This year, attention surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest has focused on calls for Israel to be banned from the competition, due to the country's deadly actions in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the nostalgic techno act Windows95man was chosen as Finland's representative with their track "No Rules!". But controversy overshadowed the win, which had been rumbling from even before the domestic qualifier began.
After the victory, Windows95man, Teemu Keisteri, and his guest vocalist Henri Piispanen, found themselves at the centre of a social media storm as they voiced hope that Israel would be banned from taking part.
However, this week the act announced that they do plan to participate in the contest while also working to convince organisers at the European Broadcasting Union to ban Israel.
Staunch political positions about warfare may seem out of place at such a colourful, musical event, but according to Eurovision expert and author Dean Vuletic, politics has always played a role at the international competition.
"[ESC] is, after all, a contest between countries, so it is a stage on which international relations are played out and on which countries send political messages to a huge audience," Vuletic told Yle News by email on Wednesday.
"The first big political message was sent by West Germany in the very first Eurovision in 1956, when a Jew and Holocaust survivor, Walter Andreas Schwarz, represented the country. Israel has historically sent songs with political and social messages, including about the Holocaust and peace with its neighbours," Vuletic explained.
"I doubt that Israel will be banned from Eurovision this year as there are no international sanctions against the country," he noted.
Underdogs, history and victories
Apart from the recent controversy, Finland's enthusiasm for ESC appears bigger than ever. Its popularity hit a new high last spring when the country's representative, bright green bolero-wearing rapper Käärijä narrowly lost out to Swedish singer Loreen.
In a way, Window95man's unusual, acid-washed denim-laced performance was similar in audacity to the monster-costumed group Lordi, which won Eurovision in 2006, marking Finland's first and only ESC victory. Since then, interest in the contest has continued to grow.
According to Yle's Eurovision Swedish-language commentator Johan Lindroos, Eurovision was hugely popular in Finland from the first broadcast in 1960, even though it had never competed in it.
"[After the 1960 broadcast] people demanded that Finland should take part, they thought it was just so great," explained Lindroos, who also serves as Radio Finland's Head of Music.
The following year, Finland made its Eurovision debut with Laila Kinnunen, one of the country's most popular singers of the 1950s and '60s.
But Finland's path to glory turned out to be a long one. With a few exceptions, the country struggled for decades to make much of a mark on the contest.
That struggle continued until 2006, when Finland bet — and won — on "Hard Rock Hallelujah", an arena-friendly track by Lordi, the Lapland-based, monster-costumed metal act.
There was much rejoicing upon the group's return to Finland, with some 90,000 exuberant people packing the area around Helsinki's Market Square for a celebratory concert.
Since that first win, Finland has done fairly well at ESC, reaching 11th place with Softengine's "Something Better" in 2014, and sixth place in 2021 with Blind Channel's "Dark Side".
"In a way, Finns have always been competitive. We love winning and success, especially if we're coming from the position of an underdog. But that always comes at a cost; if there's no success, public reaction can be quite harsh," Lindroos explains.
Last year, nice-guy party rapper Käärijä's track "Cha Cha Cha" was among bookmakers' top favourites to win ESC. But in the end, Swedish artist Loreen won in a dramatic finale.
Lindroos says that Käärijä taking second place likely helped his career in the long run, because Finland loves underdogs. He says the artist's popularity is likely due to his charismatic personality at least as much as his music.
"Nowadays, I think younger generations have a different relationship with Eurovision. They don't have all this baggage of never having won it and always getting zero points and so forth. Now kids just love Eurovision, they have a much healthier relationship with it," Lindroos says.
The contest itself doesn't seem as important to younger people as it is to prior generations, it is more about sharing a common experience, according to Lindroos.
"On TikTok, for example, it's important to be part of something big. I think that's more of what it is," he says, noting that UMK organisers were early adopters of the social media platform.
These days, the only televised events that tend to draw bigger audiences than UMK or ESC are the Independence Day gala and major sporting events like the Ice Hockey World Cup Final in 2022.
Interest in Finland's Eurovision qualifiers is not limited to people in Finland, Lindroos says. Last winter Spanish network Ten TV and Dutch LGBTQ channel OUTtv both carried the Finnish national competition.
It's not only fans who are interested in the contest, either.
Contest publicity
Radio Finland's music chief says that record industry attitudes began to change a few years ago as they realised an artist's exposure at UMK and ESC usually translates into big sales and streaming numbers.
Record companies, which have struggled with a near-constant decline in physical music sales for nearly two decades, have found that the contests are great nesting grounds for potential hits — even for artists that don't make it to the finals.
That shift occurred in 2020, when the Covid pandemic prompted Eurovision to be cancelled, according to Lindroos.
As an example he pointed to vocalist Erika Vikman's UMK entry, "Cicciolina", saying that even though it didn't win, the track was very successful.
"She didn't win, but she had a huge hit in Finland," Lindroos says. "That opened the eyes of producers, songwriters and the music industry that UMK is a great place for potential hit songs."
In another example, after reaching near the top of Spotify's world charts last spring, runner-up Käärijä's "Cha Cha Cha" has been listened to more than 25 million times on that platform alone, not to mention the song's remixes, videos and streams on other services.
Because of the Käärijä buzz, organisers decided to move the event from its regular venue in Turku with a capacity of around 3,500 to the Tampere Arena, which holds up to 15,000 people.
The event sold out in less than an hour.
Authenticity works
In an earlier interview with Yle News, Eurovision expert Vuletic said that Finland's — and Käärijä's — recent great results were due to Finns being true to themselves.
"[Finland's] entries have become more authentic, they've become more of a reflection of Finnish national culture. By this I mean that Käärijä's song was in Finnish and managed to come in second place," Vuletic explained.
"This is a huge, huge success for Finland, for the Finnish language, for Finnish popular culture, especially when we consider the challenges the Finnish language has faced at Eurovision in the context of history," he continued.
The changes are not exclusive to Finland, according to Vuletic, as he has observed an increasing trend of authenticity from other countries "and a move away from [typical] Eurovision pop recipes".
He said that Finland's ESC victory with Lordi in 2006 reflected that authenticity.
"Finland's entries are more a reflection of Finnish popular culture, its national tastes. And this is also being rewarded by Eurovision viewers," he explained.
Among other achievements, Vuletic was lecturer of the world's first university courses about Eurovision at New York University, the University of Vienna, and at Charles University in Prague.
When this article was published, Windows95man had a two percent chance of winning at ESC 2024, according to bookmakers' odds listed on the fan website eurovisionworld.com.
But what does the Eurovision scholar think about Finland's entry this year?
"The Finnish entry builds on last year's success of Käärijä, and it will also definitely stand out with its humorous performance and social message. But it's a shame it's not in Finnish, that would have made it more authentic," Vuletic said.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 will take place in Malmö, Sweden on May 7–11. Yle will broadcast the events live on TV as well as its streaming platform Areena.
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