Eurovision, that is the world’s largest non-sports event became the latest front of the Israeli war in Gaza this year. The motto of Eurovision is “United By Music” but the vibe here in Malmo felt more fractious than ever.
“They need to look at the rules… for a lot of people, it’s becoming ‘divided by music.’”
Charlie Sohne / Politico
The flashy, campy song contest that is the world’s largest non-sports event became the latest front of the Israeli war in Gaza. The motto of Eurovision is “United By Music” but the vibe here in Malmo felt more fractious than ever.
On Saturday, the day of the competition’s finale, Ireland’s Bambie Thug, a neo-pagan act whose song caterwauls between a Marilyn Manson-esque nightmare and Betty Boop, pulled out of a performance in front of a ticket-buying public of 10,000, over tensions with the Israeli public broadcaster. At that same performance, France’s contestant interrupted his song to call for an end to the war, “We need to be united by music, yes, but with love for peace.” In the hours following, both last year’s runner-up, Finland’s Kaarija, and fourth-placing candidate, Norway’s Alessandra, pulled out of the broadcast, which then opened with boos echoing through the arena as Eden Golan, Israel’s representative, stepped on stage. If large segments of the millions of fans and many of the competitors had had their way, Golan wouldn’t have been allowed on stage at all. The atmosphere behind the scenes was so tense that it spilled over into non-Israel related conflicts. The Dutch artist, Joost, was disqualified for an altercation that took place the day before the contest.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The 2024 Eurovision was hosted in Sweden, on the 50th Anniversary of ABBA winning the contest. The elaborate stage production was a technical masterpiece, with 37 countries participating for an audience of nearly 200 million people — larger than the Super Bowl, Grammys and Oscars combined. But this year’s contest was also occurring against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, in which an estimated 34,000 Palestinians have died, setting the stage for the most contentious Eurovision in the modern era. The week-long celebration of “unity” featured protests against Israeli participation that outnumbered the people inside the arena, a Koran burning and Swedish police reporting credible hacking threats from Iran, North Korea and Russia. ABBA never made an appearance.
This year was truly Eurovision’s Waterloo.
While Russia’s bloody conflict in Ukraine permeated every aspect of the contest these past two years, Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is different. Russia’s actions united the Eurovision coalition in response, while Israel’s have left the EBU’s member countries bitterly divided. The furious debates over the war pose an existential threat to a contest that has always put its faith in the power of music to bring people together. As Stig Karlsen, the head of Norway’s Eurovision delegation told me, “They need to look at the rules… for a lot of people, it’s becoming ‘divided by music.’”
The tension in Eurovision’s identity between a light-hearted music competition and a political event has always existed. Founded in 1956, the song contest was born into a fractured Europe still stitching itself back together after World War II. That first year, Walter Andreas Schwarz, whose father had been killed by the Nazis, represented Germany with a song about how his country was not properly dealing with the legacy of the Holocaust. The years following featured Italy censoring its own act out of fear that the pro-divorce song would sway a controversial referendum and Francisco Franco using the contest to advertise his dictatorship in Spain. With the integration of Eastern European countries after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the political moments continued. One contestant dodged sniper fire to escape from Sarajevo under lockdown, all to sing about the suffering of his people on the Eurovision stage.
But as the fundamental disagreements in Europe subsided, Eurovision entered its own “end of history,” commonly referred to as the “Sweden Era” in the early aughts when Eurovision changed from a stodgy cultural program to a big splashy arena show in the style of “American Idol.” Anyone watching the broadcast Saturday night saw the legacy of the Sweden era in the flashy LEDs and pyrotechnics. But it now exists alongside a growing sense of a Europe politically divided.
In the 2010s, concurrent with the rise of right-wing authoritarianism on the continent, Turkey and Hungary withdrew, saying the contest had become LGBT propaganda. Belarus left the contest after its two pro-Alexander Lukashenko, anti-protest anthems were rejected. And Russia was kicked out after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As the Deputy Director General of the European Broadcasting Union Jean Philip de Tender put it when I sat down with him, “What’s happened over the last 10-15 years is we’ve become more values driven.”
It was after the invasion of Russia that modern Eurovision seemed to have come into its own. The 2023 contest in Liverpool engaged directly with the war, as acts expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people, including an openly anti-Putin, anti-war number from the Croatian avant-punk band, Let 3. But though Eurovision seemed to have found its voice, as many Eurovision singers know, even the most confident voice sometimes cracks.
The tension in this year’s Eurovision was embodied by a performer in the very first semi-final. Eric Saade represented Sweden in the contest in 2011 with a song that could be an anthem for Eurovision’s desire for global chart success. The song’s hook repeatedly intones “I will be popular” over the kind of bubblegum track that has led to Swedish dominance of pop music worldwide, so it made sense that Saade would open the week celebrating Eurovision’s rising prominence by performing his iconic song.
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