Eurovision Rants

What's Eurovision, more exactly?

Hello, and welcome to my Eurovision book! In here, I'll put my rambles about topics regarding Eurovision Song Contest and its participants over the course of the years.

Now, let's begin with the first question of the day, which might actually be one of the "does it have an actual answer or it's just how it's perceived?" kind-of question:

"What the hell is Eurovision?"

It doesn't exist a legit definition for it in order for everyone to understand it completely, so cope with me.

So, for those you might be confused by this (aka many Americans, probably), no, Eurovision Song Contest is not like Super Bowl, nor American Idol. Made myself clear here? Alright.

Eurovision Song Contest is basically Europe's answer for unity after the event which was World War II. It's a musical competition which began in 1956, based after Sanremo.*

As the name suggests: Eurovision is mainly an European competition. Every participant country sends a representative (male, female, joke act, drag queen, band, whatever) with a song which has a limit of 3 minutes (although in the early editions, there wasn't exactly a rule about how much you could make the song so)

And then, here's the dramatic part: The voting.

There's a thing you have to know: there's 2 semi-finals, The Big 5 (Italy, Spain, France, Germany & United Kingdom, which basically are automatic qualifiers because they support Eurovision financially) and the host country which is basically just joining the Big 5.

The countries there (aka the ones in the semis) fight for a spot in the final. You can't vote for your own countries, only for the ones which are in your semifinal (I think you understood and why, probably).

In the end, it's narrowed down to 26. And from there, these 26 countries fight to win the title. And there's the voting thing to decide.

The voting scheme is 12, 10, 8, 7-1. (12 is for your 1st, 10 for your 2nd and so on). Considering nowadays it's also the televote which counts, whoever manages to gain the most points in the combined voting wins the competition.

The winner is crowned as an Eurovision winner, gets the Eurovision trophy, and his/her/their country has the opportunity to host the upcoming edition next year.

Example: In 2017, Salvador Sobral won the contest with 758 points after a long streak of failures. Portugal's last best spot was 6th place before "Amar Pelos Dois". Therefore, this year, Eurovision moved to Portugal - more exactly in Lisbon.

This fabulous contest had been around us since 1956, and it keeps on growing. And, of course, the fanbase starts growing each year.

As a fellow europal myself, this book is generally oriented to the enitre history of Eurovision, some rants here and there, fun facts and furthermore. Have fun reading this, because this is going to be one hell of a crazy train.

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*Sanremo Music Festival - A music festival which began in Italy since 1951 and continues strong as a.... music festival. Also it ended up to choose the Italian representative for Eurovision Song Contest, and it's often accredited with placing the bases for our lovely contest. NOT to be confused with a National Selection.

~Kebab