ZoboCamel
Well-known member
I've seen a lot of posts around this year saying that it so far looks like the contest's weakest year in ages; that none of the songs are winning material, and that great songs are losing out in the national finals. I feel the need to defend ESC2015, though, and here's why (warning: rant incoming).
This is the third year now that I've followed the national final season (and forum hype), and I've seen the exact same thing every year around this time. Every year it feels like the general sentiment at this stage has been disappointment, but have the last two years really been that bad? It's down to taste, of course, but I personally feel they've been some of the contest's better years, and in relative terms I think it'd be hard to argue that they were objectively bad.
No, there likely isn't a winning song amongst the nine selected; everyone seems to forget, though, that these songs are not representative of the overall level of quality. You can't just say 'we've got a quarter of the songs already, and there isn't a quarter as much as I liked last year yet', and there are three reasons for that.
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly: the weaker countries tend to choose earlier. Consider that, of the top 12 countries last year, only one has chosen their song so far, and that one is the Netherlands, who aren't a strong Eurovision country in the long term anyway. Not a single one of the top 10 last year had revealed their finished song until late February, and most of them did so in March. Most of the relatively unpopular songs so far are from countries that are relatively unpopular in most years - Albania, Macedonia, France and so on. If you actually compare songs on a country-by-country basis, I personally think that the majority of countries with a song so far have chosen a stronger one than what they usually bring. Yes, Amber's Warrior may be overhyped, but is it really a worse entry than Coming Home? Doesn't Time have a bit more merit to it than Cheesecake? Surely Nina's Warrior is an improvement over Three Minutes To Earth? And so on and so forth. We need to keep our comparisons accurate.
Secondly: many of the versions we're hearing now aren't the final versions of the songs. Of the nine countries that have chosen their songs so far, six (all except for France, Switzerland and the Netherlands) have already given a strong indication that they're reworking or otherwise modifying their songs: this means that the majority of what we're hearing now will sound slicker, better-produced and better-structured when it's all finalised and performed in May.
Thirdly: with regards to this year in particular, the January to early February period is more empty than usual, as most of the countries usually occupying the period have shuffled things around a bit. Malta, Macedonia and Belarus had earlier selections; Ukraine is out for the year; Finland has moved their selection back by a month. This has resulted in a fairly barren period of a month or so, and when we're used to seeing more of a glut of songs in these months, it's no surprise that there's less hype and discussion than in previous years.
TL;DR: We've got a stronger-than-average bunch of songs relative to the countries who've chosen them, it seems likely that these songs will improve anyway in the coming months, the large majority of strong countries are yet to reveal their entries, and this is all despite NF scheduling giving us less events at this time compared to what we had last year.
I don't really see anything to worry about, as such. But am I missing anything? Are people's complaints stemming from different reasons? I'm curious to hear some more opinions on the matter!
This is the third year now that I've followed the national final season (and forum hype), and I've seen the exact same thing every year around this time. Every year it feels like the general sentiment at this stage has been disappointment, but have the last two years really been that bad? It's down to taste, of course, but I personally feel they've been some of the contest's better years, and in relative terms I think it'd be hard to argue that they were objectively bad.
No, there likely isn't a winning song amongst the nine selected; everyone seems to forget, though, that these songs are not representative of the overall level of quality. You can't just say 'we've got a quarter of the songs already, and there isn't a quarter as much as I liked last year yet', and there are three reasons for that.
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly: the weaker countries tend to choose earlier. Consider that, of the top 12 countries last year, only one has chosen their song so far, and that one is the Netherlands, who aren't a strong Eurovision country in the long term anyway. Not a single one of the top 10 last year had revealed their finished song until late February, and most of them did so in March. Most of the relatively unpopular songs so far are from countries that are relatively unpopular in most years - Albania, Macedonia, France and so on. If you actually compare songs on a country-by-country basis, I personally think that the majority of countries with a song so far have chosen a stronger one than what they usually bring. Yes, Amber's Warrior may be overhyped, but is it really a worse entry than Coming Home? Doesn't Time have a bit more merit to it than Cheesecake? Surely Nina's Warrior is an improvement over Three Minutes To Earth? And so on and so forth. We need to keep our comparisons accurate.
Secondly: many of the versions we're hearing now aren't the final versions of the songs. Of the nine countries that have chosen their songs so far, six (all except for France, Switzerland and the Netherlands) have already given a strong indication that they're reworking or otherwise modifying their songs: this means that the majority of what we're hearing now will sound slicker, better-produced and better-structured when it's all finalised and performed in May.
Thirdly: with regards to this year in particular, the January to early February period is more empty than usual, as most of the countries usually occupying the period have shuffled things around a bit. Malta, Macedonia and Belarus had earlier selections; Ukraine is out for the year; Finland has moved their selection back by a month. This has resulted in a fairly barren period of a month or so, and when we're used to seeing more of a glut of songs in these months, it's no surprise that there's less hype and discussion than in previous years.
TL;DR: We've got a stronger-than-average bunch of songs relative to the countries who've chosen them, it seems likely that these songs will improve anyway in the coming months, the large majority of strong countries are yet to reveal their entries, and this is all despite NF scheduling giving us less events at this time compared to what we had last year.
I don't really see anything to worry about, as such. But am I missing anything? Are people's complaints stemming from different reasons? I'm curious to hear some more opinions on the matter!
I don't think Estonia's going to win this year, but I suppose I can see where the short odds are coming from - my guess is that the bookies last year underrated both Calm After The Storm and Rise Like A Phoenix, and when the frontrunner in Eesti Laul is virtually a combination of those two, they don't want to put it at long odds and then have it win. Still, though, I'm assuming that they'll fall to somewhere between fifth and tenth even if Goodbye to Yesterday is selected - probably behind Spain, Sweden and a couple of others that we've got no way of predicting.
