Kantgate, Saunas and Super Saturday

Steven Perkins: 00:00:00

In this week's episode, serving controversy as Malta are told to change their lyrics at the last minute. Will we be seeing Dionne in Basel at this year's contest? And what the hell just happened?

No, not the UK's entry, but the response to that shock Mailfest result. I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Douz Poir. Hello, London, we are ready for your vote.

It is Monday, 10th of March, and we've just had the final super Saturday of the season. All the national finals are now over and we've just got a few reveals left from broadcasters who are internally selecting their entries.

But what a week it has been. So let's start with the news. It goes without saying that the big news of the week has been Cantgate.

While filming the video for her song, Maltese ambassador Miriana Conte was informed by the EBU that she would need to change the lyrics of her song as the inclusion of the word cant, technically Maltese for singing, but very much being used in the context of the vulgar English word that it sounds like, was not acceptable.

This is all very complicated because apparently Miriana and the Maltese team had previously been led to believe that the lyrics had been accepted by the ebu. But it appears that a member broadcaster thought to be the BBC but not confirmed, had requested that the title and lyrics be changed.

This left Malta with around one week to revamp their song in a way that would make it acceptable.

And while they are currently working to comply with the EBU's demand, the Maltese broadcaster PBS has confirmed that it has formally appealed against the decision, apparently on the grounds that it is discriminatory to the Maltese language and that the rules of the contest are not being uniformly applied. How successful this appeal is likely to be remains to be seen.

ent an entry in Maltese since: 1972

Mariana Conte was even interviewed by Newsnight this week. So expect this particular bandwagon to roll on for a while, possibly all the way up to maybe elsewhere.

Germany have announced that they will be withdrawing from this year's Junior Eurovision.

Broadcaster Kika, which airs the contest in Germany and organises the German entry, said in a statement that although they still intended to screen this year's contest as usual, they would not be sending a representative from the country on this occasion.

n since making their debut in: 2020

, won for Switzerland back in: 1988

She defied the odds to perform at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris last year, and the executive producers of this year's Eurovision Song Contest have confirmed that they've been in talks with her about appearing in Basel.

However, nothing has decided yet and it's likely that we won't know one way or the other until much closer to the contest, as it will depend on whether she's well enough to do it. Ok, that's the headlines out of the way.

Now let's take a look at all the songs that have been chosen for Eurovision since our last episode, starting with Croatia.

The final of Dora: 2025

dim dominated the televote in: 2024

Marco, in fact finished in fourth place in the televote, but still had enough of a lead with the panel of regional juries that it enabled him to win the contest overall.

So I think we can say Croatia aren't going into this year's Eurovision Song Contest with quite such a place of hype behind them, But I do still think this entry is quite fun. It's a bit gothic and high camp, which is always a good combination in my book.

The staging, I think, could do with a little refining, and there were some shaky moments vocally.

But then Baby Lasagne's vocals were in a worse state at this point in last year's process, and he'd improved a lot by the time Eurovision came around. Have Croatia done enough to stand out in this year's increasingly crowded field of high concept? Attention grabbing entries.

Not sure this one does feel very much like it's a question of how well the concept works on the Eurovision stage and how well he performs it on the night. So it's borderline for me right now, qualification wise.

The runner up at Dora was Ogenyi with Die Die, which translates from Croatian as Come on, come on.

In music terms, this one does feel much more like a spiritual successor to what Baby Lasagne was doing last year and it was the public's favourite in the televote.

For what it's worth, I do think it is a slightly stronger song than the one that won, but in all honesty, given that the frontman does have a history of homophobic and anti abortion comments, I'm not particularly upset by him being denied a worldwide platform in which to espouse them. So let's say bye bye to Dai Die and move on with our live lives. So over to Austria, who were sending JJ with Wasted Love and wow.

This one I think has got huge potential.

The feeling I got listening to this for the first time was very similar to how I felt when I first heard the Code last year, that this has got Runaway Jury winner written all over it. It's huge and sweeping and operatic. So operatic.

And given that Austria is a nation with a proud operatic history, it feels authentic rather than a cynical attempt to repeat what worked so well last year.

JJ's voice is absolutely beautiful and if he pulls this off live, and given that he's a performer with the Vienna State Opera, there's no reason why he shouldn't, I think he's a lock for a lot of those jury 12s.

I'm not ruling out the possibility of a strong showing in the televote either, given that this feels very different from what anyone else is sending this year. So if all of the wackier entries end up cancelling each other out, he could sail through the middle and get a healthy score from the public too.

What particularly interests me about this one is the way that it absolutely goes off with a bass drop in the last 30 seconds, which I was wholly not expecting.

That I think is a nice concession to having one eye on the televote, but it's also the one part of the song where the vocals feel quite heavily produced, so I'm keen to see how that translates live.

It might not work as well in that environment, in the same way that I haven't quite seen the abrupt ending of Erica Vickman's Ich Coma have the same impact live yet, but let's wait and See.

And speaking of Erika, apparently the artistic director in charge of staging JJ's entry is Sergio Hayenn, who is also working with Erika this year as well as Cyprus Theo Evan and was responsible for Bambi Thug's iconic presentation last year. So we should expect something pretty incredible this week also saw the reveal of the full studio version of Kiss Kiss Goodbye by Adonis. The Czechia.

This feels like another entry with huge potential. The production on it is epic and the range of his voice should play really, really well with the juries.

The soprano elements of the song should be pretty spectacular if he can deliver them.

The song is apparently about his childhood and the impact that it's had on his adult life and I don't mind admitting that it did hit me right in the feels when I listened to it. So there's definitely potential for this one to really resonate with the voters at home.

Again, with so many countries really going for something incredibly extra with their songs this year, there's definitely a gap in the market for something truly heartfelt and sincere that also absolutely slaps. So I think this one could do really well.

I think Czechia are in perhaps the most dangerous of the two semi finals, but if they qualify for the final, they could really be one to watch out for. Okay, let's move on to the big drama of the weekend. We've skirted it long enough for weeks now.

The narrative of this contest has been around Sweden being runaway favourites with the bookies thanks to the return of Mans Zellmuller at Melodie Festivalen, with the assumption being that he would absolutely walk both Melfest and then the jury vote at Eurovision, potentially securing Sweden's second two time winner and setting a new record for the number of Eurovision wins for a single nation. Even those of us who weren't necessarily convinced that he was a lock to win Eurovision thought he was at least a lock to win Melodie Festivalen.

And then he didn't.

As it turned out, the jury vote at Belfast was a lot closer than anyone anticipated, as Mons won it by just two points over his most obvious rivals, Kaija, a comedy group from the Swedish speaking community of Finland with Barabadabastu. Let's just sauna. An earworm ode to Finnish sauna culture.

Cailla weren't necessarily expected to sweep the televote at Belfast in the way that they might have been in most other countries, because Melfest has quite a convoluted weighting system for its televote, which is based on the different age groups and is designed to ensure that the results reflect a broad demographic of voters and not just one section. So it was expected that perhaps Mons song Revolution might play better to the slightly more musically conservative voters across all age groups.

But in the end, Kaija finished nine points ahead of Mons in the televote, giving them the win by seven points overall. This is fascinating because as a Eurovision entry it seems very out of character for Sweden.

We normally expect them to send very serious, solidly crafted, if occasionally uninspiring pop songs, hence their tendency to do reliably well with juries, if not the televote. So this feels like an absolute wildcard and I have no idea how it will do.

Will juries still be inspired to give it points because they just default to Sweden?

Will juries give it points because they've become more inclined to support the more comedy novelty, crowd pleasing entries in this post Karija and Baby Lasagna era, and because it is a genuinely good entry on those terms? Or might it be that Sweden find themselves truly relying on the televote to shore them up for the first time in quite some time?

For what it's worth, I love Baro Bardo Bastu and I'm really glad it won because I think this has the potential to create a real moment at Eurovision when it's performed.

lect of Finland Swedish since: 1998

There are so many new variables being thrown into the air here that I have absolutely no idea how this one is going to land and I'm really excited about that. What about Mons, by the way?

His entry was pretty much your archetypal Melfest competent, professional, but disappointingly difficult to get excited about. Ironically, for a song called Revolution, it didn't feel like it was doing anything particularly new.

Heroes, his winning song from: 2015

And given that I felt similarly about Heroes, that it mostly won by being the most agreeable effort in a generally weak contest, I didn't really want to see a second run of that maybe. I just feel like the bar needs to be higher for a two time Eurovision winner. Sorry, Mans, let's head over to Portugal now.

This year's Festival de Canzao was won by Napa with Deslocado or dislocated. This is another case where the winning entry didn't finish top with the juries or the public.

It finished fourth with the juries and second in the televote and that happened to be enough. I think the one thing we can say about Portugal at Eurovision is that they're generally not too fussed about chasing trends.

They enjoy having an annual festival for Portuguese songs and artists and their focus is on that in and of itself rather than selecting a Eurovision entry. The outcome being that I do really like this song.

It's easy on the year, it's well crafted and I do not particularly expect it to get past the semi finals.

I think it just feels a bit too gentle and unobtrusive that people will enjoy it in the moment and will have forgotten all about it by the time they actually come to vote. For what it's worth, there was an entry that would have felt very un Portuguese at Eurovision.

Henke with the rocky punky I Wanna Destroy youy, which actually won the televote in the festival but got zero points under its jury system. So only finish fourth overall. I think it would have had a slightly stronger chance of qualifying at Eurovision.

So whether Portugal's jury system has turned out to be a tad self defeating, who can really say? The runner up in this year's contest for Portugal was Diana Vilirinho with Cortovia, which I believe means Skylark.

She got the highest number of jury votes but only finished sixth in the televote.

I think that I maybe prefer this one to Deslorcado, just because it does feel a bit more impactful and I really like the tone of her voice, but I think it is a fairly academic distinction between the two because I don't really think this one would have qualified either. So essentially Portugal are gonna Portugal and I love that about them.

Over to San Marino, who continued to have a national final process that defies all sense of logic and proportion, holding seven semi finals and a second chance round with an absolutely baffling number of entries and with frankly scant quality control.

It is a fundamentally confusing experience, perhaps best exemplified by the fact that the song that finished in fifth place in the final was BTW by Booster, a pian instrumental that almost certainly would not have actually been eligible for Eurovision due to not really being a song. We've put the link to it in the episode description and I strongly urge you to check it out just to see how much WTF there is in btw.

But perhaps the true encapsulation of the madness of the San Marino Song Contest is the fact that this year's winner, Gabri Ponte with Tutella, was the theme song for San Remo this year. Yep, that's right.

The composer of the theme song for the song festival that Italy uses to choose their Eurovision entry proceeded to enter San Marino's selection process and then won with it. It is about the most San Marino thing that could possibly happen. Just sheer merciless trolling. And honestly, I'm kind of here for it.

I wonder what it's going to be like for Lucio Corsi, Italy's representative, going up against it in particular. But yeah, San Marino are simply a law unto themselves at Eurovision, and I strongly wish for that to never change.

Oh, and the runner up was a rock hack called the Rumbled with a song titled you'd Get Me so High, which was absolutely fine and kind of fun and feels very much like the sort of song that at least one country sends in any given year and then fails to get out of the semis with.

For what that's worth, I actually got quite into this one and I kind of wanted it to win, just to see if San Marino, of all nations, could break that particular duck. But fate had other plans in store this year, I suppose. Finally, by the time you hear this, Israel will have debuted their entry.

It's called New Day Will Rise and sung by Yuval Raphael. It was released after this episode was recorded, but if you want to know more about it, you can go to the official Eurovision channels.

So we've almost got a full house at this point. Cyprus and Switzerland will be debuting their songs this week, France's is coming next weekend, and George's at some unspecified point this month.

So more news on all of those in our upcoming episodes on that subject, please do subscribe via your podcast platform of choice to make sure that you don't miss a single one. And if you'd like to leave us a glowing review to help more people find us, we would really appreciate that. We will be back next Monday.

And until then, goodnight Europe and good morning Australia.