Eurovision Song Contest 2025 Review (Non-Qualifiers)

Sorry to disappoint people who still care about this, but it’s going to be my last post related to Eurovision (at least modern Eurovision, I might go through my old 20th century reviews and improve them). I’ve been trying to push myself through the final, but I just don’t care enough now. It’s not like I majorly cared about the 2020s anyway.

I wrote most of these reviews back over summer, so they’re far more positive in tone than you’d expect, but they reflect my feelings at the time, so I’ll leave them as is.

Semi-Final 1

I really like the opening act. While it’s an opening act that mixes previous winners into a song, it does it in a very clever way: with a Swiss twist. The end result is that you can’t really tell that these are supposed to be previous Eurovision winners until some recongnisable riffs come in (like the Tattoo riff, for example). I don’t mind this too much, as a result.

After that, we, of course, get a welcome from the two hosts: Sandra Studer (who represented Switzerland in Eurovision in 1991) and Hazel Brugger (who didn’t represent Switzerland in Eurovision in any of the years). Like they point out themselves, I’m glad Switzerland got two hosts that were totally distinct from last year’s hosts (two women: a blonde and a brunette).

Slovenia – How Much Time Do We Have Left?

Performed by

Klemen

Language

English

Of my 20 votes in the semi-final, 5 went to Slovenia. I just think it’s a beautiful performance of a really lovely song. I like the warm minimalistic staging, I like the slideshow at the start and I really like that his wife joins him on stage later on. While I didn’t expect it to qualify, I was still a bit disappointed that it did anyway. There were worse songs that qualified.

Now, Klemen is, of course, quite popular around Europe. He’s made a lot of parodies - including Eurovision-related parodies of all Slovenian entries between 1993 and 2020 and all Eurovision winners between 2000 and 2024 (which created one of the most nothingburger non-dramas of the season, but caused Klemen to become friends with Dave Benton, who even appeared in Klemen’s ALBM version of his song) - which shows that this guy is a huge Eurovision fan, but also a lot of political parodies of Angela Merkel, Putin and other assholes.

I actually like it when artists attempt new things, and Klemen said that he wanted to make a serious song for a while now. I would say he didn’t fully succeed at this, however. I think the biggest flaw this song has are its lyrics. They’re just way too on-the-nose and direct. It probably isn’t a good idea to hit the viewers with the word “diagnosis” in the first 30 seconds of the song. I think this song would’ve done much better if it was in Slovene and not English as that would’ve created some mystery. In fact, this might be the only Eurovision entry that might’ve benefitted from being bilingual, having verses in Slovene and choruses and the bridge in English. I believe that the staging already conveys the message well enough (with the slide show and his wife showing up at the end), so not being fully in English wouldn’t have hindered him at all. It would’ve also allowed the song to feel less direct.

Belgium – Strobe Lights

Performed by

Red Sebastian

Language

English

Five more votes went to Belgium. There were plenty of people that predicted this as a shock NQ, but I didn’t want to believe them because this is such a good song. Now, let me talk about what it did right and what it did wrong.

For me, the biggest positive of this song is that it combines a very fast beat in the music with a very slow vocal. This alone gives it a very distinct feel, although this also proved to be quite divisive with the people I asked. I also really love the staging. Yes, it’s very red, but it has to be, it’s performed by a guy whose stage name is literally Red Sebastian. But the graphics on the columns, the walkway and the background LED are really impressive. I was insanely impressed when I watched this live. My favourite parts of the staging were the reflection in the floor when he sits down, the distorted images of Sebastian on the screen and, especially, the clones that did synchronised movements to the beat. Both as a song and as a performance, this absolutely appeals to me.

Now, what went wrong? Well, I can point out three things. The first one is that this is simply a marmite vocal style. I know about as many people that liked his voice as I do people that didn’t. But still, as anti-voting isn’t real, I can’t imagine that was the deciding reason. But it definitely didn’t help. The second thing that went wrong is the mixing. Now, the mixing in the first semi-final was generally really bad, but Belgium had by far the worst mixing of the bunch. Now that I’m listening to this on my computer with proper headphones on, it sounds fine, but it sounded so so so bad on my TV. My hypothesis is that SRG SSR sent the 5.1 mix to the Eurovision network, so all stereo TVs simply lost the middle channel. The final, and most likely reason is that it simply got lost in the mix of uptempo male songs that plagued this semi-final (and especially the second half). Norway was just before it, we also had Croatia later on, followed by Cyprus. All of them diluted each other’s vote and the worst most accessible one ended up qualifying overall. Simply put, Belgium was unlucky with the draw. But the producers putting it right after Norway didn’t help either.

Azerbaijan – Run With U

Performed by

Mamagama

Language

English

Before I go on with the review, please take time to review the picture attached below (wow, the first picture in my blog, I know).

And this absolutely holds true. I’m simply pretending that this live performance never happened. The vocals were probably the worst this year, the staging was unappealing and the lead singer just had little charisma. Of course, this was never going to have universal appeal due to his vocal style, but I actually like it. It’s one of the rare songs that actually manage to incorporate falsetto well. It just wasn’t designed to be performed live.

I also like the song for other reasons: it’s well-produced, it’s contemporary and it’s fun to listen to. In general, Azerbaijan sent their three best songs in the past three years, but their efforts weren’t rewarded at all.

I’m also happy Mamagama took their result with good humour. They even released an EP titled “37” (because they placed 37th overall). My favourite song from it is Stronger Than Storm. In general, not being a sore loser always gives you more credibility (or a sore winner, although these are, thankfully, rare in Eurovision).

Croatia – Poison Cake

Performed by

Marko Bošnjak

Language

English

If you remember my review of Dora, you’ll remember that I really didn’t like this song at the time. Have I changed my mind on it? Well, not exactly. I still don’t really like it, but I can appreciate what it’s going for and, in retrospect, it makes sense that the international jury went for it. Still, it definitely isn’t for me and will never be for me. But other Ukrainians liked it enough to give it 8p in the semi-final. No, I can’t explain it either. Overall, I would’ve preferred to have his Dora 2022 entry here, Moli za nas.

Cyprus – Shh

Performed by

Theo Evan

Language

English

While I actually like the song more than most, I’m not sad at all that it didn’t qualify. In fact, I think this is good for the contest. One of my friends coined the term “running order cultist” and this is a good reality check for them. No, closing doesn’t immeidately mean you’ll qualify. Same for getting all the “Eurovision” people (like Dimitris Kontopoulos, Elsie Bay or Sergio Jaen) to work on an entry. You can’t just throw them at Eurovision and make them create a winner.

I think most people just found it confusing, which shows in the points - apart from Azerbaijan, Albania or Slovenia, which always give 10 or 12 points to whatever entry Kontopoulos is involved with, nobody gave it any big points. It staging just didn’t relate to the story of the song, so it came off a bit disjointed and unappealing. But in a vacuum, it did look good.

General thoughts

The big problem with losing countries is that the semi-finals keep shrinking, which means that bad songs inevitably qualify because there are more bad songs than NQ slots every year. For example, in the semi-final, 67% of all songs had to make it into the final, while 62.5% of all songs had to make it from SF2.

Also, can I have a hot take: the interval act wasn’t good. To me, it feels like a very typical act out of the Melodifestivalen final. It’s Sweden who always does these tongue-in-cheek song-and-dance numbers as interval acts. As a result, it didn’t feel Swiss to me whatsoever. But then, I’ve complained about the homogenous, uninventive feeling of modern ESC numerous times in conversations with my friends and you better believe that I’ll be talking about this here too.

On the upside, I do actually like the new qualifier reveal system. It took me a bit of time to be convinced, but now I think that it’s a good idea for sure. It actually managed to make the reveal a little more interesting to follow, as it wasn’t clear who’d qualify out of the chosen group. My favourite moment in this semi-final was the Slovenia-Azerbaijan-Portugal group. When only one spot was left, I really believed that Belgium was the final qualifier and we failed to qualify for the first time ever, which would’ve pissed me off since Bird of Pray is our best entry in ages. Of course, in reality, both Belgium and Ukraine should’ve qualified instead of- ah, wait, I almost spoiled a couple of my grand final reviews.

My votes in this semi-final were as follows: 5 votes for Slovenia and Belgium each and 10 votes for Albania.

Anyway, let’s move on to the second semi-final, which was much less of a disappointment than the first one

Semi-Final 2

I don’t have a lot of thoughts on the opening, so let’s get right to the fun part: the songs.

Australia – Milkshake Man

Performed by

Go-Jo

Language

English

This was a big favourite to qualify, so what went wrong, you might ask? Well, I think the main reason is that Go-Jo is simply a dislikeable performer. And by that I mean that I was weirded out by him ever since the song was released and grew to dislike it more and more and more. Really, it’s not that hard to not give an impression of a sex pest - even though I’m 100% sure he’s a totally lovely guy in real life. But oh my god, you can’t believe just how happy I was to see this NQ.

Still, I’d like to give it some credit because it isn’t absolutely irredeemable. The song is pretty cool and catchy and the staging is memorable too (apart from the general creepy vibe, of course). But I just can’t get over the vibe to enjoy it overall, so it naturally sinks nearly to the very bottom of the year despite the upsides.

Montenegro – Dobrodošli

Performed by

Nina Žižić

Language

Montenegrin

This is a very good example of a revamp that improved the song in every way. The addition of the electronic parts to the overall orchestral song really elevated it and I still enjoy listening to it. What I don’t enjoy, on the other hand, is the live performance.

It’s especially a shame because Nina had mostly good performances during the pre-season, but it seems like the nerves got the upper hand over her the only time it actually mattered. The staging also left a lot to be desired, especially her dress. Now, I understand that this is contemporary high fashion, but contemporary high fashion simply doesn’t work at Eurovision and I thought that the Balkan delegations learned that.

Ireland – Laika Party

Performed by

Emmy

Language

English

Some songs are good. Some songs are bad. Occasionally, some songs are so monumentally bad that I’d rather dunk my head in a public toilet every day than listen to them. This is definitely a case of the latter.

To say that I hate this song would be an understatement of just how intensely I loathe every atom involved in this song, every sound wave that enters my ears, every photon emitted from my screen. Sometimes, I believe that this song was created purely to drive me into murderous apoplectic rage and cause me an aneurhysm.

While I want to describe everything wrong with this in excrutiating detail, I don’t even know where to start. Everything, and I do literally mean everything, is wrong with this. Let’s begin with an obvious part: the topic.

To be blunt, I don’t think that this song should’ve been accepted into a national final at all because it’s not appropriate for Eurovision. A song titled “Tower Party” about someone saying that the victims of 9/11 are still alive and are dancing up in the sky would’ve rightfully been deemed offensive. A song about victims of Unit 731 would’ve been universally condemned. So why don’t we extend the same kind of courtesy to a dog that died in an entirely unnecessary experiment that didn’t advance our understanding of space? Why is she saying that we wouldn’t fly without it? Why did nobody think to fact check this? Why are they literally repeating propaganda? Explain to me WHY THE FUCK IS A SONG ON AN INTERNATIONAL STAGE WITH AROUND 200 MILLION EYES ON IT REPEATING OUTDATED SOVIET PROPAGANDA?

But wait, there’s more! This song also commits the sing of having a brain damage-inducing melody. There’s literally no craft or finesse to it. It’s just the same three ear-destroying notes looped for three minutes, which means I’m absolutely begging for it to end approximately 10 seconds in. I could compose something like this in a couple hours and I don’t know how to compose music. It isn’t catchy, it isn’t cute and it isn’t fun. It’s just a total drag to listen to from start to end.

And that’s not the only reason why I get close to having a river of blood coming out of my ears when I listen to it. Emmy has the most irritating vocal style I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing in Eurovision - or, in fact, at all. Her singing makes ¿Quién maneja mi barca? sound like the sweetest, most soothing lullaby. In fact, The Moon Is Rising sounds perfectly competent compared to this as well.

Ok, one final nail in the coffin: the staging. For a song that tries to make the viewer pretend that they’re having fun, it miserably fails at its goal. It’s static, boring and lifeless. Even the camerawork is extremely shoddy. It has more camera cuts than an average action scene in a blockbuster movie . In fact, there are 73 camera cuts in just three minutes of this performance, which probably contributes to the feeling of despair dizziness I feel from watching this. Of those 73 shots, 34 are very basic zoom-ins, 16 more are zoom-outs, 11 shots are fully static and 12 more are pans from left to right or right to left. It’s insane to see a song that’s supposed to be as energetic as this go for something so un-dynamic.

Of course, it doesn’t help that both she and her brother are basically fully static for most of the performance. The dancers are present, but they’re hard to notice because their silver outfits almost completely blend in with the fog on stage. Luckily for them, they’re the only part of the performance I don’t have a single snarky remark towards because they’re so forgettable.

Overall, god, this is surely the lowest point of Eurovision ever. I thought that nobody would ever outdo Irlande Douze Pointe as my least favourite Eurovision song of all time, but Ireland managed to beat themselves this year with the help of my least favourite 21st century country: Norway. Because yeah, Emmy is actually Norwegian and this song was rejected from NMGP this year. And given the absolutely dire quality of that lineup, that should tell you a lot.

Georgia – Freedom

Performed by

Mariam Shengelia

Language

Georgian, English

This is the token two-in-one song of the year. Unlike most other two-in-one songs, where both parts are bad, this has a really interesting part in Georgian with a 5/4 meter and a quite bland English part in a 4/4 meter. Even the staging is split between being really mesmerising and quite average.

I will not cover the political controversy because I believe it’s way overblown, but I know Georgians who feel annoyed that this song represented them on an international stage, so I don’t want to dismiss it entirely either. I’ll just say that if I judge the song on its own, I like it more than I dislike it.

Although I really wish it was fully in Georgian. The switch to 4/4 isn’t bad and could work, but the instrumental also goes a bit too soft and her English isn’t good enough to keep me interested as much as I was at first. Also, the costume change didn’t work. But I believe that this could be the borderline NQ instead of a safe NQ with some work. All the good stuff is already here.

Czechia – Kiss Kiss Goodbye

Performed by

Adonxs (pronounced as Adonis, not Adonks)

Language

English

In a way, this is emblematic of a lot 2020s entries. In may cases, the staging and choreo has taken the front stage (ha), while the songs only serve as vehicles to deliver them. This leads to a big emotional disconnect with songs that are supposed to make you feel something. To quote a friend of mine, a lot of songs feel like the singer is saying “look at me being emotional” and not “let’s all feel emotional”.

The way this was presented at MESC, on the other hand, actually did connect with others. Sometimes, the delegations should go with the less is more approach, which almost always works out better. All of the elements added after the reveal only subtracted from the song. The overly elaborate choreography and especially that dance break removed any feeling of intimacy this song might’ve had.

It’s also reflected in the odds. When the song was just unveiled, it shot up to 9th, but then took a huge tumble in the odds to not even be considered a qualifier by the time SF2 started. I hope the Czech delegation and also all other delegations learn from this and all other songs where the same thing happened this year.

Serbia – Mila

Performed by

Princ

Language

Serbian

The fans absolutely hate this entry and to this day, I don’t understand why. It’s a very pleasant song with a strong vocal performance. It definitely doesn’t deserve to be ranked in the bottom 3 on most ranking apps.

Yes, I get that the staging was a bit ridiculous with him being dragged on the floor, but I still quite enjoy the song and would consider it among the more pleasant entries of the year. I suppose this was its downfall though: I doubt most people found it as dislikeable as eurofans did, but few of them liked it enough to reach for their phones to vote for it.

General Thoughts

I’d say that 2025 had pretty balanced semi-finals, all things considered. Both of them had the same number of great songs (2) and more-or-less the same number of bad songs (lots). My votes were as follows (from my Lithuanian number): 12x Latvia, 3x Finland, 2x Denmark and Georgia and 1x Armenia.

I liked the interval act we had during the voting, On Time. It had an interesting concept, it was executed well and actaully stayed in my mind after the show. This is the one that should get all the attention from people.

On the other hand, I wasn’t a fan of bringing back 2020 artists that returned in 2021. Instead, they should’ve had artists that didn’t return. I would’ve enjoyed seeing people like Damir Kedžo or Arilena Ara a lot more than Efendi. I think it was a huge missed opportunity.

The qualifier reveal was great too. Underdogs like Denmark and Latvia qualified, while Australia, which was considered to be safe, didn’t. Overall, this is probably the semi-final I’m the most satisfied with as nobody was robbed.

I also appreciated Sandra’s performance of Insieme: 1992. While it would’ve sounded better accompanied by an orchestra, it still worked well, especially considering that she competed in a year hosted by Toto.

Final

Nope. But I will link a few of my predictions that turned out to be correct.

General Thoughts

Oh boy do I have thoughts on the contest as a whole. I think absolutely everything the EBU did in the past 3 years (ESC years, starting with September) was wrong. At every point, they made the wrong decisions and the contest became less enjoyable as a result. I’m honestly so disappointed with them that I can’t even put it into words, even though I was the biggest pessimist and told everyone that no changes would be coming.

I will not be reviewing 2026. I also won’t be going back to review 2012-2024 either. It’s time for me to focus on other hobbies and interests.

Anyway, I’ll post the list of all my winners at the moment, updating the old winners I changed my mind on and my 2012-2025 winners too. I’ll also post my ranking of 2025.

I might change my mind about reviewing later or I might not, we’ll see. No promises.

Results

1. Lithuania - Tavo akys (1st in SF2) (+15)
2. Albania - Zjerm (1st in SF1) (+6)
3. Switzerland - Voyage (+7)
4. Latvia - Bur man laimi (2nd in SF2) (+9)
5. Portugal - Deslocado (2nd in SF1) (+16)
6. Denmark - Hallucination (3rd in SF2) (+17)
7. Ukraine - Bird of Pray (3rd in SF1) (+2)
8. Italy - Volevo essere un duro (-3)
9. Greece - Asteromata (4th in SF2) (-3)
10. Belgium - Strobe Lights (4th in SF1) (+25)
11. Slovenia - How Much Time Do We Have Left Together? (5th in SF1) (+23)
12. Serbia - Mila (5th in SF2) (+20)
13. Georgia - Freedom (6th in SF2) (+20)
14. Luxembourg - La poupée monte le son (7th in SF2) (+8)
15. Sweden - Bara bada bastu (6th in SF1) (-11)
16. Montenegro - Dobrodošli (8th in SF2) (+20)
17. France - Maman (-10)
18. San Marino - Tutta l’Italia (7th in SF1) (+8)
19. Azerbaijan - Run with U (8th in SF1) (+18)
20. Finland - Ich komme (9th in SF2) (-9)
21. Armenia - Survivor (10th in SF2) (-1)
22. Estonia - Espresso Macchiato (9th in SF1) (-19)
23. United Kingdom - What The Hell Just Happened? (-4)
24. Croatia - Poison Cake (10th in SF1) (+5)
25. Germany - Baller (-10)
26. Spain - Esa Diva (-2)
27. Malta - Kant (11th in SF2) (-10)
28. Poland - Gaja (11th in SF1) (-14)
29. Israel - New Day Will Rise (12th in SF2) (-27)
30. Netherlands - C’est la vie (12th in SF1) (-18)
31. Iceland - Róa (13th in SF1) (-6)
32. Cyprus - Shh (14th in SF1) (-5)
33. Czechia - Kiss Kiss Goodbye (13th in SF2) (-3)
34. Australia - Milkshake Man (14th in SF2) (-6)
35. Austria - Wasted Love (15th in SF2) (-34)
36. Norway - Lighter (15th in SF1) (-18)
37. Ireland - Laika Party (16th in SF2) (-6)

Winners

• Albania - 1 (2010)
• Andorra - 1 (2004)
• Armenia - 0 (2006)
• Austria - 3 (1965, 1972, 2016)
• Belgium - 6 (1957, 1961, 1989, 1999, 2003, 2014 [seriously], 2021)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina - 0 (1999)
• Croatia - 0 (2002, 2004)
• Cyprus - 2 (1992, 1995)
• Czechia - 1 (2007)
• Denmark - 2 (1963, 1989, 2002)
• Estonia - 1 (2001)
• Finland - 3 (1974, 1982, 1985, 1987, 2006, 2008)
• France - 8 (1962, 1969, 1976, 1977, 1979, 2003, 2009, 2013)
• Georgia - 1 (2011)
• Germany - 2 (1957, 1958, 1960, 1972, 1978)
• Hungary - 1 (2018)
• Iceland - 1 (2000)
• Israel - 0 (1988)
• Italy - 2 (1958, 1983, 1990, 2017)
• Latvia - 1 (2023)
• Lithuania - 2 (2020, 2025)
• Luxembourg - 3 (1956, 1964, 1973)
• Malta - 2 (1971, 1991)
• Monaco - 3 (1967, 1968, 1970)
• Netherlands - 3 (1959, 1988, 2022)
• North Macedonia - 1 (2012)
• Norway - 2 (1966, 1996, 2024)
• Poland - 1 (1997)
• Portugal - 1 (1967, 1984)
• Romania - 1 (2019)
• Russia - 1 (1994)
• Slovenia - 2 (1993, 2015)
• Spain - 0 (1971, 1982)
• Sweden - 1 (1962, 1980)
• Switzerland - 4 (1975, 1981, 1986, 2005)
• Turkey - 1 (1975, 1978)
• United Kingdom - 2 (1960, 1983, 1998)
• Yugoslavia - 1 (1966, 1987)

There have been lots of updates as my opinions about a lot of songs have solidified. I’m certain a lot of them will change later too, but this reflects my tastes at the current moment.