A Look At The Eurovision And Its Language Diversity
Last weekend I watched the movie “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” which tells the story of an Icelandic duo pursuing the dream to represent their country in Eurovision. Starring Will Ferrel and Rachel MacAdams, the movie is fun, mainly due to its soundtrack. All music played at the movie’s version of the contest, were composed to it, aiming to emulate the specific catchy kind of music that became a registered mark of Eurovision. I recommend this article by Bilge Ebiri for Vulture if you want to know more about that.
So, after finishing the movie and non-stop mumbling the lyrics, I watched this video, which presents the winner of every one of the 65 years of Eurovision (it isn’t that long, it’s just the chorus of each song — watch it). Being born and lived my whole life in Brazil, I was not impacted by Eurovision that much. Therefore, it was amazing to experience the 20-minutes time-lapse of music style, clothing, TV production, and everything relatable changing throughout the six decades of the contest.
One thing struck me, though. While the first decades had a plurality of languages winning the contest, by the last 20 years, one could tell that the majority of the winning songs were in English. While 51% of the Europeans are native or advanced English speakers, 80% of the songs of Eurovision 2019 were entirely or partially in English.
So, I did what every average person would do. I scrapped the internet for every edition’s list of songs and their original language. I was that curious.
Who Can Sing What?
Eurovision is a popular international song competition held in Europe every year since 1956 (except for 2020 due to the Pandemic). Each country chooses a song/singer/group to represent the nation on stage, and the one with the most votes wins. Selected juries do voting in each participant country and by popular votes. For fairness, a country can’t vote for itself. There were no regulations related to language, until 1965 when Sweden sang in English.
From then on, rules stated that the songs should be in one of the country’s national languages, with exceptions to a few words (Austria won 1966 with a German song with a few lyrics In French). In 73, the rule dropped, and from 74 to 77, only English-sung kinds of music won (with Sweden, Netherlands, and the UK respectively). The national language regulation was instituted again in 78. When I found this, I reckoned the organizers already feared an English language only-contest, as the western world’s international pop music scenario of the 70s was dominated by American artists such as Elvis and Jimi Hendrix, and British bands like The Beatles and Rolling Stones.
The organization finally lifted the ban for the 1999 edition, which had 60% of the songs in English or partially in English. We can hypothesize that the organizers were feeling the pressure to increase the contest’s popularity, and English lyrics would have a broader audience not only in Europe but outside of it. And since then, English became the “Lingua Franca” of the contest. By the end of the 2000s, 80% of the finalist’s songs were sung entirely or partially in English. The peak was 2016 when 96% of the songs had English lyrics. Only Austria sang in a different language, French.
Type: Why Most Songs In Eurovision Are In English? Click Search
At first glance, one can argue that English gives the competitor an advantage since a broader range of voters will understand the lyrics. Also, I read an argument that familiarity with a language can play a part in helping a song to get more votes. Nevertheless, the music with the most votes ever to win the contest was Portugal’s 2017 song “Amar Pelos Dois,” sung entirely in Portuguese. When you listen to it, it’s clear that this is different music from the past-decade winning songs and the ones from the movie.
This search brought me to the fresh new article by Rob Picheta for CNN. In the article, musicologists Joe Bennett of the Berklee College of Music in the US and Simon Troup of music publisher Digital Music Art UK deciphered which characteristics of music have the highest chances to win the contest. Guess what? Language is not one of them.
“They [researchers] found that the event has stubbornly resisted trends in popular music, bravely forging its own path in terms of musical experimentation.”
For such a culturally diverse contest, it’s a bummer to see it dominated by one language in what seems to be conformity with the mainstream music market.
At the Eurovision stages throughout the years, we listened to music in languages we don’t often hear (from my Latin American perspective), like Bulgarian and Romanian, less-known languages and dialects from well-known countries like Viennese (Austria, 1971), Neapolitan (Italy, 1991), and Breton (France, 1996) and even an imaginary one sang by Belgium group, Urban Trad in 2003.
Now that I’m very into the contest, I can’t wait for the Eurovision 2021 edition, and I hope to hear more non-English songs.