I had exactly one wish when I tuned into EuroVision for the first time in my life this weekend: let one of these performers be out of their goddamn minds. That wish was pleasantly granted.
The vast majority of performers wereโฆ fine. They were lovely, talented people with good pop bonafides who were pleasant to look at and able to hit notes I canโt even draw on a staff. If thatโs your thing, you were well cared for. On the other hand, a fair few stood out not only by their skill, but because they dialed in their performance from a fever dream and dared the European Broadcasting Union (or in my case, Peacock) to shut them down.
The real winner of the night, voting be damned, was Let 3 out of Croatia, essentially a Slavic version of GWAR with fewer dinosaurs and more dicks who has been at this since 1987. Their song โMama ล ฤ!โ was a combination anti-war ballad and ode to ejaculation that was performed by the band dancing in dresses and Cold War uniforms. While the tune took a bit to get catchy, by the end they had the audience eating out of the palms of their hands.
I say voting be damned, but one of my favorite parts of the finale was watching Croatia jump from nearly last place to the top half once the audience vote came in. For the uninitiated, EuroVision has an Electoral College-type system where the judges of each country hand off 12 points to a preferred winner, and then a proportional audience vote is added. Croatia got virtually nothing from the judges, but the people rallied behind them by triple digits. I have never been so impressed with democracy in my life.
Sadly, the German delegation didnโt get the same love. Lord of the Lost performed their song โBlood and Glitter,โ and it was everything you could want from German metal. Founder and lead singer Chris Harms dressed like Brian Slade from Velvet Goldmine had to sell one sparkly leg of his jumpsuit to pay for extra eyeliner, then proceeded to burn the place down with a combination of tropey Goth somberness and near-operatic battle crying. I vote that we replace Dee Snider, who decided to burn his career down with transphobia this month, with Harms for all future glam metal endeavors.
Voting also came through for Finland. I knew Kรครคrijรค was going to be good the second he opened his performance by busting out of a crate like My Pet Monster. โOh man, he’s loose! None of us are safe!โ I said out loud to no one. By the time he was joined by a quartet of pink-clad backup dancers it was clear that โCha Cha Chaโ was the banger of the night. Nothing stopped the momentum. Not Kรครคrijรคโs weird yellow not-a-shirt, not the Donkey Kong dance during the chorus, not even the human centipede he and the dancers formed near the end. No, I will not apologize for that pun.
The audience was so into it that the final vote counts were continuously interrupted with chants of โCha Cha Cha.โ If Finland hadnโt jumped to second place thanks to a startling 376 point infusion from the phone voters I am convinced the live crowd would have rioted. They only netted runner up, but the people spoke clear: we want quirky weirdoes.
As for Loreen from Sweden who took home the prize mostly thanks to a near sweep from the juries, she was at least pleasantly bananas, too. Dressed as a mummy with long stone fingernails, her performance of โTattooโ made it look like she was fighting her way out of an early grave or collapsed magical prison. I have never been so convinced that a musician has eaten human flesh as I was watching Loreen vamp and swipe at the air with her claws. While not the parade of human oddities that Croatia and Germany provided, she was still a worthy inclusion to the freak show.
Letโs hope next year is even weirder because pretty people singing ballads is fine, but we need music for the anti-normal world of today.ย
This article appears in Jan 1 โ Dec 31, 2023.
