Australia is sailing to Sweden in the hope of swathing itself in Eurovision glory against 36 other countries, most of them – as the name suggests – from Europe. The competition may be confined to the second week of May, but in fact, the Eurovision calendar kicked off months ago, leaving a sweaty trail across the continent on the way to Malmö in southern Sweden.
The 68th Eurovision Song Contest will air on SBS between May 8 and May 12, hosted by music buff Myf Warhurst and comedian Joel Creasey, and there’s so much more to it than just a bunch of countries competing in a song contest.
In addition to the pre-season party, there’s a lot they don’t tell you about Eurovision. There are secret “no cameras allowed” rehearsals that precede the official stage rehearsals and dress rehearsals, they stopwatch the songs so nobody goes over three minutes, and despite modern technology, they still use an antiquated scoring system invented when the elves ran Norway.
We’re still working on the Eurovision Drinking Game (someone is wearing glitter? Drink!) but until we iron out the rules, strap in for the behind-the-scenes, you-wouldn’t-believe-it-even-through-we-know-it’s-true Eurovision guide.
Here’s all the things you need to know before you tune into Europop’s party of the year.
There is an actual party “pre-season”
The Eurovision diehards are not waiting until May to get their glittery groove on, the partying began back in March when Madrid hosted PrePartyES, followed by the Barcelona Eurovision Party in April and the London Eurovision Party and Eurovision Concert in Amsterdam the same month.
By far the biggest pre-party is still to come: Malmöhagen in Copenhagen, a jaunty 30-minute drive over the Oresund Bridge from Malmö. Malmöhagen’s guest list includes current past competitors, including Electric Fields, who are representing Australia this year, and Sheldon Riley, who competed for Australia in 2022.
There are secret rehearsals
Leave it to Europe to have some international intrigue, but before the 37 countries bring their performances onto the stage for everyone to see in competition week, secret rehearsals take place. This year, they kicked off on Saturday, April 27 at Malmö Arena.
There are two rounds of rehearsals at this point, and as you can imagine, with 37 countries, stage time is at a premium. The first rehearsal is 30 minutes per country, and the second is 20 minutes per country. After each one, they are allowed to “tweak” their performances, camera angles and choreography.
Australia is not the only non-European country!
At least three other non-European countries have competed at different times in Eurovision’s almost seven-decade-long history. This includes Australia, Israel and Morocco. Of the four, this year, only Australia and Israel are competing.
Australia has only officially competed since 2015 when Guy Sebastian performed “Tonight Again” (He came fifth!). Our best performance in the competition was a year later, in 2016 when Dami Im performed “Sound of Silence” (she came second!) And our roughest year was 2021 when Montaigne’s “Technicolour” did not qualify for the final.
They time the songs
Anyone who goes over the three-minute rule gets a smack. Not joking, the organisers have a hard and fast rule that Eurovision songs must be performed in less than three minutes, and there are no exceptions. During the rehearsal phase, a lot of time is spent backstage tightening up performances and staging to fit under the ticking clock.
It makes sense given some of the worst Eurovision offenders – think Jemini singing “Cry Baby” for the UK in 2003, or Dustin the Turkey singing “Irelande Douze Pointe” for Ireland in 2008 – were so utterly dreadful, the very thought of them going overtime is too much to bear. The longest song ever? Before the three-minute-rule was imposed, Italy’s Nunzio Gallo, singing “Corde della Mia Chitarra” in 1957, clocked in at five minutes, nine seconds. Oh, Nunzio!
Nobody sings worse than Norway
Oh, Eurovision … the European summer romance of mixed fortunes. San Marino is one of Europe’s teenier countries, has only qualified for the final four times, and has never placed higher than 19th. Montenegro has only ever qualified for the final twice and has never placed higher than 13th.
But the truly grim fairy tale belongs to Norway, who have placed at the bottom of the Eurovision scoreboard no less than 11 times. In 1963, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1990, 1997, 2001, 2004, and 2012 they landed at the bottom, behind everyone else. There is a silver lining though: in 1985, 1995 and 2009 they actually won!
This year is the 50th anniversary of ABBA winning
Would you believe that the UK gave “Waterloo” a zero score, and just a few weeks later bought so many copies of the single that it shot to Number One on the UK charts and stayed there for two weeks! It was ABBA’s first of eight UK Number 1s, and was the 16th highest selling single in the UK that year (1974).
While we’re naming and shaming, “Waterloo” won Eurovision high jury scores from Switzerland and Finland, but a staggering five countries gave it a zero score. Aside from the UK, “Waterloo” was junked by the juries from Greece, Monaco, Belgium and Italy.
The scoring system makes no sense
Yup, even to those of us that go every year.
One of the weirdest things about Eurovision, and one of the toughest to get your head around, is exactly how they work who wins. If you’re an endurance-running fan and you tune in every year, you will know that it takes almost as long to score the competing songs as it takes to perform them on stage. Sometimes longer!
Despite this, tropes like “Hello Riga, can we have your points please?” have become something of a cliche in the Eurovision world, and in many ways the scoring is the best half of the night.
In simple terms, this is how it works: a professional jury and the TV audience in each country score other countries in order, highest to lowest, highest getting 12 points, then 10, and then eight through to one. Plus, there is a TV audience “Rest of the World” vote, which comes from phone votes in non-participating countries. The scores are aggregated and the countries are ranked – laboriously – in order.
If you can manage to comprehend how all of that sums together, congratulations, your acceptance letter to work at NASA is in the mail. But for the rest of us, tune in on May 8 for the musical mayhem and leave the counting to the geniuses!
