This isn't the kind of post I usually put on this music blog, it's more like what I'd write on the sports blog - a mild-mannered piece of topical invective. But Eurovision was on last night, and I realised, in those brief seconds where my remote took me to BBC1, that I have moved fully from the delight I took in it as a child to thoroughly hating it. I've made excuses enough. I've enjoyed, indulged, been indifferent, but now, I must say, that joke isn't funny anymore.
Despising what one loved as a child is the mark of a cynic and a killjoy, but, notwithstanding that I've changed, so has Eurovision since then, significantly for the worse. Has the world changed or have I changed? Morrissey quotes through this post are fitting not just because I'm sure there were rumours a few years ago that Morrissey was going to be the UK representative, but also because, like Eurovision, Morrissey was awesome in the 80s and is kind of loathsome now.
Can I comment if I only watched a few fleeting minutes this year? Well, you could say that's enough. But, I should add, I did watch a fair bit of it last year, and, drinking and with family, I did manage to sit through and enjoy the whole thing about 4 years ago. So I'm still in touch with how to enjoy it.
Removed from a positive context though, let us look at Eurovision as it is now. It used to be an epic 3 hours, half songs and half scores. Really, the songs were a bit of silliness to get through before the fun started. Now it's a n obese four hours, finishing so far past any kid's bedtime, and the songs have multiplied while the announcements of scores have been stripped back. The only good bit. The "sport without the sport" as one superfan described it this week (I realise that was a positive for him ... it obviously sounds like life without the living to me). But it's not sport, because good sport, proper sport, is fair and does actually discover who is best, or purports to. Even sports like skating suffer if success is dictated by a seemingly arcane judging system.
See, I watched boxing last night rather than Eurovision. I watched Jame DeGales' supermiddleweight world title bout with the slick American Andre Dirrell. Once it was clear the fight was going the distance, the commentators (and I) began to worry about the judges' scorecards. Bad scorecards can be the bane of boxing. Fighters and fans get furious if one or more judges' has seen the fight differently/wrongly. Any sport decided by human judging can suffer from that. That's not sport, not really. So a lot of sports try to have pretty clear criteria on how they are judging. As it happened, there was one bad scorecard last night, but the other two were, in most eyes (though not Andre Dirrell's), pretty spot-on. The right man won. Hurray, DeGale.
There is corruption and cheating in sport. Fans hate it. It sticks so deep in the gullet. Corruption, nepotism, a lack of merit is the very essence of modern Eurovision. And people don't seem to mind that much.
I'm hardly the one to speak up against "judging" music, I'm really not, I know that, but come on, choosing between 30 songs, ranking 30 songs in one night, that's in and of itself a nonsense. But I can't complain about that.
The songs are rubbish. Haha, they've always been rubbish, you'll say. That's the fun. But they're hardly ever rubbish in a a fun way any more, just cynical, efficient pop tat, slick enough, probably written by committee. Eurovision, as a kid, was often hilarious. It's really not hilarious anymore. It's forced jollity. All the countries know how to write dull but efficient pop music now. It's like someone said to me recently - Much better to have an old house from before when people knew how to make bad houses efficiently and cheaply. Well, a bit like that ...
I watched Eurovision gleefully for years with my brothers and sisters, it was one of my favourite TV events of the year. I knew the songs were rubbish, there was fun in that. Laughing at foreigners was a bit more innocent and acceptable then. I can't really see how it is now.
So I've mostly ignored and abided it for the last 20 years. I've never been beyond sneering at other people's fun, but my happy memories of Eurovision kept me from doing that for a long time.
But it's turned from a silly treat for them that fancy it to something really rather ghastly and bloated, corrupt and pointless.
Empty laughter ...
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