Last Saturday the whole of Europe had the opportunity to enjoy the one thing that binds us as a union of states: the Eurovision Song Festival. Broadcasted live from Belgrade in Serbia, twenty-five finalists, chosen out of the forty-three contesting countries, would perform their song and hope for the votes of the citizens of the other countries.

Not a big fan of the second class pop music and musak that is usually played and sung during this festival, but not disapproving of a bit of cheap television entertainment on a Saturday night either, Matt and I decided to watch the show with half an eye. While playing a board game and sipping cheap red wine we heard and saw the better and lesser songs drift by.

Thus far all was good. The music wasn’t even as horrible as some of the other years. The voting began, after fifteen minutes of snippets of the twenty-five contestants the lines were closed, and the results were in.

“Hello Europe, and here are the results from the televote…”

And then we found out once again: Western European countries simply don’t stand a chance. There are so many Eastern European countries that all seem to simply vote for their neighbours, regardless of the quality of the song, that the contest is already won before it has begun. This way the winning country will always be either a Balkan, Baltic or Soviet country. It’s all about politics, not about the music. Or so it seems.

In the end indeed one of those countries won: a coke addict from Russia to be exact. Was it a good song? Yes, it was probably one of the better songs of the night. Was it the best song? I don’t know. If I would know, then they wouldn’t bother with all the televoting, they would have just asked me directly. Was Russia a fair winner? Maybe, although Western Europe doesn’t seem to think so.

So is the modern Eurovision Song Festival all about politics? And if so, why?

During the show Matt came up with another possible explanation. Maybe it’s not about politics, but about culture. Musical traditions, and thus musical preferences, in Eastern European countries are very different from those in Western Europe. So it could well be that those countries simply prefer those kind of songs.

I like the idea, but could it be so simple? I don’t believe that the Russian song was particularly Soviet, that the song of Turkey was very Muslim or that the atrocious song of Bosnia & Herzegovina was anything at all. So I find it hard to believe that it merely comes down to cultural preferences that Azerbaijan thinks Turkey deserves twelve points, or that both Portugal and Andorra give incredibly high scores to that crap song of Spain. I’m not that naïve. Conclusion: there may be some cultural values involved, but the amount of politics that plays a part in this contest is definitely undeniable.

But why? Why can’t those countries just vote for the song they like best? Why do they want their political allies to win so badly? I think it all comes down to three things. One: to make sure they get votes back in return from their allies, either this year or the next. Two: a lot of the votes aren’t from natives but from guest workers and other immigrants, therefore secretly voting for their own country after all. Three: very much correlated to number two, the fact that the winner gets to host the festival in the next year. This results in a lot of tourism, promotion and honour for that country. It’s a good thing for Western European countries to win too, of course, but maybe poorer countries like the Baltic and Balkan states find this even more important?

However, this still doesn’t really explain why we, Western European countries, are so pissed of by this. And it doesn’t necessarily say that one of our songs should have won instead. When we, Western European countries, started with Europe, didn’t we secretly think that we would always stay the best and biggest and culturally advanced of our union? Could it be that we simply can’t stand losing from countries we believe are inferior to our own cultural and political standards? Did we hope they would start enjoying Western pop and rock music once they’d join the union and that the lids would be taken off their ears, their eyes opened widely, so they could finally see and hear the true nature of culture and art? That they would be voting for us madly, at the same time cursing their own low quality contesting song? What a disappointment when none of this happened. Instead their culture seeped into ours. Instead they win every year.

Yes, we don’t seem to stand a single chance against these political votes. But on the other hand we shouldn’t be reluctant to face the truth: we didn’t bring in a single song that was worthy of winning.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, May 26th, 2008.

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