It’s 1956. The previous decade has seen the global, earth-shattering chaos of the first truly World War. But the technocrats have made a breakthrough: the most obvious way to prevent any future European turmoil is not radical reform of politics, or the economy, or society at large. No no, much too messy. The plan instead is to coordinate an ultra-camp, turbo-nationalistic annual song contest, which is definitely not political. 

And so, in a flash, Eurovision became one of the foundational institutions of the post WWII order, alongside the IMF (camp but in that uptight, closeted Washington DC way), the World Bank (daddy flaunting the bling) and the United Nations (global leaders in the art of flamboyantly boasting about solving world problems while lavishly failing to do anything of the sort). 

Perhaps the plucky folk of Liverpool can somehow help repel Russia from Ukrainian soil

But it’s 1956, as I say, and Britain has been made to look a fool on the world stage after the Suez debacle. So, in order to prevent that farce from ever happening again, the UK decides next year to strut the stage once more – at Frankfurt’s Großer Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks, where a hip new game was afoot: the Eurovision Grand Prix of European Song. Confident that there would be no scope for future embarrassment, Britain went on to secure two things: a permanent and automatic right to appear at all future contests, irrespective of entrant quality, and the proud use of its recent invention – a live-updated scoreboard, forged in the white heat of the BBC’s own Festival of British Popular Songs. (If you can’t foresee any problems with this, we give you… nul points.)

Skip on to 2023, and the 67th Eurovision Song Contest should have been in Ukraine, given the victory of the rap-folk outfit Kalush Orchestra last year. Yes, the Ukrainian people need rapid redress, and some routes will deliver that more effectively than others. But we Britons will do our part too: thanks to Sam Ryder’s “Spaceman”, the pitch-perfectly derivative runner-up from last year, we will host on Ukraine’s behalf. Not for 25 years has Eurovision come to Blighty: it was last hosted here in Birmingham, during that heady year of ’98, when Google and the International Space station were founded, and when B*witched and Billie Piper changed the world. 

So who can say? Perhaps the plucky folk of Liverpool can somehow help repel Russia from Ukrainian soil – by song, one note at time? Perhaps something, somehow can be done because this city is the self-proclaimed “home of pop”. Well, that claim rang rather truer last millennium, despite the reassuring fact that Half Man Half Biscuit continue to thrive. 

But enough of politics: Eurovision is a definitely not political event. Why, only half a dozen songs this year made oblique references to the ongoing war! The jumping crowd of “Kyiverpool” fully embraced the slogan “United by music”. For instance, the show’s opening medley yoked together an improbable gaggle of performers: the Kalush Orchestra boys were joined by English support of rap from Ms Banks, and piano from the Lord Lloyd-Webber and [editor: can you fact-check whether this is a first?] HRH the Princess of Wales. And what an international gathering turned up: not just 26 countries competing, including an Asian and Australasian nation (don’t ask), but for the first time ever votes from other countries were gathered together as a united “Rest of World” vote – the globalist, or socialist, dream writ large! 

Punctuated by the splendid sarcasm of Graham Norton and the blistering brilliance of Hannah Waddingham, the evening rolled on merrily enough. The Liverpudlians were as lively as ever, the stagehands as talented and ingenious as could be imagined, and the spectacle showed all too clearly how music only reaches its truest form when experienced, thick in a crowd, live and alive.

Definitely not political

As for the setting, some people spotted politics (!) in the blue and yellow dresses, blue and yellow lighting, blue and yellow flags that permeated the evening. No, nothing to do with Ukraine, you cranks: after all, Volodymyr Zelenskyy spent the evening meeting Pope Francis in the Vatican, and the Swedish victors have an equal claim on those colours. Or when Sam Ryder called upon Queen’s drummer to keep up, all the world could have sworn they heard “Come on Russia” – not Roger. And as for the song by Ukraine’s entry – TVORCHI: Heart of Steel – if it appears to honour the men trapped in the Siege of Azovstal (20 April–20 May 2022), please remember that it does so definitely not politically.

Well, after such a raucous and chaotic evening, how to distil the swirling songs seen and heard by some 200 million folk? A basic list is how – so here are my five worst and five best performances of the night:

The Lows

Let’s start with Australia. Eight years into the unlikely extension of their “wildcard” appearance in 2015, this nation on the other side of the planet still have their foot firmly wedged in the competition’s back door. So up stepped Voyager, with their optimistically-titled song “Promise”: Danny Estrin, a 46 year-old immigration lawyer, has deliberately crafted a bespoke Eurovision song, which – on the band’s eighth year of trying – has at last made the final. So, when he sat in his Toyota MR2 warbling that he’s “Never done anything like this before”, the eyebrows rose. “Promise me it’s gonna be alright,” he pleaded. It’s bad news, Danny, I’m afraid: studies show that you can’t play eight genres at the same time and hope to come out unscathed (in fact already half his hair had been shorn off by the experiment). This “epic electro”, interrupted by thrash-trash drumming, a kitsch keytar solo, and band members apparently drawn from Queens of the Stone Age and the League of Gentlemen, was a bingo card of recent Eurovision decades, full of sound and flurry, signifying nothing. Result: 151 points (9th)

Then there was Belgium, with Gustaph blasting out “Because of You”. The will was certainly there, but nothing could prevent this from being cheap disco crap of the worst kind – grasping back in time for a credible mid-90s vibe but stumbling on that ill-remembered late-night nostalgic wander, and collapsing into graphene-thin inconsequence. Despite being dressed as a part-time beekeeper in bright pink chaps, and cheered on by a cameo appearance from the swirling legs of Pussy West, Gustaph managed to offer up a very strong contender for being the worst song I have heard broadcast for 29 years. Result: 182 points (7th)

Germany tried its hand at the challenging but perversely popular genre of “cringe metal”, attempting to strain the bullion dross of heavy metal through the ruinous sieve of tinny pig-iron pop. The result was shockingly bad. Yes, I’m talking about Lord of the Lost singing “Blood and Glitter”. Wearing a one-legged red latex playsuit, Chris “The Lord” Harms barks that “what we are is but a choice”. Quite so, my liege. Result: 18 points (26th, i.e. last)

Israel offered up one of its genuine superstars, Noa Kirel, singing “Unicorn”. A lot of promise on paper here, but the song sounded a good ten years out of date. The claim to possess “the power of a unicorn” falls flat when you manifestly echo countless predecessors as you sing it. The song closed with one of those eight-pints-deep rhetorical questions: “You wanna see me dance?” Well, before we could say the first syllable of her name, Noa had gone what choreographers call “full salmon”, writhing and squirming on the ground in gay abandon. And given the Sia-wannabe elements of her number, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that Maddie Ziegler’s iconic interpretation of “Chandelier” had a hand in forging this bizarre close to an underwhelming song. Result: 362 points (3rd)

Well, by the time the UK entry came around, as the very last contestant, most of our minds were wandering. For my part very much so, as it took me until the chorus of “I Wrote A Song” to realise that the performer was not in fact the celebrated philologist Max Muller. No, far from being a polemical Oxford Sanskritist, this was a woman from Kentish Town who lived but one letter away: Mae Muller sang a song about singing a song about a man doing her wrong, all against a Pythonesque artistic backdrop. I really wanted to like it, because god knows men do wrong, but it was rubbish. It came in second last – and that is after pricing in the sherds of global goodwill towards the hosts. Ah well, at least it’s a definitely not political game. Result 24 points (25th)

The Highs

And now the five acts that made the night worthwhile:

From Austria came the tongue-in-cheek duo Teya and Salena, who offered up the intriguingly titled song “Who the Hell is Edgar?” Well, the answer is he of Allen Poe fame, strangely enough – his poetry having inspired the songwriting process after these girls met on the talent show Starmania. But for all the Wet Leg deadpan and catchy choreography of their performance, the best element of this strange tune was its pointed repetition of “zero dot zero zero three”: 0.003% is the artistic dividend for songs streamed on Spotify. A brave gesture, then, for an unestablished duo at the world’s most viewed music event to flag up the unsustainable paradox of the world’s biggest music distributor: spreading music with unparalleled efficiency kills off artistic careers with unparalleled efficiency. “Give me two years, and your dinner will be free,” they sang sardonically, “Gas station champagne is on me.” Let’s hope that this great showing gives this pair scope to do rather more of what they want. Result: 120 points (16th)

Finland well know that weirdness wins. Back in 2006, those try-hard misfits Lordi won, and with tangible Common Demoninators vibes. A rather different tack was taken this time by the appropriately-umlauted Käärijä, whose psychedelotechnic “Cha Cha Cha” is all about how alcohol can unlock the dancefloor. Recipe: strip Jim Carrey down, give him a Dumb and Dumber-era bowl cut, strap a pair of bright green MC Hammer pants on his arms like bolero sleeves, inject both glutes with amphetamine, add a twist of lemon to a litre of vodka, and serve. After punching his way out of a (presumably Swedish-built) box, Käärijä kept four shiny pink dancers on ribbon reins: given that the song is all about the pleasures of drunk dancing, it’s fitting that these four Aqua-esque dancers steadily lowered the the social acceptability of their moves, from ballroom right down to the scuttling “lateral crab”, before ending in that rarest of family-show formations, the human caterpillar. Result: 526 points (2nd – but the British voters’ favourite)

Norway offered up the remarkable Alessandra, whose “Queen of Kings” really was quite something. Sung in English, it began like a Scottish Widow advert, before morphing into an operetta that Gilbert and Sullivan would be scrabbling to plagiarise. Decked in the outrageous outfit of a Maid Marian power-leotard, topped with a 72-slice toast-rack fascinator, Alessandra channelled elements of Lady Gaga, Ava Max, and Charlie Kelly’s “The Nightman Cometh”. And the world really was not quite ready: her high-note flourish was apparently so high-pitched that many sound systems blocked it out as extraneous background noise – a whistle of unanticipated joy. Result: 268 points (5th)

Slovenia, I confess against my initial wariness, did indeed have some charm: not only was this a coherent band of people who manifestly spent time making music together (more of that please), but these blokes were current students who had sloped off from their degree to perform over in Merseyside. Yes, the band name is weird (Joker Out), the song title hackneyed (“Carpe diem”), and the song pretty derivative and dull… but they sang with real and palpable pleasure, a genuinely refreshing tonic for a contest that so often rewards flash-in-the-pan chintziness. Result: 78 points (21st)

Finally, Croatia offered up the sort of thing that keeps these events interesting: Let 3! had somehow concocted the tune “Mama ŠČ”, a song that was pitched with a provocative rider: if it won, the band would perform their victory reprise entirely naked. Well, for these hoary pseudo-punks, it wasn’t to be. Still, the band marched forth in military fetish gear, as unnervingly bloodstained wacko-generals. Before anything made any sense, they had stripped down to vest and y-fronts, reaching their thumping climax as a trenchcoated maniac fired two nuclear warheads from his thighs. As we know, the contest is definitely not political, so the lyrics about someone (like Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko) giving the repeatedly referenced “tractor” (like he did last year) to a “little psycopath” (like one Vladimir Putin), which leads to the declaration “I’m going to war”, could – on reflection – really be about anything under the sun. Result: 123 points (13th)

That’s the list then. But we have forgotten something. Ah yes, the winner! Well, Sweden did indeed scoop their seventh victory, joining the Irish at the top of this contested pyramid of Eurovision pop-populism. And this was, furthermore, a repeat winner: with her song “Tattoo” Loreen added a second win to her 2012 victory. There is a mixed blessing in having a genuine banger in your back catalogue, as the contrast can be stark. Performing in the grip of a larger-than-life George Foreman Sandwich Maker, Loreen seemed to be handling the pressure. And, despite being covered in the scattered leather shrapnel from an explosion of the Birkenhead DFS, she still sang her song. The judges loved it, the people liked it a lot, and I can only say I thought it – both the song and its performance – pretty average pap. Result: 538 points (1st)

My six-year-old son was feverishly following the votes as they came in on the map. After a while he piped up: countries like voting for the ones next to them, and that isn’t fair because Britain has no country next to it. Well, it wasn’t the time to talk about Home Rule, nor indeed about how the blocs of European geopolitics play out in even more complex ways, so I said, “Yes, the contest has its strange cosa nostra quirks and you’ll learn them in time. But, at least we can say with head held high this year, it definitely wasn’t political.”