ESC Etc.

As of this post, 35 countries have confirmed their participation to Eurovision 2024. We are still waiting to hear back from Armenia, Australia, North Macedonia, and Romania – four countries that are facing unique challenges not necessarily related to the contest. Armenia is currently experiencing a staggering refugee crisis which has further escalated tensions with Azerbaijan; that said, the Armenian delegation does not usually take to social media to confirm their participation, so it is fair to assume they will be back next year once the official list is finalized. Australia, an EBU associate member, is negotiating new terms – most likely financial – related to the future of their participation after their 5-year invitation agreement lapsed this year. SBS, the Australian public service broadcaster affiliated with the contest, recently confirmed that they will be broadcasting next year’s contest, which seems to bode well. Both North Macedonia and Romania confirmed that they have submitted budget plans that include funding to cover their 2024 participation but are waiting for official governmental approval. If all four countries were to confirm their participation (fingers crossed!), this would bring us to a total of 39 entrants – one more compared to the 2023 contest.

In this post, we will look at the first 10 confirmed countries for 2024. What can we expect? Who’s coming to win? Who might flop? Here are my November hot takes which I am sure I will regret in January.

ALBANIA

Albania will come correct. Festivali i Këngës has determined the Albanian ESC representative since the early 2000s and it dates all the way back to 1962. It is an established institution that is embedded in the history and culture of the country which, as far as national finals go, is pretty much exactly what you want: a contest that would exist even if ESC didn’t (see Sanremo and Melodifestivalen) that is meant to celebrate the country’s musical tradition, consistently attracting big name artists. While I don’t always gel with the Albanian entry, there is no denying that there is a baseline of quality to everything they send year in, year out, and the two recent entries that did hit for me (2018’s Mall an 2019’s Ktheju Tokës) really hit and would on balance have made for great ESC winners. I do have a few concerns related to the newly established rule that, as of 2023, sends the public vote winner to ESC even if they’re not the actual winners of the festival (it immediately happened this year and Elsa Lila, who won with the song Evita, had to make way for Albina & Familja Kelmendi, the runners-up) in the sense that it might continue to produce entries that unsurprisingly do well with the televote and then get dust from the juries (Duje came in #10 and #21, respectively) ultimately ending up mid-table in the final.

AUSTRIA

I have…doubts. Two years in a row now, Austria has sent a devastating bop with a studio cut that screamed winner only to be undone by the live. Halo, the 2022 entry by LUM!X and Pia Maria, infamously crashed out in the semis after a complete on-stage vocal collapse; the 2023 entry, Who the Hell Is Edgar? by Teya and Salena, didn’t live up to the novelty aesthetic of the music video opting instead for a slicker but less distinctive staging concept and, on top of that, was then chosen to open the Grand Final aka the televote kiss of death. ORF, the national broadcaster, will be once again running an internal selection, with the chosen performer to be reportedly announced before the end of the year. Will they be also vetted to ensure their live vocals are together? I think we’re likely to get another uptempo number, especially if the winner of the selection is another songwriting bootcamp product, so I’m at least excited for that. It’ll still need to all come together on stage, which remains for now a bit of a question mark.

AZERBAIJAN

2023 felt a bit like a transitional year for Azerbaijan, following the 2022 jury voting scandal in which they were involved, and almost like they didn’t have the heart for it. While their entry this year wasn’t particularly competitive and ultimately failed to advance, it did present a more authentic perspective, and I’m really happy that they are reportedly once again opting for a homegrown act/track instead of flying out to Sweden and raiding the Melodifestivalen basement of rejected songs. I’m actually hopeful we’ll be getting a stronger overall package in 2024, and while we’re yet to hear any substantial updates, I have a feeling it’s going to be more Cleopatra (traditional/local sound with a mainstream pop sensibility appealing to both juries and televote) and less Fade to Black (sad boy ballad, caterwauling). Truthfully, I wish we could just get Efendi every year, but that’s just not the world we live in.

BELGIUM

Belgium was the first country to reveal their 2024 representative, Mustii. This pick seems in keeping with the way the Wallonian broadcaster chooses their entries – usually a performer in their 20s doing dark pop/electronica who is selected internally – and it’s been mostly ups (Blanche, Loïc) with a few downs (Jérémie). I knew of Mustii as one of the judges in Drag Race Belgique, and he’s apparently a fairly established actor and musician with a clear sound and point of view. We don’t have a song as of yet, but there is a certain cinematic flair to his music videos that leads me to believe staging is in very good hands, which isn’t nothing. I’m not necessarily expecting Mustii to make us dance, but I’d be very happy with a moody electronica piece with some drama and a hook. Belgium also gets extra points for sending a queer representative two years in a row.

CROATIA

HRT, the Croatian national broadcaster, has been sending the winner of the Dora Festival to ESC since 1993 (excluding 2013 – 2018) but, perhaps surprisingly, is yet to win the contest (or get a Top 3 finish, for that matter). Dora is on paper a great platform and selection method, as all well-established national festivals tend to be, but it is historically just a bit more all over the place both in terms of the selection of songs that get invited to compete (disparate, whiplash-inducing levels of performance and singing ability across the board) and the winners that get chosen (Let 3 immediately following Mia Dimšić is the biggest 180 I’ve seen a country do since Iceland sent Hatari a year after choosing Ari Ólafsson with a song so incomprehensibly bad it still hurts my feelings). I was a huge fan of Mama ŠČ! and in general of men over 50 performing in tighty-whities, so more of that, please?

CYPRUS

Cyprus is sending Silia Kapsis, a 16-year old Australian performer of Cypriot origin (by way of her father). I’m going to be honest here: I am not a fan of countries that send children to adult ESC, especially when JESC exists to do exactly that. It took Cyprus a bit longer than expected to confirm Silia’s participation, and in the meantime I was hoping they would actually reconsider and just choose someone else. Let me be clear – I have absolutely nothing against this girl, and she seems to be a talented dancer with a fun, engaging personality. That said, I think I just have a hard time investing in an act that hasn’t graduated high school yet. I also generally don’t think that ESC rules should really allow anybody younger than 20 or 21 to go and compete – I feel like the expectation/pressure/stress that comes with having to represent your country on an international stage is just too much to place on the shoulders of someone that young who is just getting started. Just look at what happened with Greece this year: Victor Vernicos was supposed to have the song, the voice, the experience, and the talent, and immediately went into nuclear fission the second he got up on stage to rehearse. Why put a 16-year-old kid through that? What can they possibly take away from the experience as they’re just starting to sort themselves out? I looked at Silia’s YouTube page and…why not wait a few more years and give this girl just some more time to grow up, develop more of an artistic identity, work with better producers (Dimitris Kontopulous is writing her ESC song), even just decide if this is what she wants to do for the rest of her life, and then send her when she’s actually had more experience and a couple of more established hits? Anyway.

CZECHIA

Czechia just recently confirmed their participation, but we don’t know anything else about it at this point, and even the national broadcaster seems unsure whether there will be a national final or a more straightforward internal selection. Czechia is still looking for their first victory, and their general interest in ESC seems to be stalling a bit in terms of viewing figures (I actually read somewhere that their 2024 participation was predicated upon a Top 10 finish in 2023, and they luckily achieved just that) which in turn makes it hard to get a consistently strong selection of songs and artists to compete. I did think their 2023 lineup was fairly solid, including one of my absolute favorite songs from the whole season, so I’m inclined to think that they will come correct even if they don’t have a lot of money and resources to throw at it. Their last two entries in particular were a great addition to the 2022 and 2023 rosters.

DENMARK

It is fundamentally hard for me to root for a country that doesn’t really seem to be rooting for themselves. Since hosting the contest in 2014 and infamously going three times over budget and nearly bankrupting the entire country, Denmark has pretty much been content to kind of fly under the radar while almost actively trying not to send particularly competitive songs (they have only qualified 3 times since then). Stig Karlsen, the head of the Norwegian delegation, more or less implied in a recent interview that Denmark isn’t really trying at this point, and while he likes to talk a lot, I don’t think he would have any reason to lie about that. I will say that there’s probably more of an incentive to do decently well in a year where the contest is taking place in a neighboring country, but the Danish national final is so utterly chaotic and in such need of a complete reset, I’m not quite sure what we’re going to get, and if we should care. Sorry.

ESTONIA

Eesti Laul is on balance one of my favorite national finals every year, and every year I find a number of songs that go straight into my playlist – unfortunately, none of them actually go on to win the contest. I was a huge fan of House of Glass this year, and in many ways this was the song that officially launched the whole 2023 ESC season for me. I still sing the bejesus out of it in my car and I thought it would have made for a great, very competitive entry at ESC, and instead they went and chose what turned out to be my absolute least favorite song of the whole year. I find that the strength of this national final in particular is in the range of different sounds, trends, and genres that get invited to compete, but I also think that Estonia is a bit too happy just playing it safe, which ultimately results in winners that are uninspired if not outright atrocious. I would like them to just take a leap of faith one year and send something completely unexpected and out of the box even just to see how it is received and then just regroup from there. You have options!

FINLAND

As I already discussed in my most recent podcast episode, I really think Finland is thirsty for a win and is going to go the whole hog in 2024. I was concerned for the longest time that the national delegation would be at a bit of an impasse trying to figure what to do in a post-Käärijä era: do we send another great novelty act (only to have people complain that it’s not Cha Cha Cha) or just go for something completely different (only to have people complain that it’s not Cha Cha Cha)? In the end, the national broadcaster received so many applications to UMK – the Finnish national final – that I am fairly certain that the seven songs selected will all be extremely competitive and that the focus, as we now know, was always on assembling the strongest and most diverse lineup possible. Great! My concern at this point rests entirely on the Finnish voters at home because…what are they doing? UMK this year had four incredibly competitive songs (Ylivoimainen, Something to Lose, and Hoida mut alongside the eventual winner) and three other songs that were, uh…also there. So what happened? Finland picked up their phones and, in Käärijä’s absence, would have sent Portion Boys and their fever dream of a song to Liverpool over any of those three songs that, even more concerningly, ended up in 5th, 6th, and last place. Ultimately, I feel like the 75%-25% televote and jury split at UMK is A) not really in line with the way ESC actually chooses the winner and B) putting a lot of trust on the voters at home to choose wisely. Having said all of that…if you have seven great songs to choose from, you end up with a great song no matter what wins. Bring it.

FP