Eurovision Song Contest 2023 Semis 2 and Finals

I watched the first round of the semifinals but didn’t take notes. I was inspired to take notes for the second semifinals. It was a dumpster fire.

The legend

• 👎 = Go Home
• 🫳 = Could be identified as music
• 👍 = Grudgingly granted to a couple of bands

Second semifinals

There were 16 contestants, but I’ve only reviewed fifteen below. Sue me.

Denmark 🇩🇰

Jesus fucking Christ go home. What was that? A 13-year-old waif with a stupid voice; just him on stage. Denmark is embarrassing itself in shocking fashion in the Eurovision Song Contest semifinals. This contest is all about bad music, but it’s supposed to be kitschy, not actively malevolent.👎

Armenia 🇦🇲

Just a woman on stage; porn star, wearing not much; lying on stage for most of the time; just yelling; same bullshit half-song; lots of light effects; frenetic dancing, obviously without training. Not good. Go home.👎

Romania 🇷🇴

Lone guy on stage, with guitar, singing in Romanian. Dude’s dressed like Marge Simpson in her Anne Taylor suit. The first part was better; now he’s prowling around the stage, rapping, at least partly in English. Voice is decent, though. 🫳

Estonia 🇪🇪

Young woman on stage; not a porn star. Singing breathily in English to her own piano accompaniment. Oh, wait, she stood up and the piano is still playing. Whoops. This is not very good. I don’t like this song. 👎

Belgium 🇧🇪

Lone guy on stage singing in English. Nope, wait, there are a few dancers; lots of video graphics. I have no idea how these people get selected. He’s not even good flamboyant. He has no moves of physical flair. His voice is vanilla. The song is shit. 👎

Cyprus 🇨🇾

Woman lying on the stage, by herself. Doing some untrained dancing. Also vaguely androgynous, like a few of the others. I guess riding the trans wave. Song is shit. Dance moves are embarrassing. Guy showed up and started howling at some point. 👎

Greece 🇬🇷

A 16-year-old YouTuber, singing in English, sitting alone on the stage, dressed in safari khakis. Awful. Dance moves are pathetic. He’s hopping around, grabbing his jacket lapels. 👎

This whole palette is awful so far.

Poland 🇵🇱

Porn star singer with a weak voice. Booty-short dancers. Two men, though. The dancing doesn’t even have much to do with the beat. They just kind of jerk around while music plays. They are no on the beat. I cannot emphasize enough how jarring this is. Dancers disappeared and now she’s dancing alone. More Shakira-violent moves. Singing in English. Utterly generic. 👎

Slovenia 🇸🇮

An actual band, with actual instruments, singing in Slovenian. Not a porn star in sight. A bit weird, but some recognizable signs of stage presence. They’re a band. It’s a song. Puts them streets ahead of the others. 👍

Georgia 🇬🇪

Woman on stage, by herself, yelling barely comprehensible English into a microphone. Not a porn-star look. Belly free, but looking more like a forest nymph in a white, long dress. The song is generic AF. The music can barely be called that. If this is the bar that AI has to hurdle, then I suppose it’s already producing music. No epilepsy warning, though it needed one. 👎

San Marino 🇸🇲

Also a band. Singing in English. Maroon-five-ish, rockish. Band members are enthusiastic, but spread all over the stage. Now, the singer’s lying on the stage. This is a thing this year. Some of them just lay there for the whole song. 🫳

Austria 🇦🇹

Two women singing, with four dancers. Rap-talking their lyrics in English. No instruments in evidence. Techno-ish. They’re not very mobile. Moves seem self-taught; vocals also. I can’t imagine ever wanting to hear this song again. 👎

Albania 🇦🇱

Woman singing Albanian. Five backup singers. Everything is red and black, of course. Two of the backup singers are actually over forty. Music is generic AF. But it’s still one of the better ones tonight. That is not saying much, though. No band, but a chorus. It’s music, at least.🫳

Lithuania 🇱🇹

Young woman in an orange dress singing slowly to an unseen piano in English. This is one of the generic types of songs allowed a the ESC. Some large, black, female singers just showed up, presumably in the name of identity because the lead singer is way too white and blonde and also too-clearly female, which is minus points in this semifinal. 👎

Australia 🇦🇺

Honorary EU-member starts off the show in a Honda ZRX on a stage. There are actually instruments and an actual band, with a pretty heavy sound in the chorus. But it’s really kind of Duran Duran? These guys should easily make it through. They’re generic, of course. And they’re too chicken to throw in a guitar solo, but the guy’s voice is decent. I take it back, the female guitarist did a five-note guitar solo, but then the lead singer followed it up with a slightly longer keytar solo.👍

The Finals

This part had 26 contestants, listed below. Some of the repeats reference the reviews above. I was too lazy to copy/paste it. Sue me. Just scroll. Or search in the page. Whatever. Oh, you’re on a phone? Sucks to be you.

Austria 🇦🇹

These two ladies seemed a bit better on second viewing. They get points for slagging on Spotify’s low rate of 0.003 per stream and for singing an entire song about Edgar Allen Poe. It wasn’t a great song, but it wasn’t terrible. It was a song, and it was singing. 🫳

Portugal 🇵🇹

A woman sings in portugese with a few backup singers. Her song is snappy and has actual instruments, although no-one is playing them on stage. It’s a fun song. There is no overtly pornographic play for votes. The lady can sing. This one is pretty good. 👍

Switzerland 🇨🇭

Remo and his background dancers look a bit stiff. The song is not my thing. It’s kind of boring. I guess it’s kind of bold for him to be singing “I don’t want to be a soldier” because I can pretend that he’s pleading for Switzerland to retain its neutrality in the face of a broadside by NATO, Europe, and Ukraine. It’s a generic song. His costume is a total failure. 🫳

Poland 🇵🇱

Documented above. No change. 👎

Serbia 🇷🇸

The song is kind of like a pop NIN song. The guy’s voice sounds a bit like Trent Reznor, if I’m honest. They have some pretty cool costumes and graphics floating around. It’s not a bad song. They all have pretty good stage presence. I suppose having a master’s in music counts for something. 👍

France 🇫🇷

Lone woman standing on an extremely tall dress/ladder, singing in French. It’s got a bit of a beat to it and it’s not terrible. It’s a bit of a generic dance beat and it never gets very exciting, although it hints at wanting to. Her voice is quite good. The stage theatrics—driving up and down—limit her motion considerably, which felt a bit stilted.🫳

Cyprus 🇨🇾

A song even more generic than Switzerland’s. Just a guy standing on stage, singing. He doesn’t even dance around much. Not much stage presence. He’s barefoot. He falsettos sometimes. “You can break a broken heart.” Deep, bro. 👎

Spain 🇪🇸

A woman singing in Spanish, with accompanying dancers and harmonizing chorus. It’s actually not bad—at least it sounds like it comes from the country she’s from instead of like generic world-pop. There’s a lot of clapping to the beat.🫳

Sweden 🇸🇪

A woman with very long nails crawling stiffly and moving like she’s been in a car accident—it’s not dancing—sings a generic Europop song while looking very fit and making a three-minute song feel eight minutes long. 👎

Albania 🇦🇱

Documented above. No change. 🫳

Italy 🇮🇹

A man stands alone on stage, singing in Italian. There are a couple of people climbing stairs behind him, bouncing into a trampoline. He is a very pretty man, with a very fancy tank-top. The song is utterly generic, with no band in sight, with a beat and melody that we’ve heard a million times before. It’s noot actively pestilent, though. I mean, the chorus is something about this being the last song and then the moon will explode, so that’s something. 🫳

Estonia 🇪🇪

Documented above. No change. 👎

Finland 🇫🇮

A guy in a large-shouldered green leather shirt singing in what I think is Finish, with a bunch of neon-pink background singers. The beat is driving, the chorus is infectious, and it’s not a terrible song. The bridge is a bit generic and poppy, but then he’s singing it while human-centipeding his two male and two female dancers. Very enthusiastic and fun. 👍

Czechia 🇨🇿

Six ladies dressed in light link costumes, with very, very long braids and very sparkly eye makeup. They all sing together, with a lot of chorus—with repetition, it sounds kind of like religious chanting—in at least Czech and English. There’s a rap section in the middle. Their dancing is not great—more Tik-Tok-trained dancing rather than anything classically trained or choreographed. 🫳

Australia 🇦🇺

Documented above. No change. 👍

Belgium 🇧🇪

Documented above. No change. 👎

Armenia 🇦🇲

Documented above. No change. 👎

Moldova 🇲🇩

A bearded, top-knotted guy with a couple of backup singers (ladies) wearing very tall hats. They’re singing in what I can only assume is Armenian. The guy is wearing hammer-pants and a kimono. There are two drummers, pretending to drum. There is also a little person with an elaborate helmet/mask playing a flute for the bridge. The beat is pretty driving and it’s not bad. I wouldn’t change it if it came on the radio, but I probably wouldn’t go looking for it either. 🫳

Ukraine 🇺🇦

Their lead singer is Nigerian-born and sings/raps in English. He has a bunch of black-clad dancers who are pretty decent. It was pretty generic hip-hop that said nothing about Ukraine. I could not have told you the country of origin with a gun to my head. I would have guessed Great Britain, maybe. Not terrible. 🫳

Norway 🇳🇴

This lady sings quite operatically, in English. She is alone on stage and repeats the chorus a lot. The beat is kind of generic dance music. Her costume looks straight out of a comic book. Backup dancers show up halfway through as the chorus is repeated several times. Girl power. 🫳

Germany 🇩🇪

Thrash metal band with elaborate and Hellraiser-style costumes. They’re singing in English, with the band spread over a pyramid behind the singer. The metal is a bit generic and they manage to water down the initial thrash chords—other than on the chorus. Everything is so audience-tested and sanded down. There’s no real energy, no authenticity. They look like they’re doing a Vegas show. 🫳

Lithuania 🇱🇹

Documented above. No change. 👎

Israel 🇮🇱

Like Poland and Sweden, Israel sent a generic-sounding model with a generic beat. She stands on stage alone, singing about unicorns in English. Some dancers show up. The dancing becomes increasingly aggressive. She yells at the audience “Do you want to see me dance?” then starts throwing herself around like she’s having a fit. I am mystified about the angry energy. 👎

Slovenia 🇸🇮

Documented above. No change. 👍

Croatia 🇭🇷

Five cross-dressing soldiers singing in what I assume is Croatian. They are definitely unique and fill the bill for being an ESC act, but the song is not very good. It is apparently an anti-war song, so I’m sympathetic. The Swiss moderator said something about being against dictators who exert their power against the world, but I can imagine they don’t mean any NATO nation. It’s not a good song, really. 👎

United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Porn-star vibe with four background dancers. Utterly generic europop beat and lyrics. She is, apparently, quite famous on TikTok and instagram. It doesn’t matter. This song is terrible. I don’t ever need to hear it again. I don’t know how people inflict this stuff on their ears voluntarily. I console myself with the explanation that men follow her because she fulfills their definition of hotness and children follow her because shiny. Her backup dancers are pretty good. 👎