Look what’s dropping on #Eurovision on #thisweekthosebooks

The Eurovision final is on Saturday, May 11 in Malmo, Sweden so This Week, Those Books took a look at the world’s most watched cultural event.

Look what didn’t make it into the post, which drops May 8:

There’s trivia from The Good, the Bad and the Wurst: The 100 Craziest Moments from the Eurovision Song Contest by Geoff Tibballs.

– “Back in 1982, France declined to enter, labelling the contest ‘a monument to drivel’. The biggest surprise was that it had taken them twenty-six years to notice. How can an event that last produced a truly memorable song as long ago as 1974 give genuine cause for optimism?”

– The man to blame for the Eurovision Song Contest is Frenchman Marcel Bezençon. He had been impressed by the success of Italy’s Sanremo music festival, which started in 1951 and thought that a similar but expanded contest would be the ideal way of fostering unity among the various nations of Europe. Little did he know that the event would often bring discord rather than harmony. Organised by the newly formed European Broadcasting Union, of which Bezençon was the president, the first Eurovision Song Contest was staged in Lugano, Switzerland, on 24 May 1956. Only seven countries took part – the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg and Italy.

And here’s a fun fact from Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest by Dr Dean Vuletic: “…of the 1,438 songs that were performed…from 1956 to 2016, some went on to become international hits…”

Did you know that the row over Israel’s participation in Eurovision 2024 had a particularly Nordic cast. Calls for it to be banned for its war on Gaza came from more than 2,000 Finnish, Swedish and Icelandic musicians, for an Israel ban.

On May 6, the start of Eurovision week, more than 1,500 Finnish musicians once again  invoked Israel’s controversial participation in the contest and called for the public to boycott it.

Despite it all, Israel remains in the running with its 2024 entry, Hurricane, by Eden Golan. The song was originally titled October Rain in reference to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, but its lyrics were changed to comply with Eurovision’s rules on political neutrality.