I remember as a kid back in Australia watching Eurovision in the 90s, and being fascinated not by any of the songs (for me they were the boring bit), but by the slow unfold of the voting as each country gave their points from 1 up to the magic douze. This was totally fine for the numbers-obsessed boy that I was (and still am, to be honest).

And yet there would be a certain country I would get myself attached to during the voting sequence (it would differ for each Eurovision), and I would get really excited whenever they scored 12 from another country and disappointed when their scores would be low. That would mark the beginning of my emotional involvement with the contest.

The peak of this emotional rollercoaster ride would be in 2016 when I went to Stockholm for the contest that year. It was Australia’s second year of participation in the contest, and one that would end up going to the wire in the grand final. Dami Im did Australia proud in the second place that she ultimately received, having been beaten by a handful of points by Ukraine. Nevertheless it set Australia in place as a legitimate force within Eurovision.

I remember feeling disappointed by the result for a number of days, and it took a bit of soul searching until one day I had a lightbulb moment. I needed to remember what Eurovision was all about. And I did – the music. I had become too immersed and emotional in the competition aspect of it that it prevented me from enjoying the music itself.

When I consciously refocused my attention away from the competition, it allowed me to attain a level of enjoyment of the contest that I had never had before. Whether a song comes first, tenth, or doesn’t progress past the semi finals, that is much of a muchness. The diversity of the performances every year helps to make the contest what it is today (and what it has been for the last 65 years).

Every year during National Final season (and indeed during the main contest itself), we instantly become armchair experts. We seem to know exactly what an artist needs to do to make their act ever so perfect so as to gain the douze points from as many countries as possible. There are a few issues with this though.

For starters, the viewership of Eurovision is as diverse as the artists and songs themselves. And with that diverse viewership comes diverse tastes. We continually convince ourselves year after year that what we *personally* like is what everyone else must like as well (particularly when we are in a small group of people that share the same opinion – an echo chamber, if you may).

We must be careful though not to extrapolate our internal biases into what we believe the wider viewing public wants. Just because a certain type of performance won in a particular year doesn’t mean it will win again the following year. And likewise, a certain genre that didn’t do so well in one year might end up doing really well in another year.

That is the beauty of Eurovision – the result is never truly predictable, despite what the betting markets and armchair experts might say otherwise. And we unfortunately as a fandom lose ourselves so much in the punditry and speculation in the lead-up to the contest that we have difficulty stepping back and saying to ourselves, “let’s just see what songs come up and watch how they perform in the main contest”.

That lends itself to subsequent frustration when certain artists then proceed to not do what we want them to do. But if all the artists did were to do exactly what we told them to do, it would become a very boring and predictable contest because we would know instantly what was going to happen. One of the spectacles of Eurovision is the element of surprise, the capturing of spontaneous moments. They are what often endear viewers to certain songs and artists.

By us dictating what a particular artist should or should not do with their song (because of course we’re all armchair experts at the end of the day, it seems, and must all have an opinion on something), we are in fact robbing them of their autonomy and their artistic freedom. We must keep in mind that these artists have worked hard to bring their performance to the Eurovision stage, and it helps to remember that this has been a journey for them too. Hindsight is always 20/20, but one past experience is never exactly the same as a future one. We need to start respecting and trusting the artists more to unveil their own magic.

That is not to say that criticism is not allowed. Remember we are all individuals with our own tastes and preferences, and thus we might have our own opinions about a certain song, a certain performance, even a certain artist. But criticism is like feedback – it should be coming from a place of respect and a desire to help that artist grow and succeed. And if that respect is not there in the feedback that we give, then why would any artist listen to what we have to say?

Quite often on social media, we seem to be in our own little contest to come up with the funniest and most shocking insult towards a particular artist and/or country. This would be, for example, a comment about their clothing, or about their voice, or even downright sexism. Social media seems to give some of us carte blanche to say what is on our minds completely unfiltered, with no regard for the target audience to whom the comments are being directed. I had a very deep discussion with a fellow Eurovision fan the other night, who said that sometimes a lot of things are said as banter and not really meant as an insult. In this day and age though, we must be mindful that we do not blur the line between banter and insult, as this otherwise leads to normalisation of the behaviour that we should be steering away from.

Also, in this age of social media, a lot of us do not realise that there are often the artists themselves who see these comments and wonder what they have done to receive this disrespect. Thankfully, a lot of them have enough self-confidence to know what their strengths and talents are, and will only listen to feedback and criticism from those that they trust and respect. And really, that goes for any type of feedback we give and receive in our everyday lives.

In being fans of Eurovision, we often picture ourselves as having a stake in the outcome of the contest itself, as if for some of us, it’s a matter of life or death. It excites us to consider ourselves as having “skin in the game”. So when an artist of a particular country performs and their performance doesn’t conform to the image that we had thought up in our heads (even thought it might have won a National Final or even got a respectable result in the main contest), we instantly lash out at them and list all their faults instead of celebrating the effort and achievement that the artist has attained. It displays a large amount of disrespect towards that artist and the work that they have put in their act. I have observed this more ever since Australia started officially participating in the contest in 2015, and more still since I became part of the UK Eurovision community in 2019.

It is sad that there will be fans out there who will never be satisfied unless everything is perfect (and we all logically know that perfection does not exist, thus those fans find themselves in an endless loop of criticism and backlash, with no way to derive happiness from the performances that they see and hear). It goes back to my point about certain fans becoming too invested in the competition aspect and not seeing the broader perspective. And in turn, not seeing that perspective takes away our ability to just enjoy the contest for what it is – a celebration of diversity and inclusivity through the magic of music. We see this in national level shows like Italy’s Sanremo and Albania’s Festivali I Kenges (shows that in fact predate their involvement in Eurovision itself and thus focus on the musical aspect). Are we as a fandom losing sight of that due to our own competitiveness?

In the journey I have undertaken as a Eurovision fan, I sometimes look back on the younger me who got more of a kick out of the voting sequences than the music. And I wonder how he would fare in today’s Eurovision climate…