Eurovision and Its Politics Come to America

I write from Central Park on a Saturday afternoon, listening to bongos being played near Fifth Avenue and 79th Street. It draws a sizable crowd. My phone then buzzes with a notification from the BBC, informing me that a different “party” is kicking off. Which party? Eurovision.

Across the pond, the grand finale of the Eurovision Song Contest is under way. The event was created in 1956 by the European Broadcasting Union, one of the institutions now part of the EU community. Then as now, the Europeans wanted an “ever-closer union” between their countries — beyond a mere common market or common currency — that binds their social fabrics into a new imagined community. The contest’s creators saw it as a way to advance that goal. Each country would submit an original song, performed by a new artist, that viewers would vote to advance (they were not allowed to vote for their own country). Think of American Idol, but with singers representing states and with viewers voting across a continent. Unlike the dreariness of politics, it seemed an amiable and novel way to build camaraderie in Europe a decade after the Second World War and when the Iron Curtain was at its height.

Since then, Eurovision has been one of the world’s longest-running and most successful TV programs. Acts such as ABBA and Celine Dion have either made their debut or leaped to global fame after winning the contest; it’s still the “big break” in any pop singer’s career. During that time, on the political side, Eurovision was perhaps the only institution that could claim that it was unifying Europe — because the event spans the whole of the continent, its peripheries, and far beyond. From Iceland in the North Sea to Azerbaijan in the Caspian basin, Morocco on the Eastern Atlantic to Russia’s Ural Mountains, every nation between these four corners is or has been part of the contest, including Switzerland, Israel, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the Balkans. Curiously, even Australia participates, which brings the cohort to a robust 52 countries. Over 180 million people tuned in to watch Eurovision’s final rounds in 2021, well above the number of people who watched that year’s Super Bowl. There is no European institution, it seems, that better paints a map of Europe from edge to edge and unifies its myriad ethnicities than Eurovision.

Yet, this unity is slowly slipping away. Like all European institutions, Eurovision is beset by the nationalistic divisions that now fracture the Old Continent. Contestants, writing pop music to command Europe-wide appeal, nonetheless represent their countries and have been sucked into geopolitics. It’s much like the Olympics — this year, drawing its share of controversy over host China — but more intensely political. Whereas an athlete wins or loses on his performance, the victors of Eurovision are determined by a public vote. The audience response is therefore a barometer of European public opinion. The U.K.’s last-place finish in 2019, to much domestic acrimony, was probably driven by Europe’s low opinion of Britain at the time, during the height of its bitter Brexit process. In all, it’s a big coup to win Eurovision, and a huge embarrassment to lose. For that reason, national governments accord the contest so much importance that they’ve often intervened to curate its optics.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, two non-European participants with a longtime feud over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, are a case in point. They may have fought a war over the region last year, but their feud over their status at Eurovision has been running for the past 20 years. Both governments have routinely objected to the lyrics of songs that claim, obliquely, Nagorno-Karabakh (or “Artsakh” to the Armenians) as part of their side. Contestants have waved the region’s contested flags on stage, eliciting diplomatic protests from the other side, and from their own side when disciplined for breaking Eurovision’s rules against political messaging. Bizarrely, in 2015, Azeri police even monitored public votes for the songs in the contest and interrogated Azeri citizens who voted for Armenia.

Likewise, Israel’s entry in 1973, the same year as the Yom Kippur War, bred predictable discontent among Europe’s many supporters of the Palestinian cause. Many states cut Israeli segments out of the broadcast, in a manner evocative of North Korean censorship. When reprimanded, they chose to withdraw rather than let Israeli artists be broadcast. Turkey withdrew in 1999 because the contest was being held in Israel, while most of North Africa — eligible to join Eurovision — has refused to do so because of Israel’s presence. Palestinian flags have often been flown, in protest, at the event, while Jewish leaders have objected to episodes during the Sabbath.

Most controversial, though, has been Russia’s involvement. Its invasions of Georgia, Crimea, and, most recently, the whole of Ukraine have bred vocal opposition from varied quarters and over many years. Lyrics of a song that criticizes Vladimir Putin — Georgia’s “We Don’t Want to Put In” — were struck out in 2009, while Ukraine’s mention in 2016 of the deportation of Crimean Tatars was met with Russian protests. The next year, when Ukraine was hosting, the Russian contestant, Yulia Samoylova, was banned after visiting Crimea through the Russian route (an illegal act under Ukrainian law), leading to Russia’s withdrawal from the contest. This year, after many protests, Russia and Belarus were banned from the contest outright, while an attempt by Russian state hackers to disrupt the final’s voting process was recently foiled by the Italian police and cybersecurity.

This is all worth noting to an American readership since the Eurovision model has come to America. For the past eight weeks, NBC has been broadcasting American Song Contest (ASC). Organized by the Europeans and hosted by singer Kelly Clarkson and rapper Snoop Dogg on Wednesday nights, it is identical in every respect to its European forebear. All 50 states and D.C. participate, along with the several territories including American Samoa — each with a single song and singer, each advancing through a public vote.

In a country wracked by bitter political divisions — on abortion, free speech, voting rights and vote integrity, guns, and social issues — the American Song Contest seems like the perfect candidate for a new front in our factional politics, one that will pit state against state, interest group against interest group. We already see the divisions infecting American athletic competitions, including professional football, with players taking a knee during the national anthem, and Major League Baseball, which relocated its All-Star Game out of Atlanta after Georgia passed an election-security bill. American Song Contest, too, seems ripe for capture by our culture wars.

Maybe NBC can prevent this during the qualifying stages by screening out songs deemed too divisive or brazenly political. Of course, to progressives and the Left, what qualifies as “divisive” or even “political” content varies wildly, to the disadvantage of dissenting and conservative voices. Would a song by a self-identified transgender woman describing that experience be accepted? Perhaps, if it’s good music. What about a song by a formerly transgender woman who decided to de-transition? Take a wild guess as to what NBC would think. You can mentally map the same divide over lyrics about the police, gender pronouns, climate change, and immigration — and the likely double standard that would ensue. If the contest became nothing more than a progressive lovefest, it would kneecap its nationwide appeal from the start. At least the Europeans don’t take conservatives out of the game.

Will the ASC become bitterly divisive? Will its singers, representing states, lace cultural broadsides into their songs, drawing politicians into the fray and dominating news cycles? Will Americans vote for each entrant based on ideological congruity? Perhaps. For a new contest, maybe it’s too early to tell. Yet, with more than 2 million people viewing its debut final round last week, the competition is beginning to attract attention. That this year’s winner was Oklahoma — a state under fierce criticism from progressives for its heartbeat abortion law — is an encouraging sign. If the ratings hold up, it will be worth paying attention to future editions of the ASC. Like Eurovision, it may become a barometer for our national mood.

As I finished writing, I received another notification. The BBC, again. Ukraine has won Eurovision, with a “historic” points tally from public voting. If this contest mirrors geopolitics, it will herald another historic victory.