Welcome to Oslo, to an arena NRK booked even before the 2009 final was held since they were so sure of winning. Due to being in Norway (expensive), four whole countries dropped out of the contest (granted, most of them also had no success). The countries we lost were Andorra (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave forever), Czechia (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave for a while), Montenegro (who never managed to qualify and decided to leave for a bit), as well as Hungary who actually have qualified before, but didn’t have money to keep participating consistently (so they had to rethink their approach). But hey, Georgia was back, so that’s something! And Ukraine managed to not get disqualified, even though they almost nearly were, so that’s good! All in all, 39 countries participated. But will we get stuck with 39 awful songs like in 2008, or will we continue the trend of having actually good songs like in 2009? I already know the answer, but I won’t say it upfront.

This is an anniversary post, I published my first review precisely a year ago. I’m so happy to look back and see how far I’ve come. But let’s do this sappy sort of stuff at the end of the post.

For 2009, Russia chose one of two cities that exists in Russia: Moscow. It makes sense that they’d host it in the capital for the first time - they probably would’ve held it in St. Petersburg if they won a second time. But they definitely wouldn’t have allowed those weirdos from anywhere else to host, that’s for sure. As always, there were some changes in the lineup, as San Marino dropped out and Slovakia returned. It was looking like it was going to be another year with 43 countries, but Georgia’s entry was disqualified for being “political” as well, and they decided to take a stand by not submitting a replacement, thereby making it the first of several years where the “curse of 43” kicked in. The juries were also brought back, who accounted for 50% of the results - even though the system used to get to the final result still wasn’t perfect, and it would take the EBU until 2016 to finally perfect it. This was also my first time following Eurovision before the show and picking my favourites (none of them qualified, which is what started my contrarian streak), as well as actually watching the semifinals since my favourites were spread out over them. I had five favourites (and I’m gonna be shamelessly biased towards them) - let’s see if you can guess which ones they were before I reveal them.

The streak of new winners is almost over, so let’s enjoy the last bits of it. Hosted in Belgrade, this contest featured 43 countries - the highest number of countries ever (tied with 2011 and 2018). This was clearly too much for the EBU, so they decided to split it into two semifinals with 10 countries qualifying from each. The countries would also be seeded based on voting patterns to reduce bloc voting. As for the changes in the lineup, Austria was having a sulk over not doing well with their terrible songs, so they withdrew. On the other hand, Azerbaijan and San Marino made their debuts. This means that only Australia’s debut is left. And I’m sure every country sent their best effort to this contest, so all 43 entries will be amazing! Right? Right????

After Lordi’s extremely deserved win, it was Finland’s turn to receive the contest, and they decided to do another production upgrade. From now on, Eurovision will be produced and broadcast in HD to allow us to see every tiny detail of every performance. And that was all done with 42 countries taking part - making it one of the biggest contests even to this day (only 2008, 2011 and 2018 would feature more countries - and a couple other years would also have 42). Initially, it was going to be even higher, as Monaco had expressed interest at first, and Azerbaijan didn’t join because their EBU membership was delayed, but it could’ve been 44 countries, with 30 of them competing in the semifinal. In the end, we got a slightly less terrible, but still really bad 28 countries in the semifinal. Four of them are new countries: Czechia, Georgia, Serbia and Montenegro. As Serbia and Montenegro had split into Serbia and Montenegro, both were now eligible to take part in Eurovision. Meanwhile, Georgia got that fancy new EBU membership. Austria and Hungary also returned (not as a single country, thankfully), and they had to compete in the semifinal as well.

Greece has waited since 1974 to win this contest, and Helena Paparizou finally won the contest on her second attempt. Since the 2005 final overran was very significant, the EBU had to think of a way to reduce the running time. Their solution was simple: the spokespeople would no longer present all of the points - but only the 8, 10 and 12 points. This was both a good and a bad change, but more on that later. It definitely helped the runtime, though, especially with 38 countries voting this year. Also, Austria, Hungary and Serbia and Montenegro withdrew, but Armenia joined, leaving us with 37 entries. Huh? What? There were 37 entries, but 38 voting countries? Yes! Since Serbia and Montenegro withdrew just a couple days before the show, they retained their right to vote, which was the first time votes from a non-participating country were taken into account.

It’s the 50th contest, and it’s held in Kyiv since Ukraine won it! I’ll be honest, we weren’t prepared to host this at all infrastructure-wise, but we pulled through and did our best anyway. There weren’t anywhere near enough hotels, nor was there enough airport capacity, public transport capacity, and basically everything else. Together with Euro 2012, this really forced us to modernise everything. Also, we really didn’t have a suitable arena either, but again, we pulled through. Add to that the fact that we’d just gone through a revolution, and it seems like a true miracle that we could host this thing at all. Since there was no relegation, every country that took part in 2004 also took part this year, regardless of their score or position. Eurovision actually gained some new countries since Bulgaria and Moldova both finally made their debuts, and Hungary came back for the first time since 1998. Lebanon was very close to making a debut but withdrew due to various reasons that I don’t really want to get into. On a more positive side, we’re finally in the widescreen era, which means another production values bump for the show.

We’ve finally reached the year of the EBU taking tighter control over Eurovision. From now on, the copyright would be shared by the host broadcaster and the EBU, the branding would be standardised and the televoting would be conducted by a centralised organisation, not each broadcaster separately. Also, the rules explicitly banned live music starting with this edition. However, the most important change was definitely the introduction of a semifinal. From now on, no country would have to skip a year because of poor results. Of course, the single semifinal format still wasn’t ideal, but it was infinitely better than any iteration of relegation. It’s for this reason we could extend a warm welcome to four debuting countries, Albania, Andorra, Belarus and Serbia and Montenegro, as well as wave our hands to a bunch of returning countries: Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Monaco (returning after 25 years), North Macedonia and Switzerland. This means that 36 countries took part this year, an increase of 10 from the previous year and the record at the time (though not for long). This year will already show us why a semifinal was necessary, so let’s dive right in.

Welcome everyone to Riga. We’re continuing to jump around Europe because countries will continue winning for the first time for quite a while. This contest set a new record for the number of participants: 26. Originally, the bottom ten countries were going to be relegated to make way for debuts from Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro and Ukraine, all of whom broadcast 2002 to join this year, but then the EBU decided that it would be Really Bad and asked them to hold on for one more year while they went back to the drawing board and redesigned the system to be better (honestly, they didn’t even have anything in mind until this point). In the end, Ukraine was allowed to join anyway (probably because we had a population of about 50 million, so our participation fee was higher than that of Albania with their 3 million or Serbia and Montenegro with 10 million). I’m sure that was appreciated by Latvia as the contest almost didn’t take place due to widespread organisational problems and monetary issues (not that it was noticeable in the production itself). Since the semifinal will get introduced next year, we have our last big swapout due to relegation, so let’s pay our respects to Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, North Macedonia and Switzerland and welcome back Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Portugal as well as extend a warm welcome to the debutant Ukraine.

We’re in Estonia this year, which starts our huge streak of first-time winners and first-time hosts! It’s going to be so exciting to finally start visiting all of the different countries, get new debutants and just see ESC progress. We’re also about to enter the era I’ve actually watched on the night, live, so I’ll be talking about what I remember and how I remember it. But first, let’s continue with a couple more shows that I haven’t watched live yet. This year, the EBU went back to relegating based on one show, which is mildly less bad. At first, only 22 countries were going to be allowed to take part, but then it was increased to 24 to allow Israel and Portugal to enter. In the end, Portugal decided to skip this year, so the EBU was going to allow the 18th place in 2021 to enter, but the problem was that there were two: Latvia and the Netherlands. So the EBU used the tiebreak that was in effect at the time (number of 12s, then 10s and so on) and allowed Latvia to enter. In a way, it mirrors 1999, when Latvia withdrew, which allowed Portugal to enter instead, so perhaps this was them giving back. In any case, this was definitely the most important withdrawal in all of ESC history.

Welcome to Copenhagen, the Olsen Brothers brought it here and now we have to suffer the rhyming hosts and a generally huge downgrade in the production compared to Sweden. The number of participants was reduced to 23 for some reason, which means that seven countries got relegated, but only six got to return. The relegated countries are Austria (sad), Belgium (well-deserved), Cyprus, Finland, North Macedonia, Romania and Switzerland. On the other hand, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia returned from being relegated last year and Greece returned after skipping last year voluntarily. Spain and France would’ve been relegated instead of Austria and Belgium if the Big 4 rule didn’t exist.