What you should know about the Eurovision Song Contest if you have never watched it

johannesviii:

• Eurovision is the dumbest and most wonderful thing on television. Nowadays you can watch it live on the official Eurovision Youtube channel, which is much better than tv because there’s no ads AND you can hear all the presenters’ wonderful accents instead of whoever is commenting in your own country. Double win.
  
• A lot of non-European countries participate to this thing with “Euro” in its name. We know. Get over it. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense anyway so why would you draw the line at “this isn’t a European country so this isn’t logical”. Like. Guys. People are burning pianos and baking bread on stage. Come on.
  
• The jury will almost never vote for the songs you actually liked. Sometimes they won’t even vote for the songs themselves but for the other countries they like. It’s okay. It’s part of the fun. The public’s points can change absolutely everything anyway.
• The actual goal is to become a meme, really. Moldova in particular usually knows that (even though their 2019 entry looks rather serious), but you can never anticipate anything. Did anyone see Ukraine’s flaming coffin-piano coming last year? I didn’t.
• You can’t vote for your own country. That’s also the point (although it’s not too bad in my case since my country, France, doesn’t understand the meme aspect and keeps sending serious stuff. Our real goal is actually to have more points than England and that’s basically it. My favorite French entry is actually our worst score ever. This is sad).
• The songs have to be short and non-political, which kinda explains why a lot of them are about love and/or peace (see below).
• At some point someone in the public will probably try to climb on stage and do something stupid.
  
• It isn’t Eurovision until something is on fire.
• It also isn’t Eurovision if there isn’t something truely incomprehensible happening on stage.
• Like in these examples from last year.

Originally posted by littleballofemo

Originally posted by everything-eurovision-2019

Originally posted by isabellaofparma

Some notable entries

• This parody has everything you need to know about eurovision. No, really. Watch it. I’ll wait here
  
• This is Verka Serduchka from 2007. ALL HAIL VERKA SERDUCHKA.

Originally posted by sherlockedshamy

• This guy with the awesome saxophone solo is Sergey Stepanov from Sunstroke Project.
• You might know him as The Epic Sax Guy.
• Also he came back in 2017 to save our souls.
  

Originally posted by trash-gaylie-moved

• This is my favorite Russian entry ever and it has grandmas baking bread on stage.
• Ireland once sent a muppet turkey which kept saying “Irlande douze points” (Ireland twelve points in French). No, it didn’t win
  
• In 2006, Finland won with this entry. It is glorious and I will hear no argument otherwise
• This was Ukraine’s entry last year and the first contestant to open the grand finale. Yes, the guy is in a piano that is also a coffin. Yes, the stairs and the piano are on fire. Yes, this is the kind of madness that usually happens at least once per year.

Originally posted by lesamisshipwreck

• In 2015 Israël sent an extremely catchy song which rhymed “And before I leave” with “let me show you Tel Aviv” (10/10 everyone can go home) and ended with “ok, we’ve gotta go! Three minutes! Bye bye” because the timer ran out.
• Also, last year in 2018, they won with this wonderful bit of chicken-like beatboxing.

The Grand Finale is next Saturday and we can’t be sure of anything yet but in the rehearsals we already have a song which chorus is “nanana” repeated over and over, a guy with green bird-like sleeves and random sneakers doing some sort of interpretative dance, and bondage s&m synth punk. No, really.

See you next Saturday!

(via kalianos)