United by Music

Somehow 2025 is almost at an end. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s absolutely flown by, and it feels like such a lot has happened. As we close this chapter, I wanted to take a look back at the year in Eurovision and give recognition to some of its stars. To do so, I have created my ‘Eurovision Awards’, which I will be using to reflect on what the contest has offered us over this past year. The categories, nominees and winners have all been determined by a panel of one, so there may be a little bit of personal bias present, but I have never claimed to be objective! I would like to clarify that these awards are not in any way related to the official ‘Eurovision Awards’ organised by the EBU’s social media channels. I haven’t seen much about them this year but know that they have taken place in previous years so wish to re-affirm that I alone have chosen these categories and their respective winners.   Song of the Year To be awarded to the best competing entry in this...

Those of you who follow me on Bluesky may have seen that over the course of December, I've been sharing some of my favourite Eurovision songs in the style of a traditional Advent Calendar: one song each day to take you on a trip down memory lane and bring a bit of Eurovision into the off-season (though we don't seem to be having much of an off-season this year). Here, I'll be compiling all 24 of my chosen songs. If you've been following along on Bluesky, you'll have seen it all before and I won't be adding anything else - this is solely intended to record my thoughts and choices for the sake of posterity. You can find my Bluesky account [] if you're interested in future lists and countdowns like this. Day 1:  Norway 2019: KEiiNO - “Spirit in the Sky” My favourite song from the Tel Aviv contest and one that I believe has stood the test of time. An absolute banger fully deserving of its televote victory. Day 2:  Luxembourg 1973: Anne-Marie David - “Tu te recon...

I have followed the Junior Eurovision Song Contest intermittently since 2018. Back then, I had only just become a die-hard Eurovision fan, and was a similar age to many of the competing artists. Over the years, I’ve had varying levels of engagement with the contest, from actively following the build-up in 2019 to taking no notice at all in 2024. The participation of the UK in Junior Eurovision piqued my interest in 2022, and I paid the competition a bit more attention during our short-lived return – even watching the contest live in 2023 whilst revising for an exam the next morning! This year, I decided to approach the contest blind. The general chaos of life meant that I hadn’t had much time to listen to all of the competing entries beforehand, and I also thought it would be a new and interesting experience to share only my first impressions. I watched the show live on YouTube, accompanied by my younger sister, who is much more musically gifted than I am – and certainly doesn’t sh...

 This summer, whilst on holiday in the lovely country of Luxembourg, I spent a day exploring the capital, the appropriately-named Luxembourg City. Of course, there had to be a bit of Eurovision-related sightseeing involved, so in this post I’ll be sharing some memories from my trip, as well as having a bit of a walk down memory lane looking at Luxembourg’s role in Eurovision through the years.  Luxembourg has a long history of participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, having been one of the seven countries present at the very first contest in 1956. That year, each country sent two entries to Lugano, and both of Luxembourg’s were performed by French singer Michèle Arnaud. The full results of Eurovision 1956 have never been made publicly available, and as such, we don’t know how either of these songs placed, only that they didn’t emerge victorious. Perhaps, then, we can treat 1957’s Danièle Dupré as Luxembourg’s de facto debut in the contest. Singing “Tant de peine” in Fran...