I left this until a little closer to the date this year. Eurovision 2025 kicks off in Basle or Basel as you prefer on 10th May and lasts a week through a couple of semi-finals (13th and 15th), and the Grand Final on Saturday 17th May.
The Swiss being the Swiss they held a referendum to decide on the host venue.
It is in Switzerland because an artist from that country (NEMO) won it last year, the usual procedure. It wasn’t my favourite although pretty good. Eurovision has to be the most subjective competition there is.
The delay was because I was concerned the Swiss might shy away from it on account of what happened in Sweden and the potential for a repeat this year, or worse.
But as of now at least it is on.
There are 37 countries represented including all five Nordic nations as usual. Montenegro returns this year but Moldova withdrew on cost grounds together with an acknowledgement of the poor quality of the entries. At least they are honest.
As usual the propensity is to sing in English. If you want international exposure you have to but this time out 24 contestants will sing in their native language either on its own or in conjunction with another language, usually English.
The Israeli entry (a personal favourite but I won’t bang on about it) is in three languages. Of the Nordic countries Finland, Iceland and Sweden will perform in their native language; Denmark and Norway in English.
Before I start some people ask me why I spend time on Eurovision for what is supposed to be a ‘serious’ publication. My answer always is that while you still get some horror shows there are always at least half a dozen very good, world class songs every year and that alone makes it worthwhile.
So let’s have a look in some detail
Denmark – Sissal – Hallucination
Sissal (Jóhanna Norðberg Niclasen) is actually Faroese, her homeland remaining a semi-autonomous Danish protectorate, at least until the Donald gets his sweaty palms on it. She now lives in Copenhagen.
She is the second Faroese artist to represent Denmark in Eurovision after Reiley in 2023.
I’m thinking she should have been in NMC before now but she has slipped under the radar.
Sissal released her first EP ‘Hear Me Now’ in 2025.
Sissal gets her musical inspiration from the likes of Norway’s Dagny and Sweden’s Robyn.
The song ‘Hallucination’ which she part wrote is already released (February 2025) on Virgin. She describes it as being about “meeting a person where the connection feels so real that it almost seems unreal.” I don’t suppose she means on LinkedIn and certainly not Skype.
The lyrics are nondescript and verses are pretty formulaic pop-rock and nothing to get excited about but the song explodes into EDM heaven in the choruses and it is especially in those that her powerful vocal capability shines through as she swaps effortlessly between chest and head voice in a master class.
In the official video two creepy looking masked dancers flirt with her. I don’t know what they add and I hope she finds a better alternative for the real thing.
If it does better than 15th I’ll reckon I’m hallucinating too, but we wish her all the best to gain that position.
Finland – Erika Vikman – Ich Komme
Regular readers of this annual review will know what I make of historical Finnish entries. With so much musical talent in the country they somehow manage to vote in an abomination to represent them each year as if they are all – artists, juries and public alike – deliberately sending themselves up.
So what’s the story this year?
The story is Erika Susanna Vikman, out of the second city, Tampere, who started her career as a Finnish tango singer (a local version of Argentinean tango), and who has had Top 5 chart hits there. ‘Tango’ apart she has also studied pop-jazz vocals.
She was almost selected for Eurovision in 2020 and then in the same year placed third in The Masked Singer Finland in its first season as ‘The Wasp’. (I thought that was the one Marko Hietala won just before he left Nightwish but it was the next one. Why can’t Nightwish write a Eurovision song, or just release an existing one? )
But I digress.
Erika released her debut self-titled studio album in August 2021 and it went on to peak at number-one in Finland, so she has the pedigree, for sure.
She also has an interesting private life having been in a relationship with a guy 50 years her senior. There’s hope for me yet.
I couldn’t understand why she would sing a song with a German title. ‘Ich Komme’ combines Finnish disco and electronic music and the lyrics reflect “the joyous message of pleasure, ecstasy and a state of trance”.
Now coming from the home of N-Trance, (‘Set you free’ was written about 400 metres from where I live), that caught my attention straight away.
Its structure reflects sexual pleasure and reaching orgasm. Yes, I know this is Eurovision but I’m not kidding you. Seems it is one of two songs in the contest to be about ejaculating, the other being ‘Milkshake Man’ by Australia’s Go-Jo.
I say old chap, what is the world coming to? What would Mary Hopkin or France Gall have made of this? I know what Serge Gainsbourg would have.
Suddenly it all becomes clear. She could hardly sing “I’m coming” in Finnish or English while pole dancing with her mic stand and ensuring that the penis-like mic looks huge in her little hand like its straight out of Pornhub and dallies close to her mouth while tantalisingly revealing attractive bits of her body.
In case you don’t get the message she ends up astride a giant mic stand with an even bigger mic fully erect on the end while the other side erupts like a Roman candle in what I assume is supposed to represent a spit roast.
I reckon the old chap was well advised to move on from his relationship. She would have killed him.
The song is actually pretty good, at last. As manic as Käärijä’s’ ‘Cha-Cha-Cha’ a couple of years ago but with an actual tune to it and she certainly works up a head of steam.
It could well get into the Top 2, again.
As it is after the watershed I’ll let you have a sneak preview of this orgasm fest, but make sure the kids are in bed.
I hope I get a chance to interview this lady sometime. It takes two to tango.
Iceland – VÆB – RÓA
Another country with great musicians but seemingly unable to locate them while the Eurovision selection is ongoing, Iceland is a country that often seems to offer up unpronounceable artists with equally unpronounceable song titles.
This year the job of trying to save the country from the ignominious failures of recent years falls to VÆB (which means ‘Vibe’)an electronic music duo consisting of brothers Hálfdán Helgi Matthíasson and Matthías Davíð Matthíasson;visually at least a Nordic version of Ireland’s Jedward, after whom I am certain they modeled themselves.
VÆB made their debut with the studio album ‘Væb tékk’, released in September 2022. They competed in the Icelandic selection process in 2024 where they finished fourth while ‘Bíómynd’ was the most publicly popular song among those in the competition, resulting in the first and only one to enter the Icelandic Top 10.
In 2025 they were selected again to participate and this time ‘Róa’ (‘Row’ – I didn’t know if it meant what you do in a boat or when you fall out with someone until I saw the video) won both the jury and public vote earning them the right to represent Iceland in Basle. It has also placed at #1 in the Icelandic charts.
There has been some controversy with this one, an Icelandic online newspaper hinting at plagiarism of an Israeli song but those allegations proved unfounded in the eyes of the Icelandic broadcasting company RÚV.
It could easily have been the Finnish entry, taking over where ‘Cha Cha Cha’ left off; nonstop mayhem which seems to be a strange amalgam of electro-pop, rap and an Irish jig.
In the official video Jedward – sorry, VÆB – set out on a tiny rowing boat adventure in the Atlantic Ocean as you do in Iceland (believe me, there is no ‘elf n’ safety’ there).
Along the way they meet seals, whales and some interesting humans including an old sea salt, Captain Birdseye by the look of it, who easily beats one of the brothers at arm wrestling.
Intriguingly in one scene they run along a beach sporting the flags of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. I don’t know what that signifies unless it’s a message to the Donald.
They keep their wraparound super dark glasses on even while they’re using a Davey Lamp to see where they are going. For their sake I hope they ditch them for their live performance. They look like they could be fresh, clean smiley kids who might win a few female hearts but they won’t if those girls can’t see them properly.
It’s a fun song and it’s catchy too, Iceland’s best effort for a few years. It might place as high as #10.
Norway – Kyle Alessandro – Lighter
I had to do a double take when I read that this year’s Norwegian entry is by Kyle Alessandro. I misread it as Alessandra, who performed ‘Queen of Kings’ a couple of years ago, a powerful song that might have been in with a chance had it not been for Loreen and that pesky ‘Cha Cha Cha’ thing. She finished up sixth I think.
Then I thought, Queen of Kings, Allesandro, Allesandra, has she had a sex change?
None of it. But he is the product of a Spanish father and Norwegian mother, just as she was Italian/Norwegian I think.
He’s been appearing in TV shows since a young age and has released several singles and a debut album.
He has appeared too in the Eurovision selection round in Norway before now, in the collective project Umami Tsunami in 2023 but they finished last in the final. The earthquake wasn’t strong enough.
In 2025 he returned as a solo artist with the song ‘Lighter’, which was written together with Swedish producer Adam Woods and won the selection competition this time.
‘Lighter’ is a song is about fighting back after a setback and finding hope even in difficult times and relates especially to his mother and her battle with illness. In the chorus he repeats the statement that he is his own lighter.
I took that to mean a cigarette lighter and the way they used to be deployed by audiences in support of power ballads at gigs before they were replaced by phones, rather than a reference to him losing a kilo or two.
But it seems the lighter is more specifically a metaphor for finding his inner light and not having to rely on others for moral support. Fair enough but I can’t get a handle on the key line that “no-one can burn me now” that he has his own lighter. That smacks of something altogether more serious.
Because of the circumstances under which it was written I’d like to see it do well but I’m struggling…with a hip hop styled melody that is catchy but not catchy enough when you know he’s going to be up against some very big tunes, and with a weird bridge that almost expires from its own anemia. That’s the last thing you want at Eurovision.
Norway has racked up the greatest number of ‘nul points’ and bottom of the table finishes at Eurovision and indeed it did last year with a song that deserved better.
This one won’t get nul points for sure but 15th place is I feel the best it can hope for.
Sweden – KAJ – Bara bada bastu
Sweden’s entry this year is an interesting one in that it is performed by a cross-border ethnic group called KAJ, which is a Swedish-speaking Finnish music and comedy group from Vörå in Ostrobothnia, along the western coast of Finland in the Gulf of Bothnia. The region they live in is Swedish-Finnish bilingual.
From what I can tell it isn’t part of the Sami territory that encompasses Norway, Sweden and Finland, that is hundreds of kilometres to the north but it is still representative of the cultural overlap between these Nordic countries.
So KAJ is part of the Finland-Swedish cultural sphere and primarily performs in Swedish with lyrics in the Vörå dialect. The group consists of Kevin Holmström, Axel Åhman, and Jakob Norrgård, whose first name initials form the band’s name. Yep, a boy band.
Their music spans multiple genres, including pop, K/J-Pop, Latin, rock, rap, opera, disco, and schlager (easy going pop with sentimental lyrics), often incorporating humour and satire. The group also has a satirical rockabilly alter ego called Vörjeans, which parodies raggare (greaser) subcultures and it has published lyrics for over 100 songs.
Blimey, I never knew there was so much going on up there. Presumably they gave up on Finland when they heard ‘Cha Cha Cha’.
Formed as a bunch of schoolmates in 2009 they are already multiple award winners.
‘Bara bada bastu’, a song that celebrates Finnish sauna culture,translates as ‘Let’s just sauna’ but I’m afraid that even if they strip naked and plunge into the audience they won’t be winning anything with this effort, which could have been Finland’s entry were it not for Erika’s raunchy display.
It has ‘novelty song’ stamped right through it, and although the Eurovision regulars on the night in the auditorium will love it and such songs do sometimes win, I’ll do a sauna of my own on the Town Hall steps if this one does.
I hope they don’t wear this gear on the night either. They have the appearance of well groomed young guys, The Osmonds or Hanson if you like, that somehow got caught up in a far right group plotting to bring down the government in Vörå.
And ‘Sauna!’ sounds like an order.
It is catchy up to a point and has traditional instrument quaintness but not enough to outweigh the negatives.
I don’t know how the country that twice selected Loreen managed to pick this song but good luck to them. I can’t see it doing better than ranking at #20.
A quick overview of the non-Nordic entries I am following is much the same as last year. Israel has come up with another one to beat with Yuval Raphael’s performance of ‘New day will rise.’
Wherever Israel goes there is politics lurking not far behind and I hope that viewers will accept the song and performance for its art rather than let those politics intervene.
That said, it is well known that she is a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre and hid amongst the dead and dying for eight hours, and the song recognisably refers to the people at that event – including her friends – that did not come back.
That puts it in an awkward position even though it shouldn’t as it could be deciphered as a political song. It will be interesting to see how that is interpreted on the night. For me it is marginally the best song I have heard this year.
It was written by Keren Peres who was also a co-writer on last year’s ‘Hurricane’ and who is becoming an acknowledged master of the power ballad.
I say that ‘New day will rise’ is marginally the best song because believe it or not, for the first time since Bucks Fizz in 1981 I do believe the UK has a serious chance of winning this year and not being humiliated, which has become the norm. (Sam Ryder was pretty good but was never going to beat the Ukrainian entry in 2022).
Girl group Remember Monday’s ‘What the hell just happened’ is sassy, savvy, sexy, jazzy, direct, hard hitting pop/rock with clever, meaningful lyrics, tempo and rhythm changes all over the show, multiple genres on display (with a predominance of Queen-like chords) and performed by three attractive young ladies that your mum would bust a gut to see on your arm and who can sing and harmonise all day long.
Apparently one of them has played Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. Jeez.
Unless they completely screw up the staging or do a Jemini (Google them if you don’t know what I mean) they are a shoo-in for a Top 3 position and just possibly that coveted #1 that the UK has forgotten what it feels like.
Even though it isn’t a typical Eurovision winner.
If we can’t make #3 at least then it’s definitely time for the UK to throw in the towel.
