year were in their own languages, very clearly communicating the contemporary culture of their individual countries, and giving extremely few fucks for the kind of bland homogenized radio appeal prized by the mid 2010s. Malta probably would have won in 2013, but this year, it was just…look. If every single person watches a performance and says “Lizzo” then perhaps it’s just going to feel like off-market Lizzo in the end and not something unique and refreshing. That said, Destiny seems freaking DELIGHTFUL and given that she’s only 18, I really feel she’ll be back and maybe even win in the future.

Also, we all learned in 2018 with Netta that Eurovision audiences are absolutely butt-vuvuzelas about plus-sized singers and the only cure for that is to just have a lot more of them until people stop being garbage about it. I don’t like being right about humans sucking, but they do so rarely let me down.

Still, #7 ain’t so bad!

SERBIA! K.

ALBANIA! Oh.

UK! Lol.

GERMANY! The fuck?

SWITZERLAND! Live from Yawn Canton. Don’t @ me.

AZERBAIJAN! Actually I still have Mata Hari stuck in my head and it is a BEAST to get out. Ariana Grande and the Chamber of Secrets was pretty much pure classic Eurovision cheese and I never want that to go away. It wasn’t ever going to win, but I was there for it. There was this whole meta narrative about Norway and Azerbaijan maybe being into each other but you’ve read this far so you know I was like: girl, run.

UKRAINE! OH SHIT HOLD UP.

Ukraine was SO GOOD. SHUM was a traditional Ukrainian spring planting song sung by Trinity from the Matrix while surrounded by spinning Instagram ring lights wearing a coat of feathers from like, every bird in Rio. The lead singer of Go_A is so hypnotic you could basically start a new religion right now with her as the deity and no one would even question it. For me, this and France were the only acceptable alternate winners. I will listen to anything she ever releases, even if it is her grocery list.

FRANCE! My beautiful precious goth croissant! Holy shit, I have never seen anything this French in my entire life. I hadn’t heard anything of the song before so Depressed Amelie just got up there and looked simple and gorgeous while stars fell around her and she sang her heart out. I only loved it more once I looked up the lyrics. It is SO raw and personal. I tried to tell my friends watching with me this one had a real shot at an upset, and they could not believe me, as it was so simple and unadorned compared to the craziness we’d just spent two and a half hours bathing in. But it was a modern version of an old-school kind of Eurovision classic, and I knew everyone was going to eat. it. up. Nothing the olds (i.e. the jury) love more than having their tastes validated by a super pretty representative of the new generation. But in this case, it should be eaten up! It’s brilliant and heartbreaking and SO FANCY and cool. Ugh, France, you were everything.

But everything wasn’t quite enough, because Italy had some business to attend to.

ITALY. My heart. Good god.

Now, I don’t usually watch any songs before the semifinals, to stay fresh for the livetweeting. But this time, the editor of Space Opera DM’d me to say you should watch Italy right now, because Decibel Jones just entered Eurovision for real.

And I did. And I fell in love. Because of course I fell in love. The song fucking kicks ass, it’s angry and unrelenting and awesome and Italian glam rock sung by the pluckiest band of passionate young people you ever saw, all of whom are painfully beautiful and earnest. The swagger. The stage-prowling. The lipstick and eyeliner. The song itself is called Zitti e Buoni, which means Be Silent and Be Good, but of course the message is please kindly fuck all that, and also don’t listen to idiots who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Tell me you were locked inside for a year without telling me you were locked inside for a year.

It was this cathartic moment of beauty and pain and fun without being saccharine, in a genre that NEVER wins Eurovision (Finland tried this year too with nu metal, but the glam rock revival was simply longer overdue than the Linkin Park renaissance) but so perfectly channeled where we were all at. They’re young and queer and unafraid of being seen as unmanly or unserious. The lead singer felt like an old school kind of rock star, the virtuoso guitarist was a girl, the drummer basically made the world fall in love with him in his disbelief that they’d won. Måneskin, half naked, half burgundy leather and a whole other half eyeliner and giant platform heels, was the new generation striking a big ol’ power chord, in their own language, not English so English people would deign to listen, and from the first country in Europe utterly ravaged by COVID, silenced before the rest of us were.

Everything just gets so fucked up sometimes.

It was everything.

And I’m not just saying that because it was like watching my book come to life.

And then we came to the voting, which was more exciting than I have EVER known it to be this year. I tried to tell everyone on Twitter to wait for the popular vote, that the televote has turned the results completely around many times before, but it didn’t stop anyone from biting their nails and getting upset at the idea that Switzerland was going to win with a prom-shirt ballad when we were all in the bag for the hard-rock kids who named themselves Moonlight in Danish.

I think there were a couple of things going on. One was just that—a whole lot of people were watching for the first time who don’t really understand how it all works. But another was that for us big Feelsvision fans, there was this low-key anxiety that 2019 was going to happen again.

Arcade by Duncan Lawrence won 2019, and it was fine. He’s a sweetheart and it’s a nice song.

But it also kind of didn’t feel totally legitimate. Because Norway, sung by a band called Keiino, had a major technical fuck-up during the jury show (the juries vote on a separate, private performance rather than the actual Grand Final) and their stage effects didn’t go off. So they got a VERY low jury score.

And then BTFO the televote. They won the home vote by a HUGE margin. And came fourth overall, because the jury vote was far too low to overcome. And it felt v ery unfair, because they couldn’t help a technical malfunction. But because of that malfunction, a pretty middle-of-the-road (yet lovely) ballad sung by a single young man with minimalist staging won over a distinctly Norwegian song that blew everyone away and featured indigenous lyrics and a giant space elk. Norway’s jury score dropped them so far down that the final tally was between Norway and Sweden, who also served a pretty but unspectacular radio-friendly pop song. It was frustrating to have the fans’ choice matter so little and it really looked like it might happen again. And I think people’s tolerance for injustice was just so topped out by important injustices that happened in the important real world that one more that really doesn’t matter at all felt way bigger in the moment than it was.

But Italy got more televotes than anyone ever had in the history of Eurovision, and they all cried and it meant so much to them and they were so happy Damiano split his pants from the front during their encore performance. And then, at the press conference after, just stripped them off and stuck a naked high-heeled leg in the air with one hand on a champagne bottle and made an image so iconic it was on t-shirts in less than ten minutes.

After growling rock and roll never dies into the mic as their acceptance speech. Not Eurovision sucks and it’s all rigged like the 2017 winner (yeah) or a humble Oscar speech. Just a big heart energy omnisexual Italian life-affirming growl of triumph and defiance and it felt SO BIG because rock and roll never dies but so many of us have in the last year and we are all deep in grief for a million things and rock and roll is SUPPOSED to be our scream into the void but over-production and cruel studio culture and the whole system made that into margarine when we all want fucking butter and damn it, we needed this. This isn't what Eurovision usually is, which is why it gets so much shit. And I wouldn't want the silly stuff to stop being a huge part of it, and even winning. But god it was so good to see something raw af crush us under its chunky platform heel.

They went SO HARD. For all of us.

It was all just so right and so pure. I’m obsessed. I will never stop blasting Måneskin out my car windows. I cried a lot, and I’m not sorry about it. The ones I want to win Eurovision SO rarely do, and I was being flooded with tweets saying DESS WINS and quoting Space Opera and the fact is I was on the highway as all this was happening, watching on cell data when I could and getting voting updates from legendary author Diane Duane when I couldn’t, it overwhelmed my poor little heart even though obviously it’s not about me and my dumb book it was just a beautiful coincidence but…imagine loving a band so much and wanting them to win and then they do and somehow hundreds of people are calling them by the name you made up to play in a world so shiny and beautiful you will never really be a part of it and also to convince people your silly obsession was real and important and deep and especially all that while you’re really struggling to write another book for those wild and crazy space kids.

IT WAS A LOT, OKAY.

And now it’s over and the off-season sucks. But I can’t wait for next year, to see if the golden age holds, to do it all over again, to laugh at it and love it at the same time, to feel human in the face of a tremendous amount of sternum-vibrating music, because if people try to copy THIS trend? We are in for a SHOW.

Life is beautiful and life is stupid. But two weeks ago Saturday, it was very, very beautiful indeed.

See you all in Italy.