Songs to look out for at Eurovision 2023

You’d think I’d be a lot more excited about this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Sam Ryder’s incredible second place finish meant the UK took on Ukraine’s hosting duties, so the most wonderful time of the year was going to be a few trains away for the first time in 25 years. We had gone from being so bad I talked about Eurovision being on ITV to getting to play host in the city of the Beatles, two mediocre football teams, and The Vivienne. Truly, Gay Christmas was coming home.

…and then I actually tried to buy tickets for the damn thing. Stuck on a video call with a work bestie I’d planned to go to Liverpool with, we had so many Ticketmaster tabs ready to head to something I figured we’d be more likely to get — an evening preview of a semi-final — only to be completely locked out of the show. Of course, I could just go to Liverpool and experience the atmosphere — but then came the price-gouged hotels and Airbnbs, and the train strikes1, and it just didn’t end up being workable.

I will also confess I’ve not actually listened to all of this year’s songs with much interest. The UK hasn’t, in my view, met the high standard it set for itself last year, and it does feel like a bigger number of countries are phoning it in this time around — so there’s not been a huge amount compelling me to sit and work through 36 songs ahead of the chaos that is the semi-finals. With that caveat out of the way, let’s take a look at a few of my favourites from the 67th Eurovision Song Contest — and spoilers, but one of these is probably going to win the whole thing.

Sweden - Tattoo by Loreen

If you don’t already know, this is Loreen’s second go at Eurovision. She won the whole thing in 2012 with Euphoria, a song that this newsletter called “a cultural reset” and remains the best Eurovision entry of the last fifteen years. Euphoria’s stark staging and powerful vocals — backed up by Sweden’s finest dance music minds — was the moment; it felt remarkably contemporary, was immensely catchy, and was a Top 10 hit in the UK.

Tattoo, then, is more of the same: staging that feels like it breaks Health and Safety law, vocals that feel like they’re tugging at every fibre of Loreen’s being, and the same production and songwriting team that put her first go into the playlist of every gay bar in Europe. It’s also Euphoria’s polar opposite, with lyrics focussed on holding on to love through pain (rather than embracing the ecstasy and joy of loving another person). It doesn’t always reach the heights of Euphoria, but it gets incredibly close — and honestly, it feels like blue and yellow will be winning colours for another Eurovision year.

Austria - Who The Hell Is Edgar? by Teya & Salena

There are two types of good Eurovision song: sincerely good Eurovision songs (think Euphoria, Alexander Rybak’s Fairytale, Salvador Sobral’s Amar Pelos Dois), and good-because-they’re-weird Eurovision songs. Who The Hell Is Edgar? isn’t very weird, in the way something like Subwoolfer’s Give That Wolf A Banana was last year, but it’s that only-at-Eurovision kind of weird that gave Netta’s Toy or Verka Serduchka’s Dancing Lasha Tumbai their successes.

Peek beneath the earworm that is this song’s hook and you have a weird premise — a songwriter who’s possessed by the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe — that gets more interesting the more you listen to it. I suspect it’s not an accident that a song whose lyrics bemoan the poor pay and meagre recognition of musicians and songwriters in the streaming age (“zero dot zero zero three” is the amount, in cents, musicians get for a Spotify stream) references one of the first American writers able to make a living from their writing alone.

All of this might, of course, go over the heads of Eurovision audiences across the continent (and the world!) this week. But it’s still a weird song — a cool, subversive kind of weird — and for that alone it deserves to do well.

Finland - Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä

Okay, that’s the subversively weird one out of the way. Let’s get really weird.

Finland are basically the weird Eurovision country. Their first (and so far only) win was with Hard Rock Hallelujah, a song performed by a band cosplaying as monsters from the depths of hell and whose lead singer is known simply as Mr Lordi (the song, for the record, still slaps). They have sent everyone from Pennywise the Clown to actual Darude to Eurovision, for chrissakes.

Knowing all of that, when I first saw pictures of Finland’s Eurovision entrant I nodded and went “yeah, that tracks.” Cha Cha Cha is a song that’s pulling in all sorts of weird directions: it has metal influences but lowkey hyperpop vibes, its staging and costuming is camp as all hell, and is somehow an a celebration of getting absolutely shitfaced and a little bit of self-reflection on toxic masculinity.

It’s giving you everything, and I’m obsessed. It seems the rest of Europe is, too; it’s been doing well in the betting odds as we get closer to the contest, off the back of strong rehearsals. More than that, though, I’m desperate to find out how the Eurovision party I’m going to reacts to it — it’s going to be a lot of fun.

So there you have it — three solid songs. Here’s hoping I’m not as wrong about some of these as I was about putting Eurovision on ITV (seriously, what was I thinking?) I’ll probably be back with Good Content a little later in the month — this is an incredibly busy time for me; straight after Eurovision I’m off to see Beyoncé on tour. I am going to scream. Until next time!

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