Hello Europe,
Basel. On Saturday May 17th the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 has taken place. Read impressions and a review about the show here.
What a crazy day, what an even crazier week. After having cried myself to sleep the night before for missing the event of my life and dealing with another bereavement in the family another big day finally came. Now the question was: keeping on grieving or following the tradition and celebrate at least this special night making the best day possible of it? In the end Eurovision will be Eurovision, no matter what happens it will be an event I will always look forward to and value. So after this fail of mine I had decided to create the best day possible for my family and myself increasing myself to the Grand Final. After we have visited a fairground we continued with a large shopping tour so that we could finish off with an exciting Grand Final night.
Between „United by Music“ and „Welcome Home, Eurovision“
“Building Bridges”, “We are One”, “Celebrate Diversity” – in the history of Eurovision we have had many beautiful as well as meaningful yearly changing mottos along with the pattern and color-combinations. But if you noticed it is the third year in a row now that we meet the Eurovision Song Contest under the exact same motto: “United by Music”. This is not a coincident. As official sources report, the European Broadcasting Union (short: EBU) has decided on maintaining this particular slogan as a peace-keeping action on behalf of the Russian war against Ukraine. The slogan “United by Music” intends to emphasize the idea that people can be united in peace by music.
Nonetheless the Eurovision Song Contest has also returned to its home-country with Switzerland after 36 years (last time Céline Dion has brought the contest home in 1988). Since Switzerland is the country of origin to the Grand Prix Switzerland could not go without the additional slogan “Welcome Home, Eurovision”. This is not only understandable but also a welcome change. Basically I support the idea of peace and unity with art but what makes Eurovision exciting as it is is its yearly change. Furthermore looking at all the mottos from at least the last 15 years each of the slogans have been social-politically meaningful. Therefore the change could basically continue. Nonetheless Switzerland made a good example simply including an additional slogan to the show it hosts.
Eurovision 2025: Personal Ranking
Here is my personal ranking. From the colors you can see which countries and acts I ranked higher and which countries I ranked lower than they actually were. The picture shows a clear surprising result that my personal ranks clearly differ from the actual result.
- Sweden
- Armenia
- San Marino
- Netherlands
- Estonia
- Luxembourg
- Iceland
- France
- Norway
- Greece
- Albania
- Denmark
- Poland
- Portugal
- Italy
- Austria
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- Latvia
- Israel
- Lithuania
- United Kingdom
- Spain
- Germany
- Finland
- Malta
Prohibit National Broadcasters or Their Commentators
What a tragedy – while the enchanting hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 proudly introduced the commentators of the national broadcasters at some point during the grand final I really started switching from telecommunication provider HD-quality to the YouTube livestream as I could not bear the poor comments of the German spokesman any longer. It is one thing if you as national broadcaster consider your country’s act the best and praise it accordingly at any given (or even not given opportunity) but as a fair player he went way too far kissing neighbor’s best parts of the body in a spoken sense. Good punch in the face I would say when during the national votes the return was almost nothing. But worse than this pathetically desperate call for appreciation what bothered even more was that the only act where he went without his kind and cheerful comments was for Israel.
Talking about Israel I must say that I LOVE post-Eurovision memes like this one here:
It is probably too real to be true and literally all of us felt this moment! Dear Yuval, from musician to musician: Is your survival of the Hamas-attack in combination of a song you did not even write on your own the only quality you can support and carry your talent with? Swallow it down! Eurovision is NOT and should NOT be the place to direct, solve or decide conflicts in a one-sided way. With this logic Armenia should have had won 19 Eurovision Song Contests and – what should participants say who have not experienced equal strokes of fate? I do not want to write an argumentation about who is right in the Israel-Palestine-conflict here. But let us not forget how in the past voices for Palestine had been raised (ab-)using the stage of Eurovision and the corresponding countries disapproved of their representative’s behavior.
My anger lies even deeper with this particular incident because of the Israeli national broadcaster’s behavior towards Armenia pulling Parg’s song through the mud, poorly excusing it with commonly made jokes and still expecting world’s empathy. This was the moment when I completely lost it. May be that in times of war silence would favor the offender but let us be clear: those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones themselves.
In these means I applauded to Tommy Cash’s response to Israel:
So, long speech short: What is this thing with politics and personal stories? Sure emotion is important in music but let us keep politics clearly out of the contest and actually celebrate music, nations and their versatile traits. Most of all let us keep the contest fair and equal. A good performance should never be measured by a conflict or a particular side. In the end a single person never decides the worth of a territory, side or nation and neither does it carry the weight of responsibility. As a good outcome I most of all hyped and celebrated the idea that Eurovision performances are never measured by the winning act but the idea that every participant has their deserved place in the heart of any fan and that you do not have to win the contest to be an absolute runner: Like this I can confirm from our Armenian school that even three weeks after the contest the children keep singing “Espresso Macchiato” and my two most favorite performances from the passed two years fusioning together better than one could ever image. Very well done!
Austria 2026
Regarding just the head-to-head competition between Austria and Israel we seem to see a trend here counter tenor with a mix of electronic as well as mid-level singing (just like Nemo last year) gains popularity in Eurovision. I was very sorry to learn Nemo was prohibited to hold the trophy after breaking it last year (probably out of excitement) to pass it on to JJ. But in any way with all his talent JJ is an exceptional and deserved winner bringing experience in the Vienna state opera. Just basically it is very inspiring for all sopranos that opera voices gain popularity and appreciation the happier I was to see that Elina Nechayeva (Eurovision Estonia 2018) covered the winning song immediately and beautifully. So let us enjoy the versatility of music.
Love, Johanna
Strengthen Your Spirit 