ESC 2025 in Basel, Switzerland

Eurovision Song Contest 2025It is that time of year again and this time the whole shebang is happening in Switzerland, right up the road in Basel.

I wrote these notes for fun, so don’t expect me to write about each group, and don’t expect any sort of fair evaluation of each group’s talent. I started writing somewhere after a couple of groups into the first semifinals. I filled those in during the finals. My partner insists on watching this thing, so let’s get right to it. I wanted to watch it in Italian for fun and practice but that too was verboten. We’re watching in Swiss-German. Well, the presenters speak mostly English with a bit of obligatory French where it absolutely can’t be avoided but there’s a guy live-translating to Swiss-German chattering over them.

First semifinals

Hazel’s costume hurts my eyes even more than Sandra’s costume does but both of them should be burned. These two are f@&king embarrassing so far. I hope they get better (they do by the second night).

🇮🇸 Iceland

A rap with a fiddle bridge spoken by what look like children (maximum 15 years old). They’re rapping in Icelandic. Their song sounds like something that would come from a ski-hut after 15:00, like the Hühnerstall just above Zermatt. It is not a good song. I don’t know how they made it out of the semifinals. People like kids, I guess.

🇵🇱 Poland

This is in the genre of vaguely lascivious with male and female dancers in quasi-post-apocalyptic costumes while the lead singer—a woman in a holey leotard—holds one note after another and a generic ESC-electronica beat plays in the background. There are dragons on the video and the dancers all look like they’re in Mad Max or maybe Drogo’s tribe in Game of Thrones. She sang in what I assume to be Polish.

🇺🇦 Ukraine

Ukraine’s lead singer is wearing what I can confidently call the most flamboyant Star Trek uniform I’ve ever seen. I can’t even remember what their song sounds like because I kept worrying that he would collapse from malnutrition.

🇪🇸 Spain

The camera work is absolutely insane. And terrible. And insane. The Spanish lady – who was awful – was shot from the bottom of the ribcage up half the time, which I don’t even know what the hell camera angle that even is. The camera swings around wildly the rest of the time. There are senseless effects on everything. I guess they’re trying to distract us from this nothingburger of a song.

🇪🇪 Estonia / 🇸🇪 Sweden

Estonia sang about an espresso macchiato. Sweden is singing about a sauna. Pretty much all of the acts so far have at least sung in their native languages. Both Estonia and Sweden were gimmick acts with no legs.

🇵🇹 Portugal

Portugal is terrible. They’re singing in Portogese. At least they’re playing instruments. That’s something, I guess.

🇳🇴 Norway

Norway is even worse. They sang in English.

🇧🇪 Belgium

Belgium is somehow even worse than Norway. We’re spiraling here. The dude (I’m guessing) is wearing a red, plastic suit and now he’s kneeling on a mirror and looks like he’s having sex with himself. He does have a hell of a falsetto, though, gotta give him that. OK, I take it back. This is better than Norway. It’s not good but it’s winning me over a bit. It’s got a good driving beat. It reminds me enough of Lords of Acid that I end up thinking of much better music without getting mad that I’m not listening to it. Guy in red with red lights and Switzerland’s patented blurry camera was OK.

🇮🇹 Italy

Italy is a goth skeleton singing a pretty song in Italian and playing the world’s largest grand piano. His costume is straight from the seventies. Everyone got the message from Nemo and Conchita Wurst that it’s best to be gender-ambiguous if you want to move on. Update: this song has a four-second guitar solo and a much longer harmonica solo. I still don’t hate it.

🇦🇿 Azerbaijan

I refuse to believe that Azerbaijan isn’t taking the piss. They are singing in English. Why is everyone wearing variations of giant, pleather hazmat suits? I guess I really don’t have my finger on the pulse of fashion these days. The lead singer is now carrying around a balalaika and dead-ass expects us to believe that he is playing it. NO. STOP IT.

I continue to be mystified by the production choices. The camera angles are all squeezed and cropped, putting people into weird corners. FFS, just because it worked for Mr. Robot doesn’t mean that’s how you should film a concert.

OMG the song ended completely unexpectedly. The crowd obviously had no idea the end was coming. I thought someone had mercifully cut the power.

🇸🇲 San Marino

San Marino has the world’s most generic electro-beat. It’s so generic that no-one would even know who to sue for copyright infringement. They’re singing in Italian. it’s a Ballerman-style song called “Tutta L’Italia”. I know this because they said it 200 times. Is there a rap interlude? You betcha.

🇦🇱 Albania

There is a lot of red this year. It’s Albania so sure, of course. Throw that awesome eagle up while you’re at it. This duo has a lady who sings and a guy who plays the marimba. Oh wait, he “sings” too. They both sing in what I can only assume is Albanian. Good for them. There are a ton of pace changes, making this feel more like a medley than a song. It’s not terrible

And the god-blessed Swiss camera is swinging and swooping like a child with ADHD who’s had about ten slices of cake and two liter-bottles of soda.

🇳🇱 Netherlands

If Claude from the Netherlands has real friends, they are going to mercilessly mock him for the rest of his life about this dumb song. Like, every time something goes wrong for him, at least one of his friends should sing “C’est la la la la vie.” and then his other friends should chime in until Claude starts to cry. Lucky for Claude, his friends probably don’t watch the ESC and he’s almost certainly going home tonight.

🇭🇷 Croatia

Like Albania, Croatia has a lot of tempo and genre changes. The strobe lights are crazy. The shaky camera is even more disturbing. The male singer and his dancers are all very pretty, though. That’s something.

The camera is now moving so quickly that I’ve seen the image actual tear a couple of times. He’s singing about a “serpent snake”, as a CGI snake wraps the stage (which I’m sure only the home audience can see).

🇨🇭 Switzerland

Switzerland is also pretty and singing from what looks like the location where she’s being held hostage. She also has a pretty voice and little to no makeup. She’s singing in French. It’s not my style of music but it’s not bad. The fucking cameraman insists on shaking it a bit though because he seems to think that a camera that doesn’t do something all the time is a sin against the old Gods. The camera is shaking so much now that I feel like the person who took her hostage is getting tired. OK. The camera has completely cut out now. It just froze. Wait, she’s back. It just stopped. For like ten seconds. At least the audio didn’t cut out. That’s something.

🇨🇾 Cyprus

Cyprus is singing in English. These lyrics are fucking embarrassingly bad. We know who wrote them. It starts with a Chat and ends with a GPT. Again with the strobing lights. Like, my whole living room is flashing. I can’t even tell if anyone’s pretty because they’re either in blurry red lights or they’re too far away or I’m too busy having an epileptic seizure.

The closing Swiss presentation wasn’t bad.

Second Semifinal

The two hosts are back on stage and I am impressed. I didn’t think that Hazel’s costume could be any stupider but I stand absolutely mightily corrected. I am actually at a complete loss for words to describe the dress. It screams “I lost a bet with an absolute asshole.” It’s a ton of transparent plastic discs glued to a greenish-rainbow glitter body suit. She looks like she’s in the Tron movie. Her shoes are stupidly big and clumpy. Kudos to her for acting as if absolutely nothing is wrong.

The two joked about how people were watching because the woman got the remote away from her husband, who’d rather be watching football. At least the Swiss-German moderator corrected them in translation to point out that the men would most likely be watching ice hockey—especially since Switzerland is absolutely kicking ass so far, having wiped the floor with both the U.S. and Germany and having almost beaten Czechia. Do better, Hazel.

🇦🇺 Australia

Thank God Australia’s here. The dude is somehow singing in English as if he is not a native speaker of Enlgish. The chorus is “I can tell you want a taste of the milkshake man”. I do not believe that they practiced this even once. There is no dancing. I think that they’re taking the piss. The dude is now shirtless and his package is absolutely just prominent in a way that cannot be accidental. His shoes are stupidly big and clumpy.

🇲🇪 Montenegro

Montenegro is a lady wearing a life-sized duvet cover around her neck. She looks like she’s in a play that explains to children where babies come from. She’s singing in what I can only assume is her native language. Her singing and music are a pretty generic ballad, absolutely bog-standard ESC slop. I think someone else complained about the frenetic camera? Oh, never mind. I spoke too soon: the wild camera pans, cuts, angles, and bizarre composition are 100% still here.

🇮🇪 Ireland

There is literally nothing the Irish singer can do to make me care about Ireland this year because I still miss the absolutely psycho from last year (Bambie Thug). This year’s entrant has some attractive and talented dancers but the song is so generically ESC that there is no chance that they will proceed. Her voice is pretty weak.

🇱🇻 Latvia

I kind of liked Latvia. Six women singing and chanting with really cool production values and a song that I might actually listen to again. This is a pretty and artistic performance. Falsetto solos are nice. The song had structure. As Rick Beato says, “It was a song”.

🇦🇲 Armenia

Dude’s name is “Parg”. He’s out of the gate without a shirt. The camera, blown-out HDR camerawork, and slow-motion blur the whole time means that I don’t really know what he looks like. This a Ballerman-style song, striving so hard to be the summer hit, with a bit of a metal tinge to the chorus (“Survivor”) but rap-style stanzas. It’s better than the first two songs. He’s singing mostly in English and some Armenian. Right at the very end, we get to see that he is quite handsome. That’ll work.

🇦🇹 Austria

I don’t even know what to say. Why do they even bother coming back? Is it because it was just a quick train ride this year? Good thing for them (I’m guessing) that they can probably even still catch the train back home tonight. Yes, they can sing really high notes. Good for them, I suppose.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

As an experienced ESC viewer, my hopes are not high. They just have the consistently worst taste. This year, they seem to be trying to copy the Abba sound but it is not working. .Three young ladies with quite weak voices. The chorus is “What the hell just happened?” which is what I’m asking myself after this terrible song. Guess what, though? Since their country provides so much of the budget for the ESC, they are automatically qualified for the final. So, we get to hear this gem of a song again on Saturday. Null points.

🇬🇷 Greece

Clavdia is singing a song called the awesome name of “Basteromata” in Greek. She’s alone on stage, singing a classic ballad, weaing what look for the all the world like reading glasses. Wait, somebody else showed up. She’s a “dancer”. This is utterly generic. The computer graphics are doing a lot of work. As is the crazy Swiss camera. She is by far not the worst but it’s not really my bag.

🇱🇹 Lithuania

This is what might have, in a better world, been a metal band. Instead, it’s an emo-looking lead singer trying to stay on-camera. They’re all wearing gray sacs. Kudos for going in a metal direction but it’s an aimless song that never seems to drive to a conclusion. It’s not got much structure (as usual). It’s not terrible but there are a lot of other songs just like it that are much better—and I can’t help but think of those instead.

🇲🇹 Malta

This is about as hyper-sexualized as ESC is allowed to get. They changed the name of the song to “Serving” from, I believe, “F@&king” (the moderator said it was a “Kraftausdruck” that you’re not allowed to say on television). It’s not a good song. Malta’s hoping that people vote for skimpily clad female dancers dry-humping each other, which is—NGL—not a bad bet to make with ESC voters.

🇬🇪 Georgia

She’s singing operatically in Georgian and English. She has a good voice but the song isn’t great. She has good stage presence though; she’s quite striking. I wish the camera would knock off its bullshit. I’m just going to note here that she also does a costume-change, which, like, nearly everyone has done now. They keep calling it a “quick change” but that’s not what it is: she just took off a giant coat and left it on the stage.

🇫🇷 France

Completely unsurpisingly, France has a blonde woman singing a ballad. Am I happy that my French lessons are paying off and I can understand most of the lyrics? Well, yes and no. It’s always difficult to continue liking a song once you understand the dumb lyrics. The chorus is just her scatting the word “Maman” again and again and again. Next.

Interlude

If I’m honest, the two hosts are kind of growing on me. They’re goofy but in a decent way. They’re vacuuming the stage after the French lady spilled sand all over it.

🇩🇰 Denmark

Another female ballad dropping a giant coat on stage. She’s singing in English. Oh, no, wait, now we’ve transitioned to a completely generic ESC-style electronica beat. Her voice isn’t as strong as others. She’s barely moving on stage. She has no stage presence but benefits from the frenetic camerawork in that it doesn’t … linger. Denmark stunk up the joint last year too. She’s taking the train home with Austria.

🇨🇿 Czechia

Adonxs is singing in English. He is shooting for Freddie Mercury. He’s a good showman and has a decent voice with a lot of range but the song is not good. Guess what? He also dropped his coat. It’s a thing this year.

🇱🇺 Luxembourg

She’s singing in French. Generic beat, generic melody, and generic singing but good dancers, costumes, and set design. She started off as a doll in a quasi-futuristic house but dropped that conceit quickly. OK, so she did a quick change. What is happening this year? Did they all get a memo that they should bring two outfits?

🇮🇱 Israel

We had to of course hear about how this dingbat was dancing outside of a concentration camp at the Nova music festival from our Swiss moderator, like she’s some kind of hero. She’s alone on stage, singing in English and a bit in Hebrew. It’s a standard ballad. The lyrics are a bit on the nose, no? “But we will stay even if you say goodbye” and “Everyone cries. Cry alone.” “A new day will rise.” Like where will that new day rise? Over her daddy’s new seaside condo in Gaza? Yikes.

🇩🇪 Germany

This is a generic dance tune but it’s got a decent beat and it’s also the best act that Germany has sent since Lena. Spock playing the light-cello was a nice touch. I think the name of the song is “Baller”, which is kind of funny if you know German. She’s quite attractive, which is absolutely going to help.

🇷🇸 Serbia

“Princ” is singing in Serbian. He’s in red; his dancers in black. It’s a ballad with a bit of piano accompaniment. Yawn. This is not going anywhere. He can hitch a ride with Austria.

🇫🇮 Finland

A blond lady with a sizable bosom and lips to match sings a pretty generic party song. She’s wearing a lot of leather and the moderator promises “lasciviousness” but it’s not really evident. The strobe lights and frenetic camerawork are absolutely maddening. She didn’t drop a coat because she didn’t start with one.

The closing Swiss presentation wasn’t bad.

Finals

Hazel’s wearing a rainbow sweater that doesn’t fit but it’s better than the thing she wore on Thursday. She’s joined by Michelle Hunziker, who’s not looking 48 years old at all. Today I learned that she was born in Lugano and went to school in Bern before moving to Milano. I had no idea.

As usual, all of the musical acts were exactly the same as the ones from the semifinals. I’m pleased to see that every single one of the acts that I said would move on because they were “hot” (male or female or indeterminate) moved on, as expected.

I have no idea who won nor does it really matter since the jury voting has, in the last couple of years, been overwhelmed by pretty obvious astroturfing and manipulation in the televoting portion. Last year, an absolutely terrible Israeli act rode a completely inexplicable wave of adoration from most of old Europe. I expect the same boring hasbara to dominate this year as well.