Not just a schlong contest after all...

Just my luck, I suppose. All these years I have pretended (with increasing difficulty) to have no truck whatsoever with the Eurovision Song Contest. Desperately I clung to the moribund school of 1970s rock die-hards – which I suppose makes me a ‘soldier of heavy metal’, to counterbalance all the newly-forged soldiers of steel out there – and always dismissed the show as the epitome of everything that was toxic, demeaning and debilitating about the music industry in general.

So I dubbed it the ‘Eurovision Schlong Contest’, and never paid much attention to it at all.

Now, as age starts producing unforeseen changes in my sensibilities, I actually begin to take an interest in Eurovision. I listen to the entries. I weed out the glitz and the gimmicks as best I can – or as ‘breast’ I can, in the case of Poland’s entry – and try to home in on the melodies. The lyrics too, though these are increasingly coming to be seen as mere embellishments to the music. And I no longer base my preferences merely on what reminds me of my former musical tastes from the 1980s; or what isn’t an obvious rip-off of an earlier song.

Clearly something must be wrong with me, because to my surprise I find myself enjoying the experience. Perhaps this year was exceptional (having studiously avoided the show for so long I can’t really compare to previous editions) but I counted some dozen entirely memorable songs among the usual schmuckfest of embarrassing nonsense. I noticed, for instance, that Azerbaijan no longer needs to bribe half the jury to get into the top 10. This time they easily sailed there with what could, under different circumstances, have been a clear winner.

Sadly Malta’s entry did not feature among the pleasant surprises… not so much because the song was particularly crap, but simply because it didn’t push any buttons: not with me, and not, it seems, with the televoting population of the rest of Europe.

Hence the bit about my rotten luck. Just as I start warming to the Eurovision Song Contest in spite of my fiercely held musical prejudices… the rest of this traditionally Eurovision-potty country seems to be finally switching off. There was hardly any hype at all surrounding the event this year… certainly nothing compared to the quasi-messianic hysteria surrounding Gianluca Bezzina last May. Bizarrely, people seem to be finding the current European election campaign – quite possibly the most boring campaign I’ve ever had to follow… and I’ve been following elections since 1987 – more interesting.

So once again I find myself isolated in my views about Eurovision. When I hated it, everybody loved it. Now that I find myself drawn into it like a little boy into a sweet-shop, everybody else looks the other way. Suddenly, they all complain that it’s ‘not about the music’… when in fact the musical standards were rather high. Suddenly, it’s all about politics and sex… as though popular music has never had anything to do with politics and sex before.

Initially I was tempted to construe this as yet another case of sour grapes. Malta was unable to offer serious competition to a smattering of high-calibre songs. To be fair to Firelight, I suspect this is really because most other countries pulled their socks up, while we carried on treating the show on the basis of its reputation for mediocrity. So even if Coming Home can be enjoyed as a half-decent ditty in its own right, there was a general feeling – long before last weekend – that we didn’t really stand a chance. So, in classic sour grapes fashion, our reaction has been to devalue the entire event… complaining about political voting (when voting has always been political), and implying that the eventual winner (or was that ‘wiener’?) only won because of his or her facial hair.

This sentiment was perhaps most brilliantly captured in a priceless Facebook comment immediately after the voting last Saturday. “Oh come on, Conchita didn’t have anything special. Just a fantastic voice and a great song…” (Because ‘fantastic voices’ and ‘great songs’, on their own, should not be expected to win international song contests. Only beards can do that…)

That was my initial impression, but it is admittedly a bit unfair on Malta. Truth be told, it’s how the rest of Europe viewed this year’s edition, too. With war brewing between two entrant countries even as the event was underway… and with a sudden pan-European resurgence of intense, politically-motivated homophobia, of the kind last seen in the 1930s – it seems the last thing on any country’s mind this year was the quality of the music.

Just to hammer the point home, an article appeared in the international press a few days before Saturday. It purported to give us 10 reasons why Conchita Wurt’s should win the Eurovision Song Contest 2014. These 10 reasons were (in no particular order):

1) It would piss of Russia. 2) It would piss off Russia. 3) It would piss of Russia; 4) It would piss off Russia… and on it went, until number 10: which came across as a belated afterthought: “Oh, and by the way, it’s a bloody excellent song.”

And yet there is a small detail that nearly everyone seems to have overlooked. It wasn’t the beard that won. It was the song: and taken out of its context, stripped of any visual references, chucked onto a random playlist and heard without any knowledge of the political context… it remains a pretty darn impressive piece of work no matter what musical prejudices you call your own.

People who commented on its Bond-esque flavour were unwittingly paying ‘Rise like a Phoenix’ a tremendous compliment. Bond theme songs have traditionally been sung by the likes of Shirley Bassey, Carly Simon, Tom Jones and even Louis Armstrong. To me, however, it sounded more like an undiscovered Mina track from the late 1960s. And I can’t think of any higher praise than that.

Was it the best song of the night? Oh, I don’t know. It’s not a question that can be objectively answered. Did it win only because of the hype? I somehow doubt it. There is, in fact, evidence that this was not the case at all. A breakdown of the popular vote reveals that Conchita Wurst won a number of fans even in the reputedly homophobic former Soviet bloc. It also reveals that Britain and Ireland overwhelmingly voted for the intensely heterosexual butter-churning breast-fest that was Poland’s ‘We are Slavic’. And there, in a flash, all our preconceived notions about European attitudes towards sexuality fly out of the window.

But even if we concede that Austria’s entry was tailored to capitalise on an existing political reality, and to force people to confront their own preconceptions about gender identity... erm… yes, well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Music has always done exactly that. And Conchita Wurtz’s persona isn’t even particularly ground-breaking on that front, either. The glam-rock scene of the 1970s was littered with androgynous cross-dressing mutants from outer space. David Bowie’s original album cover for ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ had him in a dress that could easily have been borrowed from Conchita’s wardrobe. And his antics on stage made the Austrian bearded wonder look almost conservative.

More to the point, it would be worrying if popular music didn’t take on board the prevailing sensitivities of the time, and try to voice or challenge them in any meaningful way. In one fell swoop we would have undone five, possibly six decades of musical revolution, and returned to the fossilised pre-rock’n’roll era when popular music was dominated by the sexless and pointedly apolitical likes of Doris Day.

At the same time Conchita’s triumph also points towards a recipe for Eurovision success that can be emulated… and not just by dumping your entire Gilette collection in the nearest bin, either. Winning the Eurovision Song Contest also involves the ability to reflect something about the diverse reality that is Europe… but that, on its own, is just not good enough. You also need to encompass all your media hype with an exceptional and memorable song.

So to the few people left out there who may still harbour ambitions of one day ‘coming home’ to a raucously triumphal welcome at the Malta International Airport: stop focusing on the beard, and start focusing your creative energies on creating something that truly gets everybody in Europe talking. That taps into the zeitgeist of the age we actually live in. And that will get a few million Europeans to tap their feet, too.

There, doesn’t sound that hard, now does it? In fact I might just have to have a go myself…