The way to win the Eurovision Tune Contest, in line with the consultants

The Eurovision Tune Contest was watched by round 163 million folks final 12 months – that means there are probably 163 million completely different opinions on what makes an ideal entrant.

Do you go for a soulful ballad, assured to go away Europe misty-eyed and full of affection and peace?

Or do you go for a tacky extravaganza, full with saucy takes on regional costumes and eye-popping staging that can have your complete continent (and Australia) raving of their residing rooms?

Based on Bennett, there’s some validity to this, with each Eurovision tune falling underneath six broad lyrical themes: “love, unity, self-assertion, partying, historical past and songs about making music”.

He provides that “songs of self-assertion or lyrical self-empowerment do very properly” – as seen with Austria’s 2014 winner Rise Like a Phoenix (Conchita Wurst).

Acts is perhaps tempted to go excessive on staging, however this is probably not the way in which to safe victory, in line with our consultants.

Songwriter Thomas Stengaard co-wrote Denmark’s 2013 winner Solely Teardrops (in addition to this 12 months’s UK entry What the Hell Simply Occurred by Keep in mind Monday). He places his success down, partly, to its easy staging, which he says made it simple to recollect.

“In case you requested a child to attract that staging, they might. It was a woman with no footwear on, two guys enjoying the drums and a flute man. Quite simple, but it surely labored.”

Vocal coach Carrie Grant, who led the UK’s jury in 2014 and got here sixth within the contest as a part of Candy Desires in 1983, agrees.

“There may be nothing worse than having an artist whose stage has a lot of cash however their efficiency does not warrant it,” she says. “It makes that efficiency appear worse.”

The 2014 winner (and Carrie’s private favorite) was Conchita Wurst – the primary act to win the competition with out backing singers or dancers on stage since 1970.

What made Conchita stand out was that she was a bearded drag queen. Carrie believes Eurovision followers love issues which might be quirky and that “embrace the LGBT neighborhood”.

However she provides that Conchita wasn’t a gimmick however as an alternative “an excellent singer who might ship what we name in vocal teaching ‘cash moments'”.

Minor-key songs more and more dominate Eurovision.

Bennett debunks the concept “main equals glad, minor equals unhappy”, including that “minor keys are extra a shorthand for emotional depth”.

In 2023, 85% of finalists carried out in minor keys, in line with the Press Affiliation. Within the final 20 years, solely two major-key songs have received – 2011’s Working Scared (for Azerbaijan) and 2017’s Amar Pelos Dois.

Professor Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, a researcher in music cognition at Princeton, highlights supply sensitivity – our intuition to affiliate a tune’s sound with its meant context. A couple of bars of a techno tune, for instance, and now we have a psychological picture of a darkish nightclub, and of the kind of DJ who would possibly carry out there.

This implies sure minor keys now instantly sign “Eurovision-ness” to audiences.

Keep in mind Monday’s What the Hell Simply Occurred was written at a songwriting camp, with a number of songwriters working collectively at a countryside retreat to put in writing the right tune for this 12 months’s UK act.

The tune was deliberately written in a significant key to face out in a sea of minor-key songs – just like the UK’s 2022 second-place entry, Spaceman by Sam Ryder (B Main).

Repetition is necessary to make a tune stick within the thoughts, says Margulis. However songs ought to keep away from being too repetitive. Margulis says that what significantly makes a tune catchy is “not solely when they’re heard repeatedly, but additionally once they throw in some type of shock twist”.

Bucks Fizz’s 1981 winner for the UK, Making Your Thoughts Up, is a basic instance. First, the tune adjustments key, shortly adopted by a memorable costume change through which the feminine singers’ skirts had been ripped off to disclose shorter skirts – a joint visible and musical twist.

Earlier Eurovision winners had been typically mocked for his or her nonsense lyrics, like Sweden’s 1984 winner Diggi-Lavatory Diggi-Ley, however Bennett argues this highlights Eurovision’s robust deal with melody.

“Eurovision actually wants massive melodic hooks. You need folks throughout Europe to be singing that melody. The necessity for a really accessible, catchy refrain is crucial.”

Key adjustments have lengthy been a approach to introduce novelty into Eurovision songs. The 2000s noticed a number of winners comply with this system, together with Olsen Brothers’ Fly on the Wings of Love for Norway (2000), and Serbia’s Molitva in 2007.

However as Bennett factors out, although they’re nonetheless current in round a fifth of finalists, no tune with a remaining refrain key change has received since Molitva nearly 20 years in the past.

Stengaard’s tune for this 12 months’s UK act Keep in mind Monday is actually stuffed with surprises. BBC music correspondent Mark Savage mentioned the tune featured “a dizzying array of key adjustments and tempo shifts”.

The tune is the songwriter’s reply to the query he asks himself at any time when he writes for Eurovision: “How do you stand out in a contest the place everybody needs to face out?”