United by Music

Eurovision is back! Back with a bang? Maybe not. Even if everything didn’t feel so distinctly off this year due to certain events, the production ORF is giving us feels like a real downgrade from the last few years. Maybe we’ve been spoilt with Hannah, Petra and Hazel in consecutive years (not forgetting the wonderful people who co-hosted with them), but Michael and Victoria are wooden, unfunny and lacking in any chemistry. The production team seem to be trying to cast Michael as the ‘funny one’ (hence all the strange outfits), but it just isn’t working. He’d be much better in a similar role to Jan Smit from 2021. And Victoria just seems so… vapid. Anyway, I might be able to give the hosts a bit of a pass had the rest of the show been better. I will say that I really enjoyed the acrobatic performance we saw, but the Eurovision quiz and the “Opposites” song were both frankly painful to watch. I’d be quite happy to ban all previous Eurovision contestants from coming back as interval ac...

Before you read this post about Eurovision 2026, I encourage you to have a look at my  statement  on this year’s contest. It’s Eurovision time again! It hardly seems like yesterday that we watched JJ take the trophy in Basel, but somehow the first semi-final is already upon us, with fifteen countries set to compete for ten places in Saturday’s final. We will also have exhibition performances from automatic qualifiers Germany and Italy. As was the case last year, the EBU has released various pictures from arena rehearsals and also a thirty-second snippet of each performance, so we have a little taster of what to expect but could still be surprised yet. The following is a short assessment of each competing song’s chances tonight – of course, there is still a lot that I don’t know, so there may be some unwise predictions here, but it’s my best guess as of now. A week or two ago, before rehearsals commenced in Vienna, I published some detailed predictions of the semi-final results...

We're nearly there: Eurovision 2026 is about to kick off in Vienna so it's about time I shared my thoughts on the last of this year's entries. This time, I'm discussing Austria, Bulgaria, Israel, Luxembourg and Sweden. Bulgaria: Dara – “Bangaranga” Bulgaria is one of three countries returning to the Eurovision Song Contest this year. After a string of good results in the late 2010s, the country withdrew from Eurovision in 2023 citing financial concerns. This year, however, Bulgaria is back and held a two-stage national selection to choose its entry. In the first stage of the process, Dara was chosen from a line-up of fifteen prominent artists, and the song “Bangaranga” was then selected over two others. The song is a deliberately chaotic slice of modern Eurovision pop: loud, hyperactive and designed to be an assault on the senses. It blends aggressive electro-pop production with Balkan-inspired imagery and an intentionally anarchic hook. It’s catchy almost by brute forc...