There are no entries that 'deliberately suck' or troll. The American commentator just isn't getting the European sense of humour or cultural significance of some of the entries, or the need to out gimmick your opponents to win the public vote. Liverpool in the U.K. hosted it this year on Ukraine's behalf, we were more than happy to stage it and help out.
Also, some years a countries just don't have very special candidates to send. Mediocre or fun is a common choice. Mediocre is just as likely to get 0 points. Lot of the times, artists just fail to deliver on big stage and live.
The troll era is something from the past. Nowadays the contest is more serious and countries are sending really good songs and performances. It is a lie that everybody wants to see the troll entries... That's the American wrong point of view
btw, the song from Portugal at 7:14 was indeed very goofy, but it was kind of a political/economical satire since the country was suffering a really hard financial crisis.
It is mostly about the party. You are not supposed to get too serious about. The professional juries was brought back in to improve the quality of the winners and keep some focus on the art, and not only popularity contests that can be motivated by many different things. This was also done to keep actual composers interested in particiapating. Getting to host the show can be a great benefit, because it is a chance to promote your own country, but at some point the expected requirements started to skyrocket so that the cost would prevent many countries to want to try to win. Last time Sweden hosted the contest they made serious effort to create a blueprint for hosting that would cost much less, so I think today most countries can handle the bill. Remember that there are also income from hosting the show, and profits to the country from all the tourists that come along with it. Hotels and restaurants can have a great time.
I agree. If he doesn't understand something, us Europeans must be deliberately trying to troll him! If you want to learn about the UK and Europe get it first hand from a Brit or European.
Oh, and it's a song contest, not a singing contest. The artist can be from another country yes, but the song writers have to have at least 1 from the country they compete in. The artist is not the most important one in the eyes of the rules though the artist obviously means a lot to the viewer, but it is the performance as a whole that sway the public not who is the best singer.
This American reactor obviously has no clue at all!!!!! ALL wants to win...... Please go watch a whole recording of an Eurovision Song contest- And you judge for yourself. Its a spectacular show!
The American gave an interpretation of it but he is not correct in his understanding of it. Countries don’t purposefully try to lose, countries have not entered on certain years if they were worried they couldn’t afford to host by winning. Also if you win you have an option to decline to host. There have been about 8 occasions where a county declined to host and on 6 of these the United Kingdom paid the money and hosted. This year actually the UK hosted because they came 2nd last year but the winner Ukraine couldn’t host because of the war, so Britain hosted it for them. Also once Israel couldn’t host because the dates of the competition would have been on the same date as an important religious festival and so they declined it. For many country’s they actually send their most high profile singers. The UK has actually sent two Anglo-Indian singers before :) both were born in India before Independence and then they moved to the UK after Independence. One of them Engelbert Humperdinck didn’t do well but the other Cliff Richard came 2nd and then 3rd. The UK has the best results in the competition because they’ve come 1st 5 times, 2nd 17 times plus lots of other high placings but in recent years have had some low results as well.
Paul Barbato does a great job on his actual Geography videos.. he got sort of lazy and in a hurry on this one. More importantly, it was done a good number of years ago, and is already hopelessly out of date, and therefore notably inaccurate in some important details. DO keep that in mind about the content. THe spirit of it is excellent for those with no prior knowledge however
Glad to see that also Indians are starting to notice the greatness that is Eurovision! :) As a European, I've loved it since my childhood :) Only sadly, my country, Finland, always used to do badly in my childhood (often undeservedly)... Happily, these days we are doing better, though sometimes rigged & corrupt juries get in our way of winning the whole show, like last year (2023). Oh, and the time we did win the contest with Lordi (those monster masked men) in 2006 was one of the happiest nights of my life ;D BTW, the video is wrong in that everybody actually does want to host (except maybe Ireland in the 90's, but that's an exception), so I assure nobody sends bad songs on purpose!!
Yeah, As already pointed out it is an American trying to explain an European event and he doesn't seem to fully get it. To be clear, not all Europeans get it either to be fair. We don't all watch it even if most of us have grown up with it and knows about it. No one wants to lose and some of those troll songs actually have an underlying meaning behind them, usually political, but you got to know what happened that year in that country to get it. Some are just meant to be humorous of course, but we don't all have the same humor in Europe so some works great while other flops. And no, UK doesn't send in bad songs on purpose. They've just sent a lot of songs that aren't liked by most Europeans. But that is also false because you can only give out a limited amount of points and the way the point system works that means some countries will be without even if people have voted for them. Like, out of 25 finalists you can only give points to 10 of those countries. Also, in semi 1 and 2 only the countries competing in them can vote. So if my country is in semi-final 2 I can not vote for anyone in semi-final 1. You never know how the people of Europe are going to vote. The juries don't look at the same thing in the songs that a viewer might do and even the viewers can be divided by true fans that follow every single country and knows the songs by heart when the final comes while the casual viewer only watch the song once. The River Dance Eurovision performance was an interval act of that year, meaning it was entertaining while we were voting and waiting for the result. The host country can show whatever they want as an interval act but most want to show something connected to their country and River Dance is a very specific old Irish Dance that suddenly got an enormous audience and became very well known in Europe afterwards. Personally I had never heard about that dance before but I went and saw "Lord of the Dance" on their European tour a few years later. It was an amazing experience to see live.
