The Internationalist Eurovision Blog

Well, not going to lie, it has been an emotional roller-coaster of a Eurovision season and not for any of the reasons that we would have thought it was going to be before the word "coronavirus" entered our vocabulary. As I look back now on Eurovision Season 2020, it's clear that reaching the end of a season that had its legs cut off in March was about gaining a sense of closure that we were never going to get upon the cancellation of the contest. That said, I still wanted to know what the result of a 2020 Eurovision would have looked like for myself so I took it upon myself to recreate the rest of the contest from what was left by the Rotterdam organisers. #EurovisionAgain was organised as a means of bringing people together. OGAE proceeded with their poll but with a fan vote twist. Several nations organised their own votes to see who would have won their nation's 12 points (with Spain and Austria including their own songs in that vote). But let's start with what...

We are now at May 4th, the day that would have marked the start of rehearsals as we made our way towards the three live shows in Rotterdam. Everybody has marked the period in their own way but fortunately Eurovision parody-writer Fatih Melek has kept on doing his thing and in many ways, we have never needed work like his more than we do now. I sat down with Fatih last week to chat through him, his work and his next steps: Tell us about you? I’m Fatih Melek from Istanbul. I work in advertising and I’m a writer. I’ve also been doing Eurovision videos for a couple of years. So far, I am enjoying it a lot. What are your first memories of the Eurovision Song Contest? I woke up on a Sunday and my parents were super happy about something. I asked why and they answered that Turkey came 3rd in Eurovision. It was 1997 and Turkey has been waiting for a good result for decades. That’s the first time I’ve heard about the contest and I’ve been watching it ever since. When did the idea...