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In the Jury's Seat – Eurovision 2024
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Give me things to rank in an upcoming video!
Looking for your best outside-the-box ideas! 😉
love this vid, we have very similar opinions especially re: croatia & lithuania. genuinely its probably me being nitpicky but my only drag on switzerland which has them slightly lower in my rank is their outfit, i thought the skirt while meaningful honestly looked kinda cheap and clashed with the top far too much for a coherent outfit but that's not something you can drag a song all the way to the bottom for lol
as for fun future rankings, i'm kinda obsessed with france in the 90s, i think it's one of the most interesting decades for any one country in the contest just in terms of how broad their output was in this time and at such a high level without getting any wins, it could be a rank but it's also probably a good video essay idea (that im releasing into the wild because ive tried to write a script for it a thousand times and never finished lol)
hope you get to most of these…
Thx for talking how Italies performance was not that great. I don't know why they try to make female performers more edgy than they are. Its the same with whatever remix they tried to do with Luxembourgs entry this year. It also destroyed Czechia 2022 for me.
If Mergara does it its authentic because the performer is dressed like that all the time and it feels authentic. If Angelina jumps around at Sanremo with a very fun song. When the same performer goes to Eurovision with much more serious than fun choreography its jarring.
The performance was completely fine and now the threw 20 things at the song. I rewatched it. Luckily Angelina is amazing but that makes the background dancers even more annoying to me.
At least it wasn't Austria. I had that in my top 10 and after the live performance it was second last XD
Rank the more goofy, novelty type songs throughout the years, like No Rules for example.
Check out Spain & Belgium fron 1983(the staging that year was abysmal but the orchestra was top notch. Spain ending up with 0 points was actually quite shocking. In 1989 will not stand out as a good year. The turkish entry however turned up the tempo 100% with (even though ending up at the bottom) a song that actually stands time well and beats the hell out of all the other contestants that year.
For your project: my favorite Eurovision edition is Eurovision 1969. Two possible prompts related to it-
1) Stick with the notion that there has to be a four-way tie for the winner of Eurovision 1969. Which four songs would you choose?
2) Is there another edition where a tie would be ideal because of your admiration for two (or more) songs?
16:10 That's so spaniard.
There I was thinking you were fantastic… And then (no) Israel. One of the most meaningful and artistically well crafted songs of the night. What has become of the ESC fandom makes me furstrated and disappointed. A song that expresses the deepest emotions and sorrow of millions of people is being treated like that, not to mention the talented singer who sang it.
That was a great trip down 2024 lane! I’m so proud that my 🇦🇺jury gave Ireland 12 pts. It gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.
So. That’s my suggestion: Can you rank the performances tat gave you goosebumps in 2000-2025 era?
21:01 Your gushing praise of our visuals gave ME goosebumps. Thanks Stuart, from Ireland.
Hi Stu! “Me importa un huevo” actually means I care a lot! “Me importa una mierda”. Great vid! 😂
I would love to hear maybe a rundown of your top3 songs from each year, and an in depth look into what made it stand out to you / why you love it so much (ex. the lyrics, the melody, the storytelling, the staging etc). I personally pay a lot of attention to lyrics, so maybe a "best line / best lyric" of your top3 would be fun (I know I certainly have a favourite line from each song)!
For example, my winner of 2024 was 🇵🇹 Portugal Iolanda's Grito. The lyrics of "Transformei cada verso de mim // I've transformed every verse within me" is such a poetic and powerful line for me, and together with the beautiful, clean yet emotive and raw vocals (ngl, surprised she didn't earn the 10 on vocals), and the tasteful, elegant interpretive visuals — it's a 10/10 no notes from me.
Rank other eurotubers rankings…
Rank the best performances after 2000!
It's hilarious how for you, "They're all so pretty and so advanced; maybe they also know our dance" was strange, while for me it was the single most impactful line in any of the 2024 songs. For me, as someone who's moved to a new country to chase my dreams, it conveys the aspiration of youth to search for greener pastures, the loneliness of moving to a new space where nobody knows anything about you, and the hopefulness that someone you see as "pretty" and "advanced" will recognize and (implicitly) approve of your style, or your "dance". Or perhaps it's a search for approval or recognition from somewhere else other than your own home. THE FEELS.
Latvia is so interesting because in the semi performance Dons did seem to show emotion while singing (In the last line he started to get kinda choked up). Alot of that is because he like everyone else was under the assumption he wasn't gonna qualify and his Eurovision experience was about to close. In the final he might've been a bit more relaxed and "having fun with it" and it was easier to be static and probably knew he wasn't winning.
That was a great video! I would like a video ranking musical bridges of songs (instrumental part only).
IMO they should change the jury's criteria to just what they thought was the best or favourite with no specific criteria. Firstly as that is likely what many of them do anyway, but also as it should make their rankings slightly more similar to the televote, and it should mean risky entries aren't hurt as much in comparison to safe formulaic entries. The actual jury results in 2024 were a step forward in that regard though.
Haven't bothered to do a song by song ranking but my top 10 would look very similar. Ireland, Switzerland, Portugal and Ukraine were the clear standouts, and the appreciation for Luktelk and Ulveham makes me so happy. I'm convinced that Ireland will go down as the most iconic act of 2024 (and one of the best all time) once we start to see their influence in this year's stagings, choreo, direction etc.
For ideas, what about:
Ranking only countries that have never won by their best placement. Does that entry really deserve to be their most successful? What is the best song never to have won among them?
Best ESC song that never made it to the stage because it was withdrawn disqualified or changed.
Great video, as always! Loved reminiscing on the past year’s selection 😊
Rank the Eurovision entries that preceded its country’s Eurovision win
Basically reverse host entries
For example, Fai Rumore would be one of them as it preceded Italy’s win with Zitti e Buoni, or Hold on Be Strong in 2008 before Alexander Rybak
Of course in since cases like Molitva you would have to consider Serbia and Montenegro the year before with Zauvijek moja
For me Ireland was like something out of a play or musical and was fully misfitted for a song competition . It was a great piece of art but I have never once felt like listening to this as a song on my phone. So even though I totally enjoyed watching it I would have put it last , 0 points for not meeting the bare minimum of a song.
A quickfire one perhaps, rating the slogans of contests, United By Music, We Are One, Spin the Magic etc
Ranking songs sung in a country's regional language could be really interesting an informational – as a linguistics student, I always admire whenever countries take these risks, not only not singing in English, but also putting forward a package that doesn't agree with neither how a country views its own national identity nor how the rest of the continent perceives their culture externally. It's a real shame some of these never make it past their national finals, such as Terra in 2022 and Lusterka this year.
Across Eurovision's existence we've seen so many languages take centre stage – Crimean Tatar, Breton, Antillean Creole, Samogitian, etc – that otherwise would have never occupied Europe's public consciousness. I'm really glad that Australia made the decision to include Yakunytjatjara in their 2024 entry, and I'm happy to see that Sweden have given the green flag for a song in Vörå Swedish this coming edition 🙂
I love that you always say that Israel is supposedly breaking the rules when in 2024 the judges almost completely gave only 0 points to Israel, unjustly, and some of them admitted that they were not judging the song but the country. That in itself breaks the rules, interestingly you don't talk about that. 😐
Maybe something like ranking every country’s first entry with a substantial amount of lyrics in English; France 2001 and Türkiye 2000 come to mind.
Türkiye 2000 is my favorite entry ever, so I’ll take any chance to bring it up. And I feel it’s kind of been lost to history even though it was the country’s third top 10 at that point. Idk though, it might just be me and how I don’t hate Eurovision 2000, unlike most fans.
Another idea that popped into my mind while typing this; ranking all the flag-colored lips from 2000. It’s definitely random and even if no one else cares, it’s a niche that I haven’t really seen.
I hope these ideas help :))
Good retrospective! I’ve been thinking about 2024’s songs and looking back I feel like it being seen as a two horse race between Switzerland and Croatia feels wrong. I loved Croatia last year but it’s a song that hasn’t aged well for me, and I don’t think it would have done nearly as well with the juries if it wasn’t a top contender in the odds. I also still just haven’t connected to Switzerland and don’t understand how it got such a high lead, and I’m saying that as a nonbinary person! Honestly I think the big two songs should have been Ireland and Ukraine, and if they were 1st/2nd in the odds I’m wondering if the jury would have looked at both even more favorably.
As someone who had Norway as their number 1 last year I have to agree with your points on the staging. I also had similar thoughts about Spain 2023 where both were my favorites but I vastly preferred that NF performance over the Final. It was super hard to admit but I see why they both underperformed (though last is still insane even with it’s flaws).
Rank the different types of pyro lol. Fire curtain, hand-held sparkler, etc.
Completely agree with your top 3, these were the 3 countries I voted for in the final
Wanna see you rank "lost opportunities": Songs that had potential for greatness (result wise) but were ruined by bad staging, production or other factors.
Secondly, find the lost gems in national finals, songs that would have led to greatness if they were picked instead of…