The Internationalist Eurovision Blog

Hello everybody! So with Israel looking like they're going to go with Tel Aviv and with the Israeli government agreeing to not play any part in the organisation of the song contest, it's looking like we can all finally get excited about a trip to Israel next May. For now, us in the Eurovision fandom have to find ways of continuing to reflect on the contest. I recently contributed to a Facebook feed around the question "Is Eurovision a gay event?" whilst also finding some new Eurovision songs to get me through the summer and having travelled to Portugal to attend a friend's wedding, made a pilgrimage to the Altice Arena to soak up the Eurovision atmosphere four weeks after the contest had finished (long story short, it was like it was never there). For me, the time has come to take in the songs I liked from this year's contest and input them plus some other new favourites into my overall rankings. Now for those of you who haven't been following along with...

Hello and with the World Cup kicking off and Israel beginning the process of organising a formal bidding process to decide their 2019 host city, it seems like the storm is finally beginning to calm down into the usual Eurovision period of reflection. Having just written a fairly critical article on the powers that be in Israel, I thought I would choose Israel as the first country for the top ten segment of this blog. This does what it says on the tin, I look back through every entry the chosen country has ever submitted and I share with everybody my top ten and the reason for its placing. In doing so, we have the opportunity to delve into the Eurovision history and culture of different countries. 10. 'There Must Be Another Way' by Noa & Mira Awad (2009) Moscow 2009 was a big contest in every possible sense of the term. The stage was costly, but big, technologically advanced and stunning. Azerbaijan and Iceland were punching above their way to achieve some of their best ...

Hello everyone! I'm sorry to have not posted in a while. I have been finishing up my University degree and am excited to be able to call myself a graduate. I normally wouldn't be too concerned about posting anything at this time. Normally, the country in question is making the decision on where the contest will be held whilst we in the fan community look up easy ways to travel and browse prices on everything. In Israel, we have arguably the most controversial host since Azerbaijan in 2012. This was in itself made more of a difficult situation when Netta and Benjamin Netanyahu both announced following Israel's victory in Lisbon that the contest would be hosted in Jerusalem, a move that makes things politically complicated for countries competing. As mentioned in my post on Eurovision, I expected the Israelis to choose to host the contest in Tel Aviv as it is the less controversial and more European of Israel's main two cities. However, the Israelis are clearly pushing ha...