All the signs, all of the mistakes

Ireland
Lesley Roy

Maps

"I was born in a distant 1980. The year of the Irish Johnny Logan war"

Ah yes. Take one or two authentic Irish folk/soul singers, add some lyrics about the countryside and shamrocks, and stir in an arrangement that sounds like a tourist video for the country shown in the breaks on CNNi. Add in a bit of stepdancing, to be sure. For well over 200 years, the powers that be at RTE in Dublin entered exactly the same song - and every year it won. I almost bought a house in Ireland to save on airfares.

I can’t remember the last time I was bored

Iceland

Daði og Gagnamagnið

10 Years

Hungary aren’t in it again this year - Orban reckons it’s all a bit too LGBT+ - which is a shame, because I used to enjoy the bit every year when their artist would turn up at an outdoor swimming pool and sing their song to a bunch of bored looking pensioners.

So where next? Oh it’s the runaway favourite. Last year’s runaway favourite. Iceland.

I once went to a whole academic conference about Eurovision. It was a day of papers and panel discussions and Paddy O'Connell spouting pseudo-academic twaddle like how the song contest has "provided a platform for the creation of national and European identities", how the event "has embraced and celebrated diversity by showcasing minority communities" and how it has been used as a "nation branding tool by countries such as Estonia and Ukraine". And I got an EBU biro.

My heart was born a radical

Greece

Stefania

Last Dance

Some countries throw half their GDP at Eurovision, but even when your total GDP is the cost of a pint in Copenhagen airport you can still pull off a masterpiece.

In 2010 for example the Greeks were so skint they handed the whole business of song picking to Universal Music Europe, and then stuck their "National Final" in the Hellenic equivalent of Westfield, with an tiny audience of customers bored queuing in TK Maxx. Look closely and you won't even see any proper speakers - the sound was piped through the shopping centre PA system as she mimed in the dark.

I really don't care that you want to bash me

Germany

Jendrik

I Don't Feel Hate

Now. You might be sat alone at your laptop staring at the election results, drinking a can of Breakers from the corner shop and wallowing in self hatred at memories of recent UK entrants, but even Humperdoink, Blue, Josh Dubovnie, Scooch, Gemini, DJ Daz and that bin man off the X Factor haven't done as badly in the past decade as the Germans.

Apart from that year when Lena sung about wearing new underwear (they're blue - I wore them just the other day), they have done really really fucking badly. Of course, they (like us) are one of the "Big Five" and thus help bankroll the whole thing, so they’ve tended not to care given they (like us) get an automatic ticket to the final (in case you've not noticed there are two semi finals on during the week leading up covered on BBC3, which is why you can get three hours in on the Saturday and STILL not see your sweepstake pick).

Wind blow I wanna see you

Georgia

Tornike Kipiani

You

It's not that long ago that the Eurovision audience - largely bored local dignitaries in the host countries - were expected to sit still, keep quiet and politely applaud each miserable entry. 

But ever since the Eastern Europeans started holding it in giant stadiums and cheap air travel meant fans could actually get there, the audience and its cheering and costumes and what our friends in the east brand as "exuberance" have been a big part of the show - holding up their phone torches for the middle eight of ballads, making us look like wankers by dressing in full Union Jack suits behind presenter links, and waving their flags. Their massive flags.

Here I am in the noise and in the fury too

France

Barbara Pravi

Voilà

France were instrumental in founding the "Concours Eurovision de la chanson" (and securing funding from the CIA for what was seen at the time as an important bit of pro-Western propaganda), and to this day insist on bits of the presentation on the night being read out in French (hence "Douze Points" and your Nan being confused at us being called "Roy and Minnie").

But right from the early days of the contest when it consisted of 5 countries, Katie Boyle and "Boom bang a ding a dong" they were pissing about being aloof and snooty. Every other country that's joined Europe's biggest party has realised it's all about bright colours, and key changes, and flashmobs, and fire curtains, and sequins, and exploding cubes (can Eric beat the cube) and prosthetic devil masks. France, on the other hand, rolls out a dreary existential piano ballad every year, shrugs and goes home again. They're like a rock solid gold guaranteed toilet break country.

Lifestyles of the sick and dangerous

Finland

Blind Channel 

Dark Side

Any birthdays coming up? Wondering what to get for that special loved one in your life? Need an "ironic" present for that Brexiteer uncle knobhead of yours? EUROS TO LITERALLY BURN?

Well as luck would have it, this year in the Eurovision tat shop as well as the obligatory beanie hats, T Shirts, mugs and mouse mats (mouse mats?) you can "CREATE YOUR OWN SONG CONTEST" by buying Eurovision: The Board Game, which manages to combine two different ways of having people you don't like in your living room into one for the bargain price of €50. What a steal!

Thought I had a cloud over my head

Estonia

Uku Suviste

The Lucky One

My favourite Estonian entry was their 2003 time travel smash "Eighties Coming Back" by Ruffus. Watch that video and suddenly you're there - not in the 80's, but in your living room in 2003 knocking back liquorsave gin and own brand frazzles with people round that you've since blocked on twitter. In this version you can even hear Wogan sounding a bit pissed blithering on about accordions and incorrectly predicting that "Baltic block voting" would work in Estonia's favour. The daft racist - it came 21st.

There was a time when the Estonians would enter "five girls in the playground pretending to be the Spice Girls" dross like this, but these days Estonia have an upsetting selection process that every year takes a ton of interesting and unusual indie stuff and slowly knocks out all the quirks until you're left with something pointlessly bland and generic. Back in 2013 for example they could have sent unpleasant multicoloured unitard punk band "Winny Pugh", but instead opted for this toilet break ballad that can't even be bothered to deliver the key change it barely builds up for. What an absolute bunch of clowns.

We'll never be more alive than right here and now

Denmark

Fyr Og Flamme

Øve Os På Hinanden

And so to Denmark, home of The Killing, the Borgen, one half of the Bridge, the Carlsberg, the Lego, the (highly underwhelming) Little Mermaid, the Hans Christian Anderson, those butter cookies you get in tins, a friend in London (because everyone has A Friend In London), these tasty looking Christmas Donuts (nom nom nom) and Emily. You know, Emily. Her off the forest.

I love Denmark. It's small. They drink (reassuringly) expensive beer. The public transport's good. They have a theme park right in the middle of their capital city. Tax is high (I like that). And it's the kind of place where you can be out browsing well designed and expensive kitchen goods when "bang!" there appears indie pop outfit Alphabeat, buying a flourescent green ladle. Although on reflection it's precisely that sort of easy living that killed the young dudes in the high boots.

There is no apocalypse long as you're here on my lips

Czech Republic

Benny Cristo

omaga

There are some countries that really try. They have big national finals and send talented try-hard X Factor rejects and hire big name songwriters and blow half their GDP on staging and go to all the preview parties and film a lovely touristy postcard. And then there's Czechia.

This year is the fifteenth year in a row they've entered without the Slovaks, and every year has been rusty nail in the foot rubbish. Their underwhelming debut in 2007 consisted of three mechanics from Kwik Fit morbidly growling, a (lack of) effort that earned them precisely one point in the first semi, from Estonia.

Hotter than sriracha on our bodies

Cyprus

Elena Tsagrinou

El Diablo

And so to Cyprus, where they drive on the left and launder Russian money. You know, like London only warmer. 

We used to go to Cyprus on holiday when I was a kid, and I was always badgering to go visit that haunting disused airport in Nicosia but instead we just seemed to visit pirate video shops to buy grainy copies of the Goonies than ran out before the e

Don’t over complicate now we’re in war zone

Croatia
Albina

Tick Tock

Those were the days. Back in the noughties bookies still regularly placed the UK in the top 5, and we were still completely baffled when phone voters around the living rooms of Europe failed to vote for whatever tuneless noise we'd spat into the content that year. 

"The UK was robbed!", we'd say, like we say when we lose at every international competition involving a level of competitive skill ever except the Darts. And even that bloke off the Darts is dead now.

I'm torn by nervous system's aching

Bulgaria
VICTORIA
Growing Up Is Getting Old

"I only saw a little bit of it, and only for a short time. I think we were in the country for maybe minutes, almost all of it at a Metro hipermart, before we turned around and came back home. My impression was ’Wow, what a dump’. Shortly after crossing the border your nose is assaulted by a sulfurous stink that makes you wonder whether you just crossed the Danube, or the River Styx.

“The parts of the country that I saw were all really run-down and grim. It’s possible this is just the area we happened to pass through, but boy what a mess. The industrial parts were like something out of a dystopian-future sci-fi movie, and the residential blocs were dirty and really ugly. But hey, now I can say I’ve been."

I see your smiley face that makes me wanna cry

Belgium
Hooverphonic

The wrong place

In normal circumstances we’d be in Belarus next, but things have gone a bit wrong in Lukashenko’s little dictatorship this year. Belarussian boomer-pop sensation Galasy ZMesta popped up in February with a back catalogue of problematic songs about women and attempted to enter a song called “I’ll teach you” that included the lyrics “I'll make you dance to the tune, I'll make you rise to the bait, I'll make you walk along the line, you'll be satisfied and happy with everything".

We’ve been here before of course. Armenia changed the title of “Don’t Deny” in 2015 to “Face the Shadow” after neighbouring countries Azerbaijan and Turkey claimed the lyrics were about their denial of the Armenian genocide. And Georgia was asked to change the lyrics to “We Don’t Wanna Put In” in 2009 due to the suspicion that “put in” was a reference to the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, but the country’s public service broadcaster refused and withdrew.

Ain’t gonna leave no survivors

Azerbaijan
Efendi
Mata Hari

Now here’s a story. Back in 1905 a woman pitches up in Paris and gets famous as a performer of Asian-inspired dances. Give it a few years and she’s touring all over Europe, telling some tale of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari - “eye of the day” in Malay.

The problem is that it was all bollocks. In truth Mata Hari was born in a little town in northern Holland in 1876, and her actual name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She’d acquired her pretty superficial knowledge of Indian dances when she lived for a few years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. As such, if anything, she was a pretty much a small-town girl in a big arcade (who got addicted to a losing game etc).

And I never thought you'd bury me and you

Austria

Vincent Bueno

Amen

Just look at the absolute state of this Austrian entry from 2005. The country that brought us Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Falco decided to enter a six-piece folk group in tracksuits doing a Latin song about "a girl from Cuba" infused with yodelling.

The chorus "exhorts everyone to dance like the girl would", but the only dancing the sole woman in the group actually does is this bit where she rubs her backside up against a trombonist. Then after they failed to qualify with this aural abscess, their broadcaster pulled out in 2006 and had the brass neck to argue that "talent ... is no longer the determining factor in contest success".

We got style and lasers, yeah

Australia
Montaigne

Technicolour

Terrible alphabet news here. Sadly, the Pyreneesian principality of A for Andorra isn't taking part again this year, which is a shame because this was an absolute banger. As was this, although I do feel like she was aiming the title at me.

There's loads of great facts about Andorra too - women live longer than men, it has an army of 12 people, the eldest able-bodied man in every family is required by law to keep a loaded rifle, and as a co-principality it's ruled by two princes! Princes who adore you! Just go ahead, now.

Bundle tears in my hand - they are rusty

Albania

Anxhela Peristeri

Karma

Here we go again! Here we go-go-go to the temple of consumption!

Can you believe that? It says here that the lyrics to Stakka Bo's 1993 tinwhistle smash "Here we go" were not, actually, "to the topper topper pop charts" (which is what I've been singing to myself ever since) but were, in fact, a biting comment on late capitalism! The lyrics to his only other "hit" (reaching #64 in the UK Top 40) were easier to understand, to be honest.