Eurovision, Israel wins popular vote

The popular vote of last night's Eurovision Song Contest was won by Israel by a significant margin. A queer man singing in a woman's voice (counter-tenor is the official term) won for Austria overall. Yuval Raphael who survived the Hamas attack, at the last concert she went to in Israel, came to Europe to sing her positive upbeat song, "New Day Will Rise". The disconnect between the politics of the street - with angry-faced thousands marching for Palestine and the wishes of Europe's silent majority could not be clearer. The antisemitism that has plagued so many political arenas across Europe in the last year is not the feeling of the majority here.

I wonder what would have happened if Israel had won overall instead of Austria. Could they have held the contest in Israel?

More contestants sang their songs in their languages rather than in English and more attempted to sing in French than before, including Yuval who sang a verse in French and Hebrew as well as English. But songs lacking English content did not do as well with the public as with jurors with the obvious exception of Britain itself - English remains the main language of connectivity in Europe and the organisers hosted in that language. Britain scored null points from the public though did better with the juries and still seems isolated following BREXIT. Their song was a little blasphemous, all style and no substance, so perhaps this is just as well. Switzerland was highly favored by the national jurors but also received no votes in the popular vote. The disconnect between the experts and the public is a feature of recent years with France and Italy also beneficiaries of their bias.

trophy33 said:

I think that this title from a local media here, describes it well:

Music is secondary. Eurovision is something between a cult and a circus.

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Quite possibly, I am always less fascinated by the songs themselves than by the messaging of the voting and the ways in which the contest is a kind of political barometer of the times. It seems for example that wokism is a feature of this cultural festival but that the public vote can override that. That said some of the special effects they are capable of staging now are quite spectacular and complement the music very well.

Friedrich Rubinstein said:

Switzerland got the 2nd most points from the jury, so I expected the song to be pretty decent (I didn't actually listen to it). When they received zero points from the popular vote, I thought it must be a technical error, haha!

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The Swiss song was better than the British one but not Celine Dion level. Still null points from the public was harsh

The media is now talking about Israel's success in the public vote as a cheat. That Mossad played social media or something like that. But maybe the anti-semites just cannot bear the fact that most people are not so ugly.