In the 1960s, just as the world\u2019s most beloved song contest was entering its second decade, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) wagered the unthinkable: Should Eurovision be discontinued? At the time, the project of European integration was still new, the memory of World War II still fresh; Europop was just beginning to flood the car radios of the first-ever generation of middle-class Europeans to discover that \u201choliday\u201d could be a verb. The contest, meanwhile, was mired in criticism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
According to Dean Vuletic, a leading historian of Eurovision, three critiques from those early years persist to this day: It costs too much, the music is of mediocre quality, and the voting is \u201crigged.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year was an odd time, as an American, to be attending this distinctly European phenomenon. Arriving in Basel, Switzerland, last week for the 69th edition of what is now the world\u2019s largest musical event, whose more than 160 million annual viewers make it one of the most popular broadcasts in all of global television, it occurred to me that these are the very same complaints currently levied against liberal democracy: strained budgets, declining quality of services, and contested elections. As the trans-Atlantic relationship sinks to its lowest point since the Iraq War, the Eurovision slogan, \u201cUnited by Music,\u201d also feels newly urgent for continental security. The Trump administration could not be clearer: America\u2019s own commitment to liberal tolerance is over, and Europe is on its own.<\/p>\n
You might say Eurovision is, in fact, a rare example of what that future might look like: a model of the West without<\/em> America. For despite the influence of American music on artists and the general rise of global Anglophone hegemony, the contest remains, Vuletic said, \u201cquintessentially European\u201d and the very largest cultural event \u201cbringing Europeans together.\u201d Is its ethos\u2014that is to say, spandex, sequins, and the inalienable right to let your freak flag fly\u2014the force holding together the last bastion of the contemporary Western order?<\/p>\n Winding through a Basel streetscape crammed with flags, balloons, and karaoke stages, where fans of varying vocal ability resurrected previous years\u2019 hits, I wondered: Is this annual celebration of diversity and self-expression not, in some way, what liberalism is?<\/p>\n For the uninitiated\u2014which is to say, for most Americans\u2014there are many ways to describe Eurovision, but they all lead to the same conclusion: that the contest is characterized by paradox above all. Launched in Switzerland in 1956 to promote cooperation in postwar Europe, today Eurovision is the height of camp, bemoaned by music snobs and celebrated by members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have claimed it as the World Cup for queer people<\/a>. It serves, simultaneously, as a show of transnational cooperation, a platform for nation-branding, and a \u201cnonpolitical\u201d arena for the celebration of liberal values such as tolerance, diversity, and individual expression\u2014values that, as the recent rise of right-wing movements has shown, turn out be political after all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is an opportunity for countries from the former Soviet bloc or even from beyond the European continent\u2014Australia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Israel are all veteran participants\u2014to express their alignment with those values and the eurozone writ large. Or to reject them, as was the case when Turkey and Hungary withdrew their national delegations before the 2013<\/a> and 2020<\/a> contests, respectively, with the former citing sham voting and the latter implicitly rejecting the broadcast\u2019s celebration of queer identity.<\/p>\n There are three rounds of live performances: two semifinals, followed by a final. Only 26 acts qualify for the finale bonanza, when the Eurovision victor is chosen live on prime-time television through a famously baroque rank-choice voting system that combines country-level public televotes with the results from each nation\u2019s expert jury. (Americans can vote in the catchall category for nonparticipating countries, \u201cRest of the World.\u201d) Juries and the public can award points to any nation except their own. The resulting voting patterns have spawned an entire academic subfield<\/a> analyzing world-historical alliances and rivalries steeped in 20th-century history: This year, as every year, the people of Cyprus awarded the maximum 24 points (12 from the public, plus another 12 from the jury) to Greece. Translated into Yankee argot, you might say Eurovision is a cross between the Super Bowl halftime show and the Olympics, viewed through the haze of a strong 20th-century hangover.<\/p>\n The winning country hosts next year\u2019s competition, unless they can\u2019t afford to or are at war, as was the case for defending champion Ukraine in 2023, which passed the honors (and expenses) to Liverpool in the United Kingdom. In the end, even as Eurovision is officially a nonpolitical event, everyone knows it\u2019s really geopolitics in drag.<\/p>\n The United States has never participated in Eurovision, not because it isn\u2019t geographically located in Europe (otherwise countries such as Israel and Georgia wouldn\u2019t be in the running) but because, unlike the 37 countries that took part this year, none of its public broadcasters are members of the EBU, the host organization for Eurovision. It\u2019s the EBU that maintains rules and regulations regarding eligibility, as well as the contest\u2019s nonpolitical nature.<\/p>\n That said, there is a certain protectiveness of Eurovision\u2019s European quality vis-\u00e0-vis the United States. (As one fan visiting from Germany\u2019s Bavaria region told me, \u201cYou guys can do your own thing\u2014it\u2019s all right.\u201d) Saskia Jaszoltowski, a musicologist at the University of Graz in Austria, who has studied music in political contexts from the Third Reich to Eurovision, points out that the contest was founded not only with unity in mind but to support the European music industry amid rising U.S. cultural hegemony. That Eurovision is relatively unknown in the United States, however, hardly stopped enthusiastic fans from traveling across the Atlantic this year to support its unifying mission. For them, Eurovision has become custodian to all the values that the Trump administration has left behind.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is basically the opposite of the current government,\u201d said one young American man, who arrived in Basel from London draped in stars and rainbow stripes. A trio of men from Chicago, who introduced themselves as \u201cthe \u2018G\u2019 in LGBTQ+\u201d and who were supporting Israel and Finland, told me that with the shift to the right in the United States and elsewhere, Eurovision\u2019s message of \u201cbringing people together feels especially important.\u201d (The famed ridiculousness, glitz, and everything else they \u201clove to hate\u201d is, to boot, an escape from \u201call the bullshit.\u201d) Another man expressed surprise at the lack of anti-American sentiment he experienced, given the Trump administration\u2019s recent harassment of European counterparts over tariffs and Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. The Swiss American standing in front of him warned against a Europhilic romanticism. \u201cThere\u2019s a right-wing movement in Europe, too, not only in the U.S.,\u201d she said. Still, America feels like a model of what might happen but hasn\u2019t yet: \u201cEuropeans are very watchful and concerned about what\u2019s happening across the Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n Three 30-something women in matching, homemade silver hats, out of earshot of this call to caution, told me, wistfully, \u201cI wish we did have something like this in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans cheer before the start of Eurovision in Basel, Switzerland, on May 15. Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The good news for prospective fans is that regardless of where you reside, Eurovision is, first and foremost, a television production, meant to be watched from your living room. Most Europeans will have grown up tuning in with friends and family at watch parties, where it\u2019s common to draw up bingo cards with classic Eurovision cliches and check off the boxes as the show evolves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Did a Baltic state feature electrofolk heightened by outrageous costumes? Did the United Kingdom win nul points<\/em> (French and English are the official languages of Eurovision, another postwar legacy) in the combined public vote? Did the French sing in French? (Did they submit, yet again, a defiantly somber ballad in an act of snobbish, yet heroic, defense of good taste?) Did Italy give a boy-band nod to glam rock? Bingo.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s winning card would have also included combat gear from a futuristic space age, boats, flame blasters, and\u2014a major break from recent precedent\u2014lyrics sung in native languages. Eurovision powerhouse Sweden, which introduced the world to ABBA with the pop group\u2019s winning entry, \u201cWaterloo,\u201d in 1974, performed its first non-English song<\/a> since 1998. Nearly two-thirds of this year\u2019s songs, in fact, were sung in languages other than English<\/a>, including\u2014in addition to a strong showing in French\u2014Finnish, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Portuguese. It\u2019s a strong signal that audiences and artists, if not Europe as a whole, are willing to tilt away from Anglocentrism\u2014and the commercial opportunities that have historically come with it. As a German attendee told me, \u201cThey always get an extra point from me if they sing in their native language.\u201d<\/p>\n The final lineup, pruned to 26 acts in the semifinals, also contained two boats, three sequined bustiers, and four mid-song costume changes. (Australian artist Go-Jo, knocked out in the semifinals, would have been the fifth artist to strip on stage, shedding his shirt after emerging from an oversized blender filled with liquid smoke during his performance of \u201cMilkshake Man<\/a>.\u201d) Latvia brought the obligatory witchy number<\/a> in six-part harmony, with the entire band dressed as forest nymphs in bronze lam\u00e9 and fairy crowns; the crowd went wild when, mid-act, they appeared to grow tails, an illusion conjured from the LED backdrop at Basel\u2019s St. Jakobshalle arena. There were two aerial lifts, one in Poland\u2019s \u201cGaja<\/a>,\u201d in which 52-year-old popstar Justyna Steczkowska, clad in a slashed leather-like unitard, was raised over the stage by two black ropes reminiscent of BDSM. The second arrived in the cult-favorite \u201cIch Komme<\/a>\u201d (\u201cI\u2019m Coming\u201d) from Finland, which ended with sex-positive singer Erika Vikman belting the orgasmic chorus in Finnish and German while soaring on a giant golden microphone stand that, in the final moments, ejaculated\u2014innuendo intended\u2014golden sparks.<\/p>\n Finnish singer Erika Vikman performs \u201cIch Komme\u201d at Eurovision in Basel on May 15. Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The EBU code of conduct explicitly prohibits<\/a> performers from engaging in \u201cpolitical promotion or related conduct, including actions, statements, or symbols during\u2014or in relation to\u2014the event.\u201d Last year, Israeli contestant Eden Golan was forced to revise her original entry, \u201cOctober Rain,\u201d for its apparent reference to Hamas\u2019s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel; the final rendition was titled \u201cHurricane<\/a>.\u201d Overt sexual obscenities are also a no-go. This year, Maltese singer Miriana Conte had to revise her punny lyrics<\/a> just before the submission deadline once the EBU, acting on a complaint filed by the BBC, caught<\/a> the phonetic resonance between \u201ckant<\/em>,\u201d the Maltese word for \u201csinging,\u201d and a certain English slur.<\/p>\n Eurovision\u2019s slapstick, self-referential, and sexually provocative aesthetic emerges, in part, from these restrictions. But politics is never entirely eliminated either. A hint of politically charged comic subversion made it onto the final stage via \u201cEspresso Macchiato<\/a>\u201d by Estonian rapper Tommy Cash, who got his start back home under the moniker \u201cKanye East\u201d and who has since collaborated with American superstar Charli XCX. An ironic ode to cafe culture sung in an exaggerated Italian accent (\u201cNo stresso, no stresso \/ No need to be depresso\u201d) and laced with questionable Italian stereotypes (\u201cI\u2019m sweating like a mafioso\u201d), the song is a rare example of one country parodying not its own national stereotypes but another\u2019s.<\/p>\n Tommy Cash, representing Estonia, performs on stage during Eurovision in Basel on May 17. Harold Cunningham\/Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Americans will have also noticed that Cash performed in a navy suit, white shirt, and overly long red tie<\/a> whose extra footage recalls the trademark neckwear of the current U.S. president, especially when combined with the act\u2019s megalomaniacal backdrops, including a bouncing private plane that flapped its wings along to the beat. (Every surface in the arena was an LED screen ready to burst into each act\u2019s tailored backdrops and animations.) The choreography, furthermore, included a wild shuffle that commentators speculated<\/a> was an exaggeration of Trump\u2019s signature dance move, the side-to-side alternating fist pump. A clear crowd darling, Estonia came second in the televote, just 39 points behind the public favorite Israel, and third in the contest overall. In the combined vote, Israel was this year\u2019s runner-up with \u201cNew Day Will Rise<\/a>,\u201d sung by Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre on Oct. 7.<\/p>\n A selection of the varied mix of performers at the 2025 Eurovision contest in Basel.Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The overwhelming theme of this year\u2019s entries was resilience and self-confidence. Part of this is simply the nature of pop, Eurovision\u2019s dominant genre, whose associated themes, Vuletic said, have thus been well represented for years. Resilience was also an unobjectionable choice for a public exhausted by a relentless post-pandemic news cycle, including the controversy over Israel\u2019s participation in Basel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yet multiplied through dozens of acts, something about the message began to ring false. \u201cI\u2019m a survivor \/ Stay aliver,\u201d sang Armenia\u2019s Parg<\/a> while running on a treadmill, stripped to his waist and slathered in mud, seemingly impeded by nothing other than his own heavy cargo pants and combat boots. \u201cNothing can bring me down,\u201d belted Norway\u2019s Kyle Alessandro<\/a>, who kicked off the final with this year\u2019s representative aesthetic of dystopian adventure, as if artists were addressing us from the near future on a planet colonized by Elon Musk and landscaped by artificial intelligence trained on Avatar<\/em> and Dune<\/em>. (On this planet, everyone wears formfitting bodysuits, plus or minus, in Alessandro\u2019s case, a Viking-style breastplate.)<\/p>\n The Icelandic Gen-Z duo VAEB<\/a> shoehorned similar tidings into an Icelandic rap about rowing that somehow managed to combine hoedown instrumentals with the energy of techno. Translated from the Icelandic: \u201cThere is nothing that can stop me now\u201d; \u201cIf I sink today \/ It\u2019s no problem.\u201d \u201cCannot, cannot, cannot, cannot \/ Cannot ruin me,\u201d echoed Latvia\u2019s ethereal wood nymphs in their Enya-esque harmonies\u2014and in Latvian\u2014while Luxembourg, Malta (\u201cWhy should we let other people decide \/ When we could be having the time of our lives?\u201d), Poland, and Spain gave odes to girl power, celebrating a doll liberated from her marionette strings, \u201cqueen energy,\u201d the earth goddess Gaia, and divas, respectively.<\/p>\n Produced in slick pop beats, the music, meanwhile, struck a different mood: party, party, party. From within the arena, at least, it was difficult to detect any sense of the struggle that was so necessary to overcome. A rare exception was Ukraine, which seems to have used the Eurovision license to sing in less-than-fluent English to sneak a possible protest into \u201cBird of Pray<\/a>,\u201d which combines Ukrainian and English lyrics. The official chorus reads: \u201cBird \/ I\u2019m begging you \/ Begging you please just \/ Live.\u201d Sung in pop-rock harmony reminiscent of ABBA, it is indistinguishable from \u201cI\u2019m begging you, begging you, please just leave,\u201d addressed to that more idiomatic of avian species, the bird of prey.<\/p>\n A fan waves an Israeli flag as Yuval Raphael performs at Eurovision in Basel on May 15. Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPolitics has always been involved in the contest,\u201d said Vuletic, whose research into Eurovision\u2019s history has focused on just how political a nonpolitical event can be. In the very first competition in 1956, West Germany sent Walter Andreas Schwarz<\/a>, whose biography as a Holocaust survivor, combined with a song about longing for a better future, sent a strong message about postwar priorities. In 1968, Czech singer Karel Gott<\/a> won Intervision, a rival song contest hosted in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, with his song \u201cTausend Fenster<\/a>\u201d (\u201cThousand Windows\u201d), with its allusions to the Iron Curtain. That year, he represented Austria at Eurovision with the same number, during the height of the Prague Spring. Turkey boycotted Eurovision in 1976 in protest of the Greek entry, \u201cPanaghia Mou, Panaghia Mou<\/a>\u201d (\u201cMy Lady, My Lady\u201d), which censured the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. And in 2009, Georgia withdrew after refusing to revise<\/a> the lyrics to its song \u201cWe Don\u2019t Wanna Put In<\/a>,\u201d a protest song written in response to Russia\u2019s attacks during the Russo-Georgian War the year before. Russia participated in Eurovision from 1994 to 2021 but was expelled by the EBU shortly after invading Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the wake of that unprecedented expulsion, Israel\u2019s participation in 2024 during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war strained the spirit of \u201cUnited by Music\u201d nearly to the breaking point. In that year\u2019s host city of Malmo, Sweden, thousands of people took to the streets calling for an end to Israel\u2019s ongoing bombardment and blockade of Gaza\u2014since characterized as genocidal by human rights organizations around the world. Irish contestant Bambie Thug was censored<\/a> for attempting to perform with the words \u201cCease-Fire\u201d and \u201cFreedom for Palestine\u201d scrawled in medieval Irish script on their face and legs. Slimane, representing France, paused his dress rehearsal<\/a> performance to deliver a desperate message of peace and love. Despite the sense that the contest had turned hostile toward Israel, however, the country came second in the public televote.<\/p>\n The mood in Basel this year was calmer, leavened by Swiss neutrality and new rules surrounding contestant speech that Vuletic said were intended to \u201cclamp down even more on the politics\u201d following last year\u2019s scandals. Arriving at St. Jakobshalle to attend the second semifinal, five employees from Basel\u2019s pharma industry, who collectively hailed from Argentina, Ireland, and Uzbekistan, told me that Eurovision was a \u201clight-hearted balance to all the shit that\u2019s going on in the world.\u201d A native of Munich in a tailored, purple-sequined jacket was attending Eurovision for the 12th time because its message had only become more important in recent years. \u201cI really believe very much in the European idea,\u201d he said. When I asked if he was voting for Latvia due to any connection to the country, he responded that this was precisely the beauty of what the contest, at its best, could be: You don\u2019t need a personal connection in order to show enthusiasm for another country\u2019s music, language, or culture.<\/p>\n But dip below the surface, and the quietude quickly transforms to a kind of denialism. The fans I spoke with were uneasy, voicing concerns about the fragility of the project of pan-European integration that Eurovision is meant to support. Two days later, at the final, a France-based Israeli couple, draped in Israeli flags and crowned with headgear of white-and-blue pompoms erected on antennae, recalled the euphoria of Israel hosting the contest in Tel Aviv in 2019, telling me that Eurovision used to feel like a \u201c100 percent party\u201d with \u201cgreat vibes.\u201d This year, however, was \u201cdifferent.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re happy to be a part of it and to have the opportunity to show our voice,\u201d one said, elaborating on how important it was for Israel to be part of this community. \u201cBut it feels a little like we\u2019re the unwanted child.\u201d<\/p>\n The EBU\u2019s posthaste expulsion of Russian broadcasters has become an important object lesson in how, in today\u2019s polarized times, liberal institutions ought to regulate and define terms of inclusion. In an initial statement<\/a>, published on Feb. 25, 2022\u2014one day after the invasion of Ukraine began\u2014the EBU said \u201cthe inclusion of a Russian entry \u2026 would bring the competition into disrepute.\u201d In a later statement<\/a>, published four days later, the union offered different reasoning, explaining that Russia\u2019s broadcasters RTR, Channel One, and RDO were excluded for failing to meet standards of media independence required by union membership. Going into this year\u2019s contest, broadcasters from Iceland, Ireland, Slovenia, and Spain cited<\/a> the Russian case in calling on the EBU to bar Israel from participating in Basel. More than 70 former participants signed a letter<\/a> expressing a similar message.<\/p>\n Fans, some draped with Ukrainian flags, gather at Place de la Bastille to watch Eurovision in Paris on May 17. Kiran Ridley\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s that first statement\u2019s ambiguous reference to \u201cdisrepute\u201d that has especially jeopardized the EBU\u2019s claim to neutrality, exposing it to accusations of hypocrisy. Jaszoltowski, the musicologist, called it \u201crushed.\u201d It was also confusing: The rules<\/a> for the 2025 contest hold broadcasters responsible for taking \u201call necessary measures\u201d to prevent Eurovision from being \u201cpoliticized,\u201d \u201cinstrumentalized,\u201d \u201cand\/or otherwise brought into disrepute in any way,\u201d while eligibility requirements simply state that a song be under three minutes, invite no more than six performers (and no animals) on stage, and be submitted by a member of the EBU. A country\u2019s broader reputation, however, is nowhere mentioned.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can only be part of the European Broadcasting Union,\u201d Jaszoltowski pointed out, if you comply with \u201cfreedom of speech, freedom of press, I mean all these values that are in danger in the last couple of years\u201d\u2014terms that require broadcasters, if not their governments, to adhere to a kind of liberal tradition. Yet watchdogs, notably, had tracked threats to Russia\u2019s freedom of press long before 2022: From 2014 to 2022, on Reporters Without Borders\u2019 World Press Freedom Index<\/a>, Russia ranked between 148 and 155 out of a total of 180 countries. Today, it has sunk to 171.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Which, then, is the defining criterion\u2014disrepute or freedom of press? In response to a request for comment about its decision regarding the Israeli delegation, the EBU suggested the latter, stating that it is currently \u201csupporting our Israeli member Kan against the threat from being privatized or shut down by the Israeli government,\u201d a reference to a recent motion<\/a> from far-right parties in the Knesset to bring the public broadcaster under private ownership.<\/p>\n Historically, Eurovision has served the important role of integrating, Jaszoltowski said, \u201ceven maybe those who have a hard time being integrated.\u201d From 1961 to 1975, Spain competed under Francisco Franco\u2019s fascist dictatorship, even hosting the contest in 1969, amid protest from other countries. It was an uneasy extension of tolerance practiced by other so-called nonpolitical international events. The Olympics, often held up as an imperfect analogy to the song contest, famously took place in Nazi Germany in 1936, where American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals in a legendary refute to the Nazi ideology of Aryan racial supremacy. The 1934 FIFA World Cup took place in Fascist Italy. And as William Lee Adams, who has covered Eurovision for the fansite Wiwibloggs for more than a decade, points out, Russia participated in 2014 after annexing Crimea and, a short time later, passing its anti-LGBTQ+ laws. That same year, Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst<\/a>, now a Eurovision legend, won it all: \u201cEurovision was the response to anti-liberal ideas,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n It is precisely because Eurovision is a nonpolitical event that makes it such a rich site for protest and debate\u2014and why unclear decision-making causes such a crisis of legitimacy for liberal institutions that claim to be nonideological. For many sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the swift response to Russia remains yet another unforgivable case of applying double standards. \u201cMy politics don\u2019t align with [Eurovision] at the moment,\u201d said one disappointed fan, a British diversity officer based in Switzerland, attending the second semifinal. She hoped that in the future, the EBU would \u201cwalk the talk.\u201d For now, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n A protester holds a sign during a demonstration in support of Palestinians prior to the Eurovision final in Basel on May 17. Sebastien Bozon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n For any participating country with an existential reason to gain the ear of the West\u2014in particular, the West without America\u2014Eurovision remains an incredibly powerful platform. In recent years, this has been especially true for Israel and Ukraine. While politicians are barred from the contest (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s request to address the crowd at the 2023 rendition was denied<\/a>), broadcasters can still make profound political statements through their choice of contestants. \u201cOf course it is a political statement of the national broadcaster of Israel to send this particular participant who survived the Hamas terror attacks,\u201d said Jaszoltowski, despite the fact that \u201cthe song and her lyrics are not political at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It was, by all measures, a successful message. In spite of the French Israeli couple\u2019s sense that Israel was \u201cunwanted\u201d at the contest, Raphael\u2019s \u201cNew Day Will Rise\u201d won second place, notably sweeping the public vote. Even Spain, whose participating broadcaster called for Israel\u2019s exclusion, allotted 12 points\u2014the maximum allowed\u2014to Israel in the public vote. So did the rest of Eurovision\u2019s most populous participating countries, including Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the catchall category, \u201cRest of the World.\u201d (The reason Israel did not win the contest is that in the jury vote, decided by music industry experts, it came 14th, with 60 points to Austria\u2019s winning 258. Votes are also not weighted by population; 12 points from Luxembourg, which Israel also earned, count the same as 12 points from Spain.)<\/p>\n Two disturbances took place during Raphael\u2019s acts, one during a semifinal<\/a> dress rehearsal and another during the final<\/a>; in both cases, protesters were swiftly handed over to the police or security personnel. It is awful to contemplate the trauma that the survivor of a terrorist attack might have experienced during these disruptions. Multiple pro-Palestinian demonstrations took place in central Basel, at least one drawing hundreds of people, who called for<\/a> Israel\u2019s expulsion from the contest and a cease-fire in Gaza. On the other hand, the only demonstration to make it within visible range of the arena was a group of 20 or so local Christians waving Israeli flags just beyond the police boundary, who told me that they had gathered to support Israel\u2019s right to defend itself and to protest antisemitism and the lack of neutrality toward Israel in the popular press. When I asked the group\u2019s spokesperson for his views on the plight of residents of Gaza enduring the latest expansion of Israel\u2019s military campaign\u2014which has only added to the Palestinian death toll of more than 53,000\u2014he said it was a \u201cbig problem.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut this is politics,\u201d he added. In other words, beyond the scope of Eurovision.<\/p>\n There were no Palestinian fans to interview in Basel, of course, because Palestine\u2019s bid to enter Eurovision was rejected<\/a> in 2007 on the basis that its broadcaster did not meet standards for full EBU membership. Gaza does not currently have stable access to telecommunications services, let alone a functioning health care system. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, furthermore, are currently prohibited from leaving the territory except under highly restricted circumstances\u2014which do not include being the wild, campy, musical savants whom Eurovision attracts. One can only imagine what message a hypothetical Palestinian delegation would have chosen to send through its own contestant or song selection or how the public might have responded. Expelling Israel from the contest is unlikely to have improved the audience\u2019s capacity to conjure such a counterfactual, just as the EBU\u2019s expulsion of Russia failed to end the war in Ukraine. It was the absence of Palestinian voices, rather than Israel\u2019s presence, that haunted St. Jakobshalle: On the night of the final, in a football stadium with ticketed spillover seating for 36,000, I spotted three wan Palestinian flags.<\/p>\n JJ, representing Austria, celebrates after winning Eurovision in Basel on May 17. Harold Cunningham\/Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The voting patterns at this year\u2019s Eurovision painted a portrait of a Western world\u2014or at least of its European remainder\u2014that is having trouble making up its mind. The winner, Austria\u2019s virtuosic JJ, a classically trained countertenor<\/a> with the Vienna State Opera, won with 436 points, the lowest winning total<\/a> since the latest version of the rank-choice voting system was introduced in 2016. (Switzerland won last year\u2019s contest with a whopping 591 points, while in 2022 Ukraine totaled 631.) The lower the number of points it takes to secure victory, the more national juries and viewers have scattered their loyalties across countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Austria\u2019s win was a surprise to anyone who followed the bookies, who had KAJ, the Finnish comedy group representing Sweden with a spoof on sauna culture, in the lead for weeks. JJ\u2019s triumph was not a surprise, however, for anyone who listened closely to the 26 finalists as a sample of an uneasy, confused liberal zeitgeist. KAJ\u2019s comedic, self-congratulatory call to crank up the heat (translated from the Swedish: \u201cSteam it up and let go of all stress today\u201d \/ \u201cSauna brothers, we\u2019re the ones who glow\u201d) might have been received as a welcome call to escape. But for the juries, amid all that\u2019s happening in the world, it read, perhaps, as another expression of exhaustion.<\/p>\n No wonder Estonia\u2019s entry was such a crowd-pleaser, snatching the second-place finish in the televote: The enigmatic combo of Cash\u2019s Trumpian suit with lines such as \u201cLife is like spaghetti \/ It\u2019s hard until you make it\u201d is exactly the kind of uninterpretable, politically adjacent irony that resonates in a nihilistic moment. There is the sense that someone, somewhere, ought to be offended by such a song\u2014but you, dear listener, are in on the joke.<\/p>\n JJ, by contrast, who won over the national juries and placed fourth in the public vote, performed in black and white on a sailboat lost in the middle of a simulated ocean, as if Tom Hanks had trained at a Viennese conservatory before starring in Cast Away<\/em>. For \u201cWasted Love<\/a>\u201d tells a story of heartbreak and despair: \u201cYou left me in the deep end \/ I\u2019m drowning in my feelings.\u201d The sense that the world is, in fact, full of pain that is overcome only through struggle, discomfort, and great investment of time was heightened by the actually operatic vocals.<\/p>\n Halfway through the song, a whirlpool appeared on the stage floor as JJ began to struggle forward, steering the flimsy dinghy against an imaginary tempest. The choreographed struggle to stay upright against an invisible wind as a dark club beat dropped and strobe lights spliced the broadcast into a series of freeze-frames was pure Eurovision: exaggerated, melodramatic, decidedly overdone. But uniquely among the acts, it might have also hit a note of truth. \n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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