What We Learned From the Eurovision 2021 Final and Winner

Maneskin’s win with “Zitti E Buoni,” a song filled with off-color lines and lyrics about smoking, was not the only sign of a rock resurgence. Finland’s Blind Channel came in sixth with an angry nu-metal song called “Dark Side,” while The Black Mamba, representing Portugal, came in 12th with “Love Is On My Side,” a piece of classic 1970s rock music that wouldn’t have been out of place in Paul McCartney’s back catalog.

French could be the next language to conquer global pop

For the past few years, Spanish-language pop has surged in the American and European pop charts thanks to acts like Bad Bunny, Rosalía and C. Tangana. Is now the hour for French? On Saturday, Barbara Pravi came second for France with “Voilà” — a traditional slice of chanson that many critics compared to the songs of Édith Piaf. Third place went to Switzerland’s Gjon’s Tears with “Tout l’Univers,” also in French.

Europe hates Britain. (And Germany. But a bit less.)

James Newman, Britain’s entry, suffered the biggest embarrassment of the night — receiving no points from the judges, and none from the public either. It’s the first time Britain has finished with zero since 2003. Could it have something to do with Britain’s departure from the European Union?

But, also, maybe it doesn’t. Germany, the dominant force in European politics, — received only three votes on Saturday, coming in second-to-last. Spain’s entry won just six votes; the Netherlands, 11.

Eurovision has the world’s greatest voting system

The voting process for Eurovision is convoluted and takes hours, involving juries spread across 39 nations — some nowhere near Europe, like Australia — as well as a separate vote by the public. But on Saturday, the ballot tally was a highlight of the contest. As the votes were announced, the lead switched several times between acts, with France and Switzerland seeming to be likely winners at first, before Iceland came into contention, and Italy stormed through with huge public support. It might be complicated, but perhaps other major prize ceremonies, like the Grammy Awards, should consider adopting such systems and getting the public involved, too.

“We just want to say to the whole Europe, to the whole world, rock ‘n’ roll never dies!” said Damiano David, the band’s lead singer, accepting the prize.

Maneskin, a rare rock winner in a contest whose previous winners include Abba and Celine Dion, beat 25 other acts, some unusual even for Eurovision standards, including a folk-techno act from Ukraine, a feminist Russian pop star and an Icelandic disco band.

The show will be seen by many around the world as a sign that major cultural events, featuring competitors from dozens of countries, can be held successfully if sufficient measures are put in place to limit the spread of coronavirus.

In the run up to Saturday’s event, contestants had to undergo regular coronavirus testing, adhere to social distancing rules and stay in their hotels if not attending rehearsals.

The measures were not enough to stop the pandemic from intruding entirely on the event. Last Saturday, a member of the Polish delegation tested positive for Covid-19. The following day so did a member of Iceland’s entry, the hotly tipped disco act Dadi Freyr and Gagnamagnid, who were staying at the same hotel.

This was Italy’s third win since the contest’s creation in 1956; its previous triumph was in 1990, with Toto Cutugno.

Testifying to the strength of the field, the lead kept changing as the votes from the various national juries came in, with Switzerland in the top spot by then, followed by France and Malta. But the popular vote upended the ranking, and Italy passed its competitors.

When the polls close, the 10 songs with the greatest number of votes from each country receive points. The top-ranked song gets 12 — or “douze points.” (This is also the point when the judges start speaking French.) The second-ranked song gets 10, the third 8, and the rest get from seven down to one point.

But alongside the public vote, there is another one. On Friday night, juries representing each country secretly picked their own top 10, which are allocated points in the same way. Their choices are often heavily influenced by politics. The Greek and Cypriot juries usually trade votes, for instance, perhaps reflecting the countries’ close cultural ties.

Eurovision’s hosts receive the jury votes by satellite link from each country directly and announce them first. This takes forever. Then the public’s votes are added to the jury tallies and the tension-filled process ends with the announcement of a winner.

In the chorus, Macrooy switches from English to Sranan Tongo, the language of his native Suriname, a South American country that was once a colony of the Netherlands. “Yu no man broko mi,” he sings, over and over: “You can’t break me.”

Eurovision is well known for songs that take stands on social or political issues. In 1971, Germany’s Katja Ebstein sang “Diese Welt” (“This World”), a pro-environment track that was radical for its time. More recently, acts have pushed for gay, lesbian and transgender rights in Europe.

So it’s great to see Macrooy continuing that trend — although, sadly, he has almost no chance of winning. Few countries ever win Eurovision twice in a row. Ireland did three times in the 1990s, but by the third time they were desperate not to win again. The winner hosts the next year’s show, and it was starting to get expensive.

Remarkably in an era when performers are media-trained into utter blandness, Pravi is an unabashed activist for women’s rights and has been forthcoming about her experience with domestic violence.

But in case you were wondering if there really are invisible people dancing around in white pants, this what Greece looked like in the arena, using a ’green screen:

Frank Lochthove, Germany

Mr. Lochthove, 45, recalled how Germany’s hosting the soccer World Cup finals in 2006 had given it the opportunity to shed a postwar suspicion of flags and national pride to cheer on the national team. But for Mr. Lochthove, the most important competition was the 2010 Eurovision, held in Oslo, which the German singer Lena won. “She managed to cast a spell on the whole audience,” he said.

James Sheen, Britain

Mr. Sheen said he held his first Eurovision party in 1991, and continued to host parties for the next 20 years. Each time, the shindigs grew more elaborate as he added score sheets, themed food, colored spotlights, a sound system and a smoke machine.

In 2011, Mr. Sheen drove to Düsseldorf, Germany, to be in the audience for the first time. While the parties were dear to him, nothing beat the thrill of the real thing, he said.

Maria Bresic, Australia

When Ms. Bresic was growing up in the 1970s in the western suburbs of Sydney, she knew about the Eurovision Song Contest from Croatian-language radio and from her parents’ friends.

Her parents had come from Croatian and the way they watched the contest in the 1980s was influenced by the complicated politics of the Balkans at the time.

“Mum and Dad wouldn’t be interested in watching any of the performances by certain countries,” Ms. Bresic said. When Yugoslavia won the contest in 1989, “My parents were outraged,” she said, because, in their mind, the winning band, Riva, should have been considered Croatian, not Yugoslav.

Ricardo Mohammed, United States

Mr. Mohammed has a singular way of keeping track of time. Asked when he started his Eurovision viewing party at Hardware, a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, he replied, “Emmelie de Forest won that year.” (For the uninitiated, that would be 2013.) He also remembered a trip to London, “the year Nicki French represented England” (otherwise known as 2000).

Mr. Mohammed, a.k.a. D.J. ohRicky, discovered Eurovision as a child in his native Trinidad, via British broadcasts. He said the closest analogy for the contest was Broadway. “Those fans know the statistics, like how many Tonys someone won,” he said. “It’s the same for Eurovision die-hards: They know the last time a country won, who wrote a particular song.”

Britain has performed poorly at almost every Eurovision since it last won in 1997 (thanks to Katrina and the Wave’s “Love Shine a Light”). The only exception was Jade Ewen’s “It’s My Time” in 2009, a theatrical ballad written by Andrew Lloyd Webber: That came in fifth.

Why does Britain do so badly? Commentators often claim it’s because Europeans have long hated Britain’s lack of commitment to the European Union, something confirmed in 2016 when the British public voted for Brexit.

But the reality is the British entries normally just aren’t very good.

Newman’s song isn’t bad, but his performance tonight isn’t exciting enough. He’s singing while doing dad dancing between two huge model trumpets. To win Eurovision, you need to do more than dad dance while standing between two huge model trumpets.

Australia, a country mad for pop music (it was an early ABBA adopter) has long broadcast Eurovision and, in 2015, it finally landed a one-time-only invitation. Somehow Australia turned into the guest that wouldn’t leave. Not only is it still there, but it placed second in 2016 — these guys are in it to win it, eventually. Sadly it won’t do it this year, as its entry, Montaigne, didn’t make it out of the elimination round and isn’t in today’s grand final.

It’s a great start for the contest, in my opinion and could easily be a Lady Gaga hit. But opening songs never win Eurovision, so this probably won’t either!

More than 3,500 mainly Dutch fans were in to see the show, while journalists, some 400 of them, have been tucked away in a dark, rather depressing conference hall, where they can follow the event on four large screens.

Inside, people were filled with exuberance, partly because the show was going on after a year’s hiatus, and partly because it just felt so good to be out of lockdown. The costumes were colorful: Near me, two men were wearing orange tuxedos and another man wore a British flag as a cape.

Yet some of the reporters working for specialist Eurovision blogs and other outlets told me the setup that kept them away from the crowds made them sad. “Eurovision is about bringing people together, but they are forced to keep people apart,” said William Lee Adams of Wiwibloggs. “I’ll gladly wear a military grade face mask, if I can be among the singers and the public.”

I decided not to miss out on the live event. So I found myself at 10 a.m. this morning standing in the rain on a drab field outside of the city of Lisse for my Covid test. In hand, I had my ticket, which cost a mere €650, or about $790.

Yes, it is — a real thing that has been drawing hundreds of millions of viewers since 1956. But since the contest is not usually broadcast in the United States (the cable network Logo last had the rights in 2018), few knew of its existence, let alone what it’s all about.

The second-most-common American reaction to the movie’s Belarusian horror rockers and bare-chested Russian crooners seemed to be: “OK, but they must have exaggerated it.”

Well, no, they didn’t — “Fire Saga” eerily captures Eurovision’s most demented aspects, especially its signature unselfconscious reveling in over-the-top theatrics. Ferrell (whose wife is from Eurovision-crazy Sweden) pulled off a spot-on satire that eschews condescension: The film doesn’t laugh at the contest or its fans, but with them. And like many of the acts from the real competition, the songs from the movie are infernally catchy: “Husavik,” the lead number in “Fire Saga,” was nominated for an Academy Award.

The entrant facing the biggest challenge in capturing last year’s magic is Dadi Freyr, a singer performing with the band Gagnamagnid, which is Iceland’s entry. Last year, he was a favorite to win with “Think About Things,” a catchy disco number about Freyr’s newborn child.

The band’s entry this year is another fun track called “10 Years.” Freyr said he wanted to keep the track similar in style to “Think About Things,” since Icelanders had voted for a disco tune to represent them at the competition. It took 12 attempts to come up with a new song he liked, he added.

Jeangu Macrooy, the Netherlands’ entry, said he also struggled. “I was getting no inspiration — I was just sitting inside,” he said.

Then, in December, a host of thoughts and feelings around the police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement started bubbling up inside him, he said.

Soon he conjured the lyrics to “Birth of a New Age,” an uplifting gospel-inspired track: “They tried to drain you of your faith / But you are the rage that melts the chains.”

Macrooy said he hoped it would speak to everyone standing up for their rights, whether people of color, L.G.B.T.Q. people or members of other marginalized groups.