Eurovision 2020: The Contest That Never Was
Before Coronavirus, I was a freelance workshop facilitator, a football fan and a Eurovision lover. As I write this post on March 20th 2020, I have lost my livelihood, will not see any football until at earliest May and proceed back into the winter that is the period without the Eurovision Song Contest. On the day that the cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest was announced, Eurovision fans embarked on the longest wait yet for a Eurovision Song Contest and the joys of the contest we love have never seemed further away. I (like most of you probably are) am in mourning. Yes I know that health and safety is more important than a TV show. Yes I know how vital it is that we prevent the spread of this virus as much as possible. Yes I know that people have died and that this is an unprecedented health crisis. But yes, I am allowed to feel sad about the first time that the contest has been cancelled and the loss of all 41 of our songs who will not grace the Eurovision stage.
I attended the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm and I have since hailed it as the greatest Eurovision Song Contest of all time. 2020 was set to beat it. The stage was brilliant, the hosts were brilliant, the artwork was brilliant and in Rotterdam, there was a city desperate to showcase itself to the world in all its brilliance. Whilst it is true that Rotterdam will probably host the contest in May 2021 anyway, the same cannot be said of our songs. Whilst it is likely that many of the internal selection artists will be kept, we have no clue of what the quality of their songs might look like. We will probably also lose many of the artists who fought their way through gruelling national final processes including The Mamas, Diodato, The Roop and Dadi Freyr.
The saddest thing however as a person of BAME origin is that we will potentially lose the incredible diversity that Eurovision 2020 was set to showcase. Whilst none of us can guarantee if next year's set won't end up showcasing the diversity even more, I am not optimistic and feel like the cancellation of Eurovision 2020 represents a serious setback for the profile of BAME musicians within Europe.
Whilst it is hard to peer into alternative realities, I believe that Rotterdam 2020 was set to run Stockholm 2016 close as one of the best contests of all time. Perhaps Rotterdam 2021 will fulfill on that promise and perhaps it won't. For now, I'm just putting out this post as an opportunity to vent my immense grief about what coronavirus has done to the contest we love. Following Tel Aviv 2019, I wrote a post asking if loving Eurovision was a losing game. How fiercely it is clear as we look into the 14 months until May 2021 that the answer to that is a clear no.
I attended the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm and I have since hailed it as the greatest Eurovision Song Contest of all time. 2020 was set to beat it. The stage was brilliant, the hosts were brilliant, the artwork was brilliant and in Rotterdam, there was a city desperate to showcase itself to the world in all its brilliance. Whilst it is true that Rotterdam will probably host the contest in May 2021 anyway, the same cannot be said of our songs. Whilst it is likely that many of the internal selection artists will be kept, we have no clue of what the quality of their songs might look like. We will probably also lose many of the artists who fought their way through gruelling national final processes including The Mamas, Diodato, The Roop and Dadi Freyr.
The saddest thing however as a person of BAME origin is that we will potentially lose the incredible diversity that Eurovision 2020 was set to showcase. Whilst none of us can guarantee if next year's set won't end up showcasing the diversity even more, I am not optimistic and feel like the cancellation of Eurovision 2020 represents a serious setback for the profile of BAME musicians within Europe.
Whilst it is hard to peer into alternative realities, I believe that Rotterdam 2020 was set to run Stockholm 2016 close as one of the best contests of all time. Perhaps Rotterdam 2021 will fulfill on that promise and perhaps it won't. For now, I'm just putting out this post as an opportunity to vent my immense grief about what coronavirus has done to the contest we love. Following Tel Aviv 2019, I wrote a post asking if loving Eurovision was a losing game. How fiercely it is clear as we look into the 14 months until May 2021 that the answer to that is a clear no.
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