The First Time I: Watched Eurovision Live

This is The First Time, a column where Zach either 1) writes about the first time he did something specific in his life and talks about any pop culture connections surrounding it, or 2) tries something for the first time ever in 2025 and writes about it—sees a new movie, eats a new food, etc. etc. etc.

I spent this weekend in a hotel on the beach. It was one of the first times I've actually gotten a tangible material benefit from what I do most Saturday mornings—publicly read the Torah in synagogue. Believe me when I say I don't do it for the money. That's because there's no money in it. I don't get paid for reading it, or for the prep, which consists of a few hours to study it and memorize it and go over it over and over. Then, on Saturday morning, I do the public reading. I do it because I like to be on stage, with all eyes on me. I like the adulation afterward. I also like knowing the Torah and learning it so deeply. Is anything really altruistic?

Anyway, my friend who was getting married on Sunday asked me to read Torah at his pre-wedding Shabbat, which was held in said hotel. In exchange, he offered me free room and board for two days. That was very nice. 

But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because my roommate for the weekend told me that he was obsessed with Eurovision, and that the Grand Final was Saturday night, and that he wanted to have some kind of watch party in our hotel room.

Americans don't really know what Eurovision is, and certainly barely care about it if they do. But in Europe, it's a really big deal. It's also a big deal for countries that for some reason are part of it, even though they aren't actually European. Australia is in the contest. And so is Israel. Watching Eurovision in Israel is a national pastime.

It's a song contest. As far as I know, it started as a way to unite Europe after World War II (in the '50s). All the European countries have their own mini-competition to pick their entrant and their song (37 countries in total this year). Each song is around three minutes. Then, everyone performs in the semifinal round. The top 26 point-getters from the semis advance to the final. It's always hosted by the previous year's winning country—meaning this year it was hosted by Switzerland, in Basel.

There's a major performance element to this, too. Each country tries to top the next with absurd and outrageous designs. If they're not being kitschy or campy, they are going hard for the emotional knockout. Essentially, you need to be super weird or induce tears to be successful at Eurovision. I should also add that some songs are in native languages, but some are mostly in English and incorporate a few words of the native language only.

The winner is chosen by a combination of a jury and fan vote—each country that's in the contest has its own jury, which spreads out a total of 58 points among their top ten choices. There's an online fan vote, with a system that accounts for 50 percent of the results. But it's not just about the music—it is, of course, political. Russia is banned, and the PM of Spain recently called on Israel to be banned, too.

We turned it on and started watching. And now, brief comments on everything! (P.S. you can watch the whole show here if you want. Or search each country individually on YouTube for their Grand Final performance. And share your comments please! Especially for the ones I liked a lot. I want to hear what you thought.)

The Swiss hosts. The woman in the middle's dress occupied much of our attention throughout the night.

The Performers
(in order of appearance)

Norway — Kyle Alessandro, "Lighter"

A raging fire behind someone and we are off to a strong start! This song was alright, a regular pop song.

Luxembourg — Laura Thorn, "La poupée monte le son"

Honestly this song was really catchy and the design (she was like a doll in a dollhouse) was cute. She should have gotten a better result (spoiler!).

Estonia — Tommy Cash, "Espresso Macchiato"

A love song about coffee, for some reason sung in Italian. I appreciate the terrifying heavies next to him who morphed into dancers halfway through.

Israel — Yuval Raphael, "New Day Will Rise"

Raphael survived the Nova Festival massacre on October 7 by hiding under dead bodies for hours. This was very emotional and went for the heartstrings. I wanted her to win, obviously. I have to admit found myself wishing the song itself was just a touch better. It felt a bit formulaic. She was an incredible performer, though, and just seems like a good person.

Lithuania — Katarsis, "Tavo Akys"

A dark rock song trying for Nirvana vibes with some kind of European twist. His eyes are boring into my soul.

Spain — Melody, "Esa Diva"

A mediocre, sexy song, basic enough to change the radio channel if you heard it. 

Ukraine — Ziferblat, "Bird of Pray"

I need Joe to tell me what genre of music this is. It was a lot of sounds, some of which were enjoyable.

United Kingdom — Remember Monday, "What the Hell Just Happened?"

This one made me stand up and pay attention—the song and words were very transfixing, and these ladies have their look down. Apparently Eurovision hates the UK though, and I kind of get it—speaking native English here somehow misses the point.

Austria — JJ, "Wasted Love"

Beautiful vocals, unique look, Bon Iver vibes. Talent was very much on display, and I felt like a story was being told, but I didn't sit up and turn my head for it.

Iceland — VÆB, "RÓA"

Techno children singing a song. 

Latvia — Tautumeitas, "Bur Man Laimi"

The most unique performance. Forest nymphs singing a siren-like melody. I feared they would add me to their cult.

Netherlands — Claude, "C'est La Vie"

I thought he was going to kill it, but the song was a little too formulaic and basic. I just wanted it to be better. Maybe my hopes for Eurovision are too high.

Finland — Erika Vikman, "ICH KOMME"

The most sexually provocative performance of the night. A Europop song I think? Do I know enough about European culture to even be writing this?

Italy — Lucio Corsi, "Volevo Essere Un Duro"

An emo-elfish Paul McCartney and a Marilyn Manson-lite person singing a ballad. Eh.

Poland — Justyna Steczkowska, "GAJA"

Apparently she also performed at Eurovision 1995. A scary, gothy tune. Large men dressed in leather are my fuel.

Germany — Abor & Tynna, "Baller"

My favorite performance of the night. It didn't hurt that Tynna felt like the first dateable person of the evening. The two of them felt like real humans. The "BA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA" really got me. This was German techno at its finest. I've been listening to this song over and over again since Saturday night.

Greece — Klavdia, "Asteromáta"

Cute librarian look? I'm here for it. I liked the urgency, the DRAMA of this one. Fiery medieval sets can also never hurt, as well as a background of doves flying about.

Armenia — PARG, "SURVIVOR"

How many songs have we already heard about survivors in our lifetimes? And yet you can't deny this is a beautiful man right here. I keep wanting to write the word "Norse" in reference to these outfits, although I have no clue if it's relevant.

Switzerland — Zoë Më, "Voyage"

It felt like Switzerland mailed it in after winning last year. This song made me want to go to sleep. 

Malta — Miriana Conte, "SERVING"

The most kinky performance of the night, as Conte first appeared on stage inside an open mouth situated between two wide open legs, adorned with flowers, singing "I got a secret you should know." This one deserves a second pic for its batshit insanity.

Portugal — NAPA, "Deslocado"

If you're going to go emo, please make sure it's a song I'm going to cry to. I felt stone cold listening to this.

Denmark — Sissal, "Hallucination"

Maybe I was getting tired at this point? I don't remember this performance at all.

Sweden — KAJ, "Bara Bada Bastu"

This one woke me up. Swedish people singing with absolute joy about their love for the sauna while playing an accordion. It wasn't the weirdest one of the night, but it was the best weird one, and the song is very very catchy.

France — Louane, "maman"

An emotional one where sand ostensibly falling out of an hourglass descends on this famous French singer as she sings about her deceased mother. It wasn't a bad song, and I thought it had a chance to win; it toed that line between weird and meaningful.

San Marino — Gabry Ponte, "Tutta L'Italia"

Anyone else think this song title just pandered to the country that surrounds this one? Masked BDSM men with an angry David behind them were enjoyable to watch.

Albania — Shkodra Elektronike, "Zjerm"

Now here was some dark basement shit. A sultry woman in a red dress, a large bald muscled man banging a Norse (yeah!) drum, scary underground music, a sexy faceoff!

And just like that, we were done. It was now 12:50 AM Israel time.

Jury Vote

It took me a while to figure out how the voting worked, but eventually I got it. The hosts called on each of the 37 countries, whose rep appeared via video from the country itself. There they announced who they assigned their max points to (12 points). 

Italy's results were announced by a giant mouse?

As you can see, each country divided its points among ten countries total (what you see on the left there are nine countries, and the tenth was announced live by the rep on the right, for the 12 points. Once they announced who won the 12 points, the camera cut to the winner celebrating. To get through 37 countries takes a long time. (Countries can't vote for themselves.)

The more dramatic the better.

The scoreboard was continuously updated with each country's result in real time. 

Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France seemed to be the most popular ones for 12-pointers, which honestly surprised me. I thought Sweden deserved more. Germany for sure did. France was predictable, but Switzerland SUCKED. It seemed like obvious pandering to the hosts.

These were the results after the jury vote:

Austria was good, yeah, but to be so definitively ahead? It felt weird. Italy made no sense to me. Switzerland was just bad, and I don't get how they were in second place. Sweden deserved to be higher. Luxembourg deserved to be higher. I'm sure there were politics involved that I didn't fully understand.

Obviously, I was rooting for Israel (and Germany, but don't tell). It seemed like we'd get a mediocre result after only getting max points from Azerbaijan and sitting in fifteenth place. 

It was 1:30 AM.

"Just wait," my hotel roommate said. "Things change."

Popular Vote

Here's how the popular vote in Eurovision works: Anyone can go to the Eurovision website to vote up to 20 times for a contestant. Each vote costs 2.50 shekels in Israel, or a little less than a dollar. Your phone's location prohibits you from voting from the country you're currently located in, meaning I couldn't vote for Israel. So if I was going to vote, I had to spread my votes around different, non-Israel countries.

I decided to pay for seven votes for a total of 17.50 shekel ($4.94). I gave three votes to Germany, and one vote each to Albania, Luxembourg, Greece, and the UK. Looking back, I should have given Sweden a vote too. After you vote, you automatically get directed to a screen, where a prerecorded message from the artists from the country you voted for plays.

Don't they look like nice, warm German people? Tynna is my latest crush.

Albania, never change.

If the jury vote has political interests, the popular vote would seem to be the true arbiter of what the common man thinks. Yes, the common man is also political, but doesn't have anyone to answer to, and is prone to being less swayed by outside interests. A better reflection of popular opinion? I think so.

From how they explained it on the show, this is how the popular vote works. Take France. The top vote-getter from the French public, i.e. from votes cast in France, receives 12 points. The second-most vote getter from France gets 10 points, third gets 8, 6, 4... and so on, until the tenth-most gets 1 point. The total number of votes from the 37 countries are added up (important note: the 37 countries eligible to vote for each specific country consist of the 36 other countries, as countries can't vote for themselves, PLUS a total vote from the "rest of the world" not in the contest—which counts as one total country, so this would include votes from, say, the US, Canada, Namibia, etc.). So if, say, Albania got the most votes from all 37 countries, they would get 444 popular vote points (12*37 = 444). If Albania, however, didn't rank in the top 10 from any of the 37 countries, they would get 0 points for the popular vote. I hope I explained that well.

The hosts informed us they would announce the number of points each country got through the popular vote starting with the lowest ranked country in the jury round (Iceland with 0 points) and then go up until they finished with Austria, after which a winner would be crowned.

Before they announced the popular vote, they interviewed Austria's JJ. Her dress, though.

As a Eurovision neophyte, I didn't really believe my roommate that things would dramatically change. But here we went.

Iceland: Not at zero anymore!

I'm going to list the points here and comment as I see fit:

Iceland: 33 points.

San Marino: 18 points. A lukewarm reaction.

Poland: 139 points! They seemed happy!

Norway: 67 points. Indifference from me.

Luxembourg: 24 points.

Only moderately happy.

Spain: 10 points. They looked embarrassed.

Lithuania: 62 points. They raised a glass of some kind.

Portugal: 13 points. They cheered. I'm sure they didn't expect much.

Armenia: 30 points. A golf clap.

Denmark: 2 points.

The face of polite embarrassment.

Albania: 173 points. WOW. I'm so proud!

I want to be tied up and dominated by them.

Israel:

I was definitely disappointed with the low jury score, and I really wasn't expecting much here. The song was inspiring, but it could have been better, even with Yuval Raphael's heart wrenching story. Last year's song was better and was written by the same person. Also, it goes without saying that lots of people hate us. Two different people tried to rush the stage during Yuval Raphael's performance, yelling "Free Palestine." She got booed while she was singing by a good portion of the crowd (they use anti-boo technology to silence it on TV, but you can hear it in the arena, apparently). When she walked in the welcome parade through Basel before the competition, someone made a throat-slitting motion toward her. How could she do well?

Still, my heart was beating fast.

I feel you.

"The audience," the host said, "has awarded you... [dramatic pause] 297 points! That means we have a new leader on the scoreboard!"

INSANE. INSANE. UNBELIEVABLE! WOW!!!!

Hell yeah! I am crying.

So Israel was in first place, so far with the highest popular vote score. How long would it last?

Ukraine: 158 points. That's great! A crowd favorite, I'm sure.

Germany: 74 points. I could tell they were disappointed. They deserved better. Their song was best.

Malta: 8 points. Everyone saw through the singer's vaginal exit.

Finland: 108 points. Undeserved.

UK: 0 points. A prime example of the common man speaking, even though the jury ranked them in the middle. English speakers don't belong, according to the proletariat. Simple as that.

At least they could laugh about it.

Estonia: 258 points. Dang, that's a lot. But they didn't take over first! Israel still leading by one point only!

People like espressos and macchiatos.

Greece: 126 points. This felt right.

Latvia: 42 points. The nymphs were too terrifying?

Sweden: 195 points. I really thought they would overtake Israel for first. But this put them in third. 

And, now, five countries left. I was sure Israel would drop down, even out of the top five.

Netherlands: 42 points. 

I also thought he'd do better.

Italy: 97 points. Should have been lower. They kind of sucked.

France: Now I was sure they would overtake Israel. An emotional song, a good performance. But they got 50 points only and they lingered in seventh place.

Sad.

Switzerland: A hometown bump? They needed 144 points to overtake Israel.

A live shot of the three countries remaining. Yuval realized at this point how crazy this was.

...and...

Switzerland got...

0 POINTS.

No way. No FUCKING WAY.

Honestly the right decision. It was a bad song. The will of the people prevails! The jury sucks!

And now it was down to Austria and Israel. We would finish no lower than second.

The final reveal.

I turned to my roommate. "My heart is beating," I said.

"I know," he said. "This is amazing.

"But we better not win."

And, sadly, I knew he was right.

Imagine if Israel won. First of all, Israel would be expected to host next year's Eurovision. That is basically impossible right now. A missile landed on the airport grounds just a couple weeks ago, and airlines are canceling flights left and right. There's a war going on. I really hope the war isn't going on next year, but it is now, and it's a factor. We also don't need the attention now. The world already hates us, and we don't need winning a song contest—and all the drama that entails—to further complicate the discourse around Israel.

Second place would be the ideal result. It's sad, but it's true.

Austria needed 100 points to overtake Israel. I wanted them to do it. Even though I didn't really like their song. I wanted them to do it.

It sucks that that has to be the reality.

Right before.

"Austria. From the audience...you have received...

"178 points!"

Sigh of relief from me.

Let's all go to Vienna.

His head hurts?

Final results.

The winner gets on stage to perform the song they won with. As JJ walked toward the stage—it was after 2 AM at this point—I got an alert on my phone of an incoming missile, from the sweet Houthi rebels in Yemen. And as JJ started singing, air raid sirens started blaring, and we heard booms. We were too tired to go to the shelter. 

So instead of running down to safety, we took our chances, and we watched JJ perform.

The sirens are just part of life here now—it's been happening like 4-5 times a week lately—but the timing was fitting.

Epilogue

What can we say about this? 

Something similar happened last year. Israel did poorly in the jury vote, but amazingly in the popular vote. And I wrote about it then. It holds true now. I'm copying it below: 

Maybe we're not as hated as we thought?

Maybe there's a silent group of people that actually support us, as a country, regardless of war or anything else? Maybe they have compassion on us for what happened on October 7, for the hostages that are still being held?

I don't know how to draw any other conclusion from this. 

It would be intellectually dishonest at this point to blindly support Israel. As I type this, there is starvation happening in Gaza. Most Israelis want the war to end, for the hostages to come home. I'm really angry at the government for prolonging the war. For hurting us in the international space. For a lack of compassion and care. I wish we were better than this.

And yet. The level of hate we've gotten is unprecedented. Even before the government squandered much of the goodwill we had after October 7, people were protesting us. People were supporting the Hamas attack the day after it happened. In New York, the Democratic Socialists of America were doing just that. How is that OK? This was before Israel had really even started the war. It shows that people want Israel to be made a pariah state, gone, wiped off the map, no matter what it does. I really believe that.

Expresses the moment.

The haters came out after the vote. Erika Vikman, the Finnish singer, said the following: "Israel has been able to mobilize a lot of votes. I think that's really unfair." And the spokesperson from the Belgian public channel VRT said this: "We have no indications that the vote count was incorrect, but we do ask for full transparency from the EBU. The broadcaster finds it strange that Israel received 12 points from the Spanish public despite protests against Israel's participation in the contest."

This is downright Trumpian. If we thought Trump was dangerous and a liar for declaring the 2020 election rigged, we have to say the same about this. The protesters are loud, yes. But they're not everything. The average person seems to have love in their heart for Israel, even with the situation and how terrible and complicated it is. For Yuval Raphael and her story. And for the message from "New Day Will Rise." Let's not accuse someone of cheating and minimize their accomplishment.

Here's what Eurovision Director Matting Green said after all this:

"The voting system used in Eurovision is considered the most advanced in the world... there is no suspicion of bias or irregularities in the awarding of the points—not even in relation to the full score given to Israel by viewers in Spain (12 points)." 

Israel got second. It was fair. And it was amazing. 

What do I think of Eurovision? I wish it didn't have to be so political. I wish I could just have simple pride for my country, like Austrians are able to have more than me. No one will protest Vienna hosting Eurovision next year. I wish I could have just written about weird outfits and saunas and people walking out of vaginas. It's not like that anymore. The '90s are over, and everything is political.

I'm grateful I got to watch it. I'm grateful for the perfect result Israel got. And you can bet I'll watch Eurovision next year.