I’ve just recently come back from a week up in Liverpool where the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest was being held. And to say that my mind was completely fucked up with a mixed assortment of emotions is, quite frankly, an understatement.
Yes, there are the usual posts on social media from people gushing about how their week was so unbelievably positive, amazing, mind-blowing, best week ever, insert your own choice of embellishment here. But for some of us, it was not always like that…
Let me just start by saying that Liverpool (to use a tired Eurovision cliche) put on an absolutely amazing show 😏. No, seriously, they did. The effort that Liverpool put into hosting this year’s contest on behalf of Ukraine was incredible, and certainly unrivalled compared to some past host cities in recent years. The enthusiasm with which Liverpudlians embraced Eurovision last week was second to none, and is a great case study from which future host cities can learn.
However, for me it was not entirely glamorous…
Finding A Place To Stay
Back when Liverpool was confirmed as the host city last October, all available affordable accommodation was immediately snapped up. For those like me on a tight budget, it instantly felt like a door slamming shut on us.
Being a hardcore Eurovision fan means you need to know how to play the game – in this instance, it means having multiple screens and apps open ready to pounce on the first available hotel room that you can afford and making the booking. And kudos to you if you actually succeed in doing that.
In the usual rules of the game, rooms should start to become available and affordable once delegation numbers are confirmed and tickets are released (as people decide to cancel their bookings). Unfortunately this did not start happening until the actual week of the contest itself, by which point it would have not been worth the trip to Liverpool anyway.
Additionally, folks suddenly found their bookings cancelled for inexplicable reasons, only for rooms to be made available again at highly inflated prices. Much fuss was made over this, but nobody seemed to want to do anything about it.
This led some, including myself, to look outside Liverpool for any available accommodation. Luckily enough, I was able to score a dorm bed in a quite dingy hostel right next to Piccadilly Station in Manchester (some people turn their noses up at the mere thought, but seeing as this is how I lived my first 2 years in London, this was totally nothing new for me – a bed was a bed).
On the plus side, including the daily commute between Manchester and Liverpool, it turned out to be much cheaper than what a room in Liverpool itself for a week was costing at the time. Conversely though, the availability and frequency of train services between the two cities during the week of Eurovision left a LOT to be desired (including the lack of all-night services), and severely limited the options I had to enjoy myself to the fullest that week.
For example, in the lead-up to the contest, I had bought a weekly pass to the OGAE EuroClub at Camp & Furnace, however due to the aforementioned limited travel options, was only able to go three times during Eurovision week. Which was a shame, because the club setup was actually really good, and credit needs to go to OGAE UK for exceptional organisation.
It also meant that I spent an average of 90-120 minutes each day commuting to and from Manchester, which is time I could have spent doing other things in Liverpool itself. Whichever city ends up hosting next year, please please please ensure there are both ample supplies of accommodation and transportation!
In fact, I wrote a Twitter thread about this very thing…
Friendship In A Eurovision World
Eurovision is commonly presented by many as a celebration of diversity both in music and in people. Likewise, its fan community portrays itself to be one that is welcoming and respectful of all different types of people as a result of that diversity, no matter who you are or where you come from.
Unfortunately, this has been far from the truth on many occasions in recent years…
Prior to COVID, I was what one would consider an extroverted introvert – I was very outgoing within the UK Eurovision fan community especially, and wanted to get along with everyone. What I learned quite quickly though was that this community was an amplified microcosm of wider society – it had its own set of hierarchies, with certain circles of people who would either respect you or look down upon you depending on how much of a fan you were. Indeed, the amount of disrespect I saw from certain members of OGAE UK towards new members was utterly shocking for me.
However, I still attempted to stay on good terms with the rest of the community, as it was a nice social outlet for me to get into as I had not long relocated to London from Australia. And this was mainly succeeding, until I had a breakdown during the first COVID lockdown (I speak about it at length here:
https://nocreativebrain.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/lessons-learned-in-a-london-lockdown/
Without overly repeating what I wrote in that post, the main takeaway from my recovery was that a lot of the “friends” I thought I had in my life were not actually friends – they were more acquaintances. And for me as an autistic person, I’m quite deep when it comes to these things – if you’re an acquaintance, you may as well be a complete stranger. Another consequence was that I leaned way more into my introverted side – the extrovert in me only came out on rare occasions, and only with people around whom I truly felt comfortable.
The following year, during the ESC National Final season of 2021, I started to finally realise how completely toxic the “fandom” actually was via my time on Twitter, and it had got to a point where I almost had another breakdown – thankfully though I recognised the signs straight away and removed myself from Twitter for several months. When I came back on six months later, I did a full reset of followers, ie. I unfollowed *everyone* and rebuilt my account accordingly. Nowadays it is in a much healthier state, and so is my own mind.
When “normality” started returning in 2022, the difference in my approach to my fellow Eurovision fans compared to pre-COVID was quite stark. A lot of people with whom I had been somewhat close were now virtual strangers, and the connection we had was now somewhat faded. I don’t begrudge them for that – on the contrary, I take full ownership of wanting to reset my brain so that I didn’t necessarily have to rely on other people for my own happiness. If that meant some former friends drifted away, then so be it – and I can honestly say that what I lost in quantity, I gained in quality with the people who did stay in my life post-breakdown.
And yet at times, you cannot help but feel isolated from everyone else, no matter how beneficial it is for your own happiness and integrity in the long run…
One of the consequences of staying in Manchester during Eurovision was the physical distance I had from everyone else, even those people in the fan community with whom I am actually quite close. On the one hand, I was happy that I was getting the chance to just experience Eurovision as my own person and absorb the atmosphere on my own terms.
But on the other hand, the times that I did spend with the really genuine people in Liverpool (especially my Aussie friends) did help me immensely to feel connected again to the Eurovision community, and I’m not gonna lie, I had never been happier. At the same time though, I did not want to fall back into the trap of relying on them to keep myself happy – I had come too far on my post-breakdown journey to compromise that now, and besides, I did not want to feel like I was burdening them (thank you imposter syndrome).
I also met a number of other people along the way, some of whom I bonded with straight away, and others who just didn’t quite connect with me the way I had wanted and/or hoped. Then again, that’s pretty much a reflection of the difficulties of being autistic and not quite having the social game down pat like the neurotypicals. Even some others I already knew (and thought I had a good relationship with) were a mixed bag – they were either quite excited to see me, or they were like “meh” and went on their own way.
On a special note though, there was one person I met in Liverpool via Twitter, who hung out with me for a couple of afternoons during Eurovision week, especially when I was feeling a bit low and aimless, and helped to cheer me up somewhat. If you are reading this, thank you for being so supportive and I am glad I met you.
To add some more context to this, I used Twitter a lot over Eurovision week, especially when I had a lot going on in my brain and I needed to get stuff out. A couple of them are below:
A Growing Class Divide Within The Eurovision Fan Community
A common observation that gets made by Eurovision fans around the world is that Eurovision itself is a quite expensive hobby, especially for those who commit themselves to travelling to the contest every year (and my fan friends back home in Australia come to mind particularly as I write this). Whereas in the past, people would have been saying this as a joke or somewhat ironically, in more recent years, the cost of attending Eurovision has become an actual serious issue – indeed the cost of tickets over the last few years has risen so high that it has become somewhat financially prohibitive for even some of the most hardcore fans to attend.
To put this into more specific context, as a member of OGAE UK, I was lucky enough to be able to get a package for the Afternoon Previews, aka Family Shows this year for around £360. Compare this to last year, where I paid €350 for a *Jury Show* package in Turin – the equivalent package in Liverpool this year was around £700. You can see why there are concerns – and it is not something that the EBU nor the host broadcaster has been willing to address for some years now.
It also ties in with the accommodation issues I discussed at the beginning of this post, where prices in Liverpool were so artificially high for a lengthy period – they only started to go down during the week of Eurovision itself, which didn’t help someone like myself with somewhat tight financial constraints.
Because of these general cost increases over the last few years, a bit of a class divide is presenting itself, where attending Eurovision in person is something only for the privileged few who can afford it. In my opinion, that goes against the very ethos of Eurovision itself – all people should have the opportunity to enjoy the contest equally. Yes a host broadcaster needs to recoup costs, etc., but having barriers such as high ticket costs and expensive accommodation supply does not resolve the issues of inequality that have arisen.
And you can see that privilege amongst a number of fan circles within the community, even if they may not be aware of it themselves. Awareness of that privilege and using that to push for more equality is always the best way that the less privileged can find a voice and enjoy Eurovision to their fullest.
The Result…
Let me start by congratulating Loreen for winning Sweden’s 7th Eurovision victory with “Tattoo”, which she won fair and square within the rules of the contest.
Ok, now we have that out of the way, let’s talk some real talk…
This result is without a doubt one of the most divisive and polarising results in the history of the contest, and especially since the split jury/televote allocation started in 2016. It cannot be overstated just *how* much the crowd (and indeed the voting public) got behind Finland, who was being represented by Käärijä with his song “Cha Cha Cha”.
From where I was watching in the Eurovillage in Liverpool’s Pier Head, just about everyone there was rooting for Finland, especially after his performance. It would not have escaped the EBU’s attention just how much even the audience in the arena were behind Finland, to the point where both Graham Norton and Hannah Waddingham were struggling to keep them under control.
The big divide between the jury opinion and that of the public has never been more stark. While Loreen’s jury vote was extraordinarily high, Käärijä’s televote was exactly the same magnitude as that of Salvador Sobral’s back in 2017 (and second only to Ukraine in 2022) – and Sobral had also trumped the jury vote that year to gain the most number of total points in Eurovision history, something which Loreen failed to attain this time around.
So how do we even begin to address something like this?
Firstly, it has to be said that juries DO serve a purpose at Eurovision. Indeed it is readily observed that the overall song quality of the contest has markedly improved since the reintroduction of juries back in 2009, and has seen a dramatic shift from the televote-only era of the 2000s. The EBU also experimented this year with ditching juries for the semi-finals, which appears to have been received somewhat positively based on the quality of this year’s Grand Final – so we may well have that again next year.
But in the meantime, what can be done to better improve the juries themselves? Right now, each national jury contains five members – there have been suggestions of increasing this number to nine, whilst also in turn increasing the diversity characteristics of the individual jurors to better reflect the country they represent.
Could there also be a revamp of the criteria that is used? The current criteria, in my opinion, are sufficient on their own (but perhaps could be more specific):
- Vocal capacity of the artist(s)
- Performance on stage
- Composition and originality of the song
- Overall impression of the song
In any case, I do believe the EBU needs to have a serious discussion about the role of the juries and how they can be improved to decrease the chance of a polarising result in the future.
Promoting Inclusivity In Future Eurovision Results
Apart from the headline discussion of Sweden vs Finland in this year’s Grand Final, there is also a lot to be said about recognition (or lack thereof) of a number of other performances in the same final. And it is something that particularly struck me with this year’s contest…
As everyone knows, since 1975, Eurovision has had the famous 12/10/8-1 scoring system that each country uses to score their favourites. However, as someone who is very much about equality, equity and inclusivity, there are a couple of things that strike me hard about this. For example, due to the nature of the scoring system, if you don’t score within a country’s top 10, you may as well just not exist at all – you could be 11th or 12th with an amazing song, and yet it will instantly be judged as crap simply because it didn’t receive any points under the system.
On the one hand, it does motivate countries to strive for strong entries – however, music taste is subjective, and what might be strong to one person may not be as such to another. And quite often, the fandom will react wildly to a particular song, only to see it crash and burn during the contest for a variety of reasons.
But on the flip side, as explained above, anything below 10th is simply not recognised whatsoever. And for someone like me who values inclusivity, that goes right against the very concept. It also pushes the contest factor way too heavily, when again this is meant to be a celebration of diversity.
So what could we do to get around it?
Personally (and probably controversially), I think drastic action is needed – scrap the 12/10/8-1 system altogether. Give *every* song points from 25 all the way down to 1 – in practice, for each jury on the night, the bottom 22 rankings and points are displayed immediately, with the top 3 remaining blank, and the spokesperson will announce which of their top 3 gets the maximum points.
This way, EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY is recognised, no matter how many or how few points they receive. And by the time all countries have voted, we have a more accurate picture of where every country actually ranked from a jury perspective. The same points system would naturally be used for the televote, completing the overall picture. The chances are, countries who would be scoring last or close thereto in the current system may find that they’re actually truly higher than first thought.
Epilogue – Post-Eurovision Depression (Or Lack Thereof)…
Usually around this time I would be thinking back on what an amazing time I had during Eurovision week and wishing that I was back there just enjoying myself, as I did last year after Turin and in 2016 after Stockholm. However, I have not actually felt that this year – I remember being in the coach back to London the day after the Grand Final, with my brain incredibly fucked up on a combination of lack of sleep, the disappointing result (for me personally), the experiences I had had during the week in Liverpool. I wanted it to all be over.
When I went back to work this week, I literally just dove right in and used it to distract me. And it has served its purpose, in the sense that I now have enough emotional and mental distance from Eurovision week to be able to write this.
I recognise that for many people, Liverpool was truly an awesome week with many incredible experiences, and this post is not meant to take away from any of those – we are all individuals and interact with the world around us in different ways, and take those experiences on board accordingly. This is merely a long-form upload of all the thoughts and feelings that I personally felt and experienced during my time in Liverpool.
And for some of you, this may well resonate in some way, and I hope that if you had been feeling something similar during Eurovision last week (or indeed at another point in your life), this post reassures you that you are not alone.
Until next year…
No Creative Brain 
This sounds like you (and many people) been left behind by costs of this. Thank you for writing so truthfully about your experience. Heartbreaking in places. Keep well