Eurovision

Saturday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you! | 14 May 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying: ‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

The power of song

You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how we might choose to vote in the coming referendum. Surely it’s just a string of naff pop songs stuck together with fake glitter and a lot of false jollity? The songs are uniformly terrible, the show so overproduced it’s impossible not to mock its grandiosity, the idea that it conjures up the meaning of Europe laughably misplaced. But in a programme for the World Service that caught my attention because it sounded so counterintuitive, Nicola Clase, head of mission at the Swedish embassy in London, tried to persuade us otherwise.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you!

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying: ‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The ejection of Romania from Eurovision is shameful

On Eurovision night, the best and most heartfelt performances always come from the countries imprisoned behind an Iron Curtain not so long ago. Since Romania joined the comity of Eurovision in 1994, its entries have always impressed. It has always known that Eurovision is a rare chance for the peoples of Europe – and its environs – to come together, drink vodka and laugh with (and sometimes at) each other’s entries. The sheer effort that these tiny countries go to, as they show themselves to the world’s largest television audience for a non-sporting event, is testimony to the awesome soft power of Eurovision. Which is why it is scandalous that the European Broadcasting

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Public will now choose UK’s Eurovision entry – but should we trust the BBC with the shortlist?

For almost two decades, Britain has failed dismally at Eurovision – and deservedly. Our entries have been so bad as to represent a passive-aggressive insult to an entire continent. You can blame the BBC: it picks the song, and just doesn’t understand Eurovision. It seems to think it’s the equivalent of a musical bad taste party, where the aim is to send in cheesy songs. You Europeans have awful taste, the BBC seems to say, so here’s a song so crap that you’ll love it! They tend not to. Today, the BBC has announced that the public will choose the song. Its musical politburo won’t. This is a step forward, but it

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 9 July 2015

The case for Daesh Sir: For once the admirable Rod Liddle has got it completely wrong (‘You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State’, 4 July). We absolutely shouldn’t call the homoerotic, narcissistic death cult ‘Islamic State’ — not because it offends ordinary Muslims, nor because it has nothing to do with Islam (it has everything to do with Islam) but because it legitimises and validates the preposterous project. The media has a responsibility not to run terrorist propaganda unchallenged. Politicians, including the Prime Minister, are starting to wise up to this and should be applauded for doing so. We are in an information war with our enemies. Let

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Eurovision-speak

Like a reluctantly remembered nightmare, last week’s Eurovision Song Contest already seems very distant. But, in the manner of the Sand people in Star Wars, the nations of Eurovision will no doubt soon be back, and in greater numbers. Disappointingly, with scarcely an alien tongue displayed apart from Montenegrin, the chosen language was poor English. Since it is hard (for those not native speakers) to make out the sense of songs in English, the logic seemed to be to write them nonsensically from the outset. Sweden’s winning song had a thing about natural history, but showed a feeble grasp of fundamentals. ‘Go sing it like a hummingbird,’ it said, ‘The

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Måns Zelmerlöw’s ‘Heroes’ shows why Sweden rules the pop world

This is a blog written after the first screening of Måns Zelmerlöw’s Heroes, which went on to win the Swedish nomination and the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. The world’s most-watched cultural event is some time away, but for Eurovision affectionados the entertainment has started already. Britain and Sweden are the continent’s two greatest exporters of pop music, but the UK Eurovision contestant is annointed by the BBC whose institutional snobbishness and soft xenophobia prevents it from understanding the contest. Sweden asks Swedes to choose from one of 28 entries in a six-stage event called Melody Festival, now in full flow. For MelFest, a song starts with songwriters. They’re celebrated, and shown on camera before the performer gets going. A song that wins Eurovision

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Australia joining the Eurovision shows the awesome soft power of the song contest

All you want from Europe is free trade, cheap flights and the Eurovision Song Contest – the rest is bureaucracy. One of the contest’s many strengths is its generous, expansive definition of ‘European’. Its soft power is awesome, and effective. It reaches out to countries banging on the door of the West – nations the European Union itself is too sniffy, paranoid and insular to include. This has led to several historic occasions, underling Eurovision’s status as the world’s premiere forum for the collision of politics and culture, where hatchets are buried (or dug up) and new alliances struck. Israel has been contesting since 1973, and its giving 12 points to Germany in 1982 was

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

This strategy won Eurovision. It could also save your life

Oskar Morgenstern grew up in Vienna, John von Neumann in Budapest. Clearly the same Austro-Hungarian intellectual spirit which gave rise to Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele and their seminal joint work Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour is still alive in that part of the world, because the Austrians chose a bearded transvestite to represent them in the Eurovision song contest. Oskar and John would have been very proud. If you want a really childish explanation of game theory, it is that when everyone else goes around shouting ‘rock’, a few smart people should start to shout ‘paper’. And perhaps a few really smart and really brave people, figuring out this

Thursday

Charles Moore

My tax avoidance tip – win literary prizes!

David Cameron is said to want a woman to be chairman of the BBC Trust, now that Chris Patten has had to retire early because of ill health. Perhaps he has a bad conscience about what happened last time. By far the best candidate then was the runner-up, Patricia Hodgson, a distinguished BBC veteran who is committed to its virtues and has always understood its vices. She would have led a return to the BBC’s core strengths, and saved licence fee money in the process. But the government did not know what it wanted, so it chose the nearest chum, Lord Patten, who accepted in that casual and complacent spirit

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Eurovision 2014: the booing of Russia was a disgrace

Yet again, the best Eurovision entries rose to the top on the night. Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria were the bookies’ favourites before the betting started, and no amount of ‘buddy voting’ upended that. What did disappoint me was the booing of the teenaged girls representing Russia. I felt desperately sorry for the Tolmachevy twins, who had a decent song and pulled off an impressive stage performance. I can’t remember the last time I heard a Eurovision audience boo anyone; during the Iraq war in 2003, no one booed Britain – we just came last with no votes from anyone. The acrimony should be in the voting: Poland didn’t have to

Digby Warde-Aldam

We watched Eurovision – so you didn’t have to

I like Europe, even if this may not be the place to admit it, and I like this moment, when our brothers are forced to make fools of themselves in a language none bar the Irish can speak convincingly. Sauf les Français, obviously. ‘Ukraine will win. Europe has solidarity. You’ll see,’ says my European flatmate. But after the first batch of votes, it becomes clear that either Ukraine’s entry wasn’t very good, or Putin actually takes the competition seriously. Having missed both Maria Yaremchuk’s Tick-Tock and the inner machinations of the Kremlin’s ministry of culture, my guess is one or both of those things. Many horrors were committed in the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Eurovision: It was the beard wot won it

I enjoyed Fraser’s preview of the Eurovision Song Contest; I had not known that he was such a fan. You work with someone for years, oblivious to their dark secrets, their strange peccadilloes. It was typically brave of him to come out, in public. I watched the thing, again. I thought the entry from The Netherlands was the best song I have ever heard at a Eurovision Song Contest, and by some margin. But that may be because Europop makes me feel ill, and their song definitely wasn’t Europop. It’s the first time I’ve heard a pedal steel in this competition. That being said, the Dutch have form as purveyors

Steerpike Steerpike

Sorry, Britain didn’t vote for the Austrian ‘Bearded Lady’

There has been plenty of progressive backslapping this morning because Britain was one of the many countries to award the full 12 points to the bearded Austrian drag act Conchita Wurst in Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest. We showed those bigots over in Eastern Europe and Russia a thing or two, the chatterati say. Mr S hates to be a party-pooper, but he has news for you. The British public actually voted for some Polish girls in milkmaid outfits, seductively churning butter and cleaning clothes. The Polish ladies were very self-confident, if a little old fashioned: ‘We’re Slavic girls We know how to use our charming beauty Now, shake what

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Ukip and the vicious politics of Eurovision

The Eurovision song contest has just started – seven million of us will tune in, at least 30 million Eurovision-related drinks will be consumed and the voting will be deliciously political as always.  (Poland has entered again, perhaps just for the joy of being able to vote on Russia). But there’s plenty domestic politics too. Ukip’s Nigel Farage claims that Britain is doomed tonight because of discrimination against us. He obviously doesn’t follow the contest very closely – if he did, he’s struggle to name a single entry submitted by the BBC in the last few years that deserved to qualify for the final, far less win it. Nowhere in recent

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive poll: Brits think we’re doomed in Eurovision (and blame the BBC)

Seven million of us will be tuning in at 8pm tomorrow night for the Eurovision final, rising to nine million when the UK number is played. But what do we expect to see, and do we think it’s rigged? The Spectator’s Culture House Daily blog, in conjunction with YouGov, is able to give you an exclusive poll of 1,860 Brits, seeing what the nation thinks about world’s most-watched cultural event. Seventeen years of hurt has led Britain to think that we just can’t win this thing anymore. A pitiful 1 per cent of those polled think Molly’s Children of the Universe will take the crown tomorrow night, a low figure

Thursday

Marcus Berkmann

Addicted to Vole

Earworm: what a wonderful word. It describes, as nothing else quite can, the effect a really invasive melody can have on your consciousness. Hear the song once and you will hear it again and again, on a loop in your brain. At the pub quiz the other night, the answer to a question was Brotherhood of Man, and at least two of us subsequently suffered the torture of hearing ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ in our heads for the rest of the evening. I don’t usually think of myself as Drinking To Forget, but this evening might have been an exception. So are people who love pop music more susceptible

Monday

Thursday

Marcus Berkmann

Has music died? If not, where are the new decent pop tunes?

I am suffering, as we all do from time to time, from a shortage of decent new tunes. Of course, ‘suffering’ may be a slight exaggeration here. Very little physical pain has been involved. But research has shown that music obsessives need a constant upgrade of their personal tunebanks in order to perform at full capacity. It’s all very well going back and playing the Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue at top volume and singing along to every vocal harmony, as I might have done once or twice this past week, but a long-term solution it is not. It’s where to find these new tunes that has become