Last weekend Eurovision 2023 ended, probably the strangest in the history of this competition. Instead of last year’s winner in Ukraine, he, by right of silver medalist, was hosted by Great Britain. Russian media’s special correspondent Aleksey Krizhevsky compared this year’s Eurovision with previous ones and concluded that the competition, most unusual in its form, was the prologue of a new musical order in which Russia is struggling to find his place.
gentleman’s set
In past years, at Eurovision, you could play a kind of bingo. Almost in every contest necessarily appear:
Lord of the Lost (Germany) in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023Martin Meissner / AP
a group in monster costumes (this time – Germany); a group with a song in the national language (Slovenia); a guitar group dreaming of bewitching the public with good old rock’n’roll (Australia), a singer from the Baltic/Scandinavian region with a dark number from Europop who often wins (winner 2023 Sweden); a singer or singer with an excellent number that does not fit as much as possible into the average format of Eurovision (oddly enough, Ukraine); a team from a generally Balkan country, whose fairly costumed number is full of clowning and dancing (Croatia); nine years ago, with the onset of geopolitical turbulence around Ukraine, another element of this gentleman’s set was added to this line-up: a politicized and heartfelt song about the current situation in the world (the winner of 2014 was the Crimean Tatar singer Jamala, who represented Ukraine).
Depending on the year, one or another item from this gentleman’s ensemble won (or vice versa, took last place in the list).
New old rules
In the current competition, everything is turned upside down compared to the previous one. Most politicized was the Croatian band’s anti-war number about the “little psychopath”, resolved in the Laibach band’s post-totalitarian aesthetic.
Let 3 (Croatia) in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023Martin Meissner / AP
The most unformatted, as I noted above, was the number of Ukraine, the “guest hostess” of Eurovision, unable to accept the contest due to hostilities. The Ukrainian team Tvorchi with an atypical number for this country in English and a black singer presented the most unexpected composition.
Finally, singer Loreen, who brought victory to Sweden for the second time in the last ten years, showed that the competition itself is much more important than the final of this musical contest. The rousing Europop, built on tried-and-true moves, plus spectacular stage and choreography, proved enough to appeal to changing European audiences. And year after year, if nothing new happens on the planet, she chooses Eurovision favorites like God clothes her soul.
For comparison, let’s recall Eurovision 2022, which was marked by a pre-determined and conditioned by the hot phase of the armed conflict the victory of Ukraine (as well as the victory of Jamala in 2014). The folk-hip-hop number Kalush Orchestra with a strong ethnic component, as last year showed, really had the potential for a big hit. At the same time, he could have won if not for the disaster that unfolded in the homeland of artists.
After all, does anyone remember Sam Ryder’s ‘Space Man’ which gave the UK second place in 2022? But it was he who gave the island state the right to host the competition on its territory due to the impossibility of doing so under the howl of an air raid alarm in Kiev. No, a year ago everything was overshadowed by the Ukrainian number – I repeat, he was convincing regardless of the “additional circumstances” that ensured his victory.
The return of normality
The current Eurovision has shown that a new European normal is replacing last year’s military emergency.
Yes, Ukrainian flags and Ukrainian speech on the streets of the city became its new signs outside the television screen. But at the same time, the country with which Europe still stands in solidarity is no longer assured of first place. Without too much grief, she takes eighth place – not ashamed, but not a champion either.
Martin Meissner/AP
But at the same time, there were a lot of Ukrainians in the competition – from performances at the opening, from yellow and blue to the colors of the hosts’ clothes. Finally, an impressive out-of-competition number (first for its visual solution), in which the Ukrainian singer Alyosha and the British Rebecca Fergusson took over Duran Duran’s famous hit “Ordinary World”, the melody of which was woven into the noise an air raid alert. The “ordinary world” now looks and sounds exactly like that.
Nevertheless, the triumphs again, as many times before, were Scandinavia, adept at creating pop hits: the top two places went to Sweden and Finland. They, along with bronze medalist Israel next year, will go directly to the final, without qualifying stages.
Russia is not expected and Russia is not waiting
One element of this new normal, unfortunately for Russians, will be Russia’s absence from this pop music championship. Moreover, if last year the disqualification was quite sudden, when the membership of television channels of the Russian Federation in the European Broadcasting Union was suspended, this year it formally corresponded to the letter of the regulations . A country that, for one reason or another, skips a year in Eurovision is deprived of the right to participate in the next one. And we must not flatter ourselves that in the years to come the Russia expected at Eurovision.
This was the reason for resentment in service, so to speak, in the official Russian press and on television. The soloist of the Käärja project, representing Finland, recalled a bare chest and green sleeves, dancing in a negligee to the eccentric Croats of Let 3, and the promotion of these very unconventional values ​​which make ties tremble for the whole competition.
It should be noted, however, that the contest is discussed in this spirit in the national media every time Russia performs in Eurovision unsuccessfully or does not participate at all. It seems that in Liverpool all these statements simply went unnoticed.
And that, oddly enough, is also part of the new – but now Russian – normal that the citizens of our country will have to get used to. As well as the fans of these sports whose federations are excluded from the European sports family and are moving towards the Asian family, having no other options to continue their activities.
The question “what to do?” stands sharply in front of fans of Russian pop music. But really, what? Well, for example, one can sigh at the forever changed circumstances and the incompleteness of the European musical world without the Russian tricolor and the artists of our country. Or, on the contrary, go back, repeating learned phrases about the “abolition of Russian culture” (although the only one who represented it at Eurovision in recent years may have been “Buranovskiye Babushki”) .
In time, only one thing will remain – to watch, like the naive provincials in the film “The Nameless Star”, a decorated musical express rushing in, in which there is no – and, it seems , there can be no more – passengers From Russia.
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