The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, held in Basel’s St Jakobshalle, was less a musical competition than a geopolitical pantomime dressed in sequins and lit by a thousand wind machines. It was, as ever, a spectacle that could make a cynic weep and Noel Gallagher reach for the gin. Switzerland, having won in 2024 with Nemo’s operatic tantrum The Code, hosted this 69th edition with the grim determination of a nation that knows neutrality is its only export besides overpriced watches and chocolate. The result was a three-night carnival of camp, chaos, and the kind of earnest ballads that make you wonder if Europe has collectively forgotten what a melody is.
Enter Austria’s JJ, a Viennese vocal acrobat who, with Wasted Love, turned an operatic ballad into a club banger with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It was as if Puccini had been reincarnated in a Berghain basement, and Europe lapped it up. JJ’s win—Austria’s third, following Udo Jürgens and Conchita Wurst—was less a triumph of music than of sheer lung capacity. His reprise, dripping with tears and a plea for “more love,” was the kind of moment that Eurovision thrives on: absurdly sincere, yet impossible to take seriously. One could almost hear the ghost of Terry Wogan chuckling into his whiskey.
Israel’s Yuval Raphael, finishing second, was the night’s lightning rod. Her performance, briefly disrupted by paint-throwing protesters, was a reminder that Eurovision’s “United by Music” mantra is about as binding as a Labour Party manifesto. The European Broadcasting Union, ever the spineless referee, suppressed audience boos and prayed Austria’s victory would spare them the nightmare of hosting in Tel Aviv. The protests outside, complete with tear gas and water cannons, were a stark contrast to the glitter inside, where politics is supposedly banned but always the loudest guest.
Estonia’s Tommy Cash took third with Espresso Macchiato, a faux-Italian piss-take that had Italians clutching their espressos in outrage. Cash, a provocateur who loves “anything trashy,” delivered a song that mocked national stereotypes with the glee of a toddler in a sandpit. It was gloriously stupid, and one wished it had won just to see Rome host next year’s contest in a fit of pique. Sweden, the bookies’ favourite with their sauna-obsessed Bara Bada Bastu, landed fourth, proving that even accordion-led odes to sweating in a wooden box can’t always sway the televote.
The UK, as is tradition, sent Remember Monday—a girl group with a musical theatre background and a song called What The Hell Just Happened?—to continue its proud record of Eurovision futility. This 1970s pastiche, stuffed with tempo changes and barrelhouse piano, was like Queen covering the Andrews Sisters in a Nashville dive bar. It was theatrical, yes, but so is a pantomime dame, and the result was predictably dire: another bottom-half finish having again won no points from the public vote, with only Sam Ryder’s 2022 fluke to remind us that Britain once knew how to write a tune. The BBC’s decision to pick acts via backroom deals rather than public votes remains a mystery, like asking a tone-deaf choirboy to headline at Carnegie Hall.
Elsewhere, the contest was a parade of the gloriously unhinged. Finland’s Erika Vikman rode a spark-spewing golden microphone for Ich Komme, a techno-rave ode to, well, let’s call it “arrival.” It was the kind of performance that makes you check the subtitles twice and hide the remote from your grandmother. Malta’s Miriana Conte, forced to rename her song Serving to avoid a naughty homophone, still oozed camp defiance. And Latvia’s Tautumeitas, with their glitch-pop curses and monkey tails, looked like they’d wandered in from a pagan ritual gone wrong.
The hosts—Hazel Brugger, Sandra Studer, and Michelle Hunziker for the final—were as polished as a Swiss bank vault but about as memorable. Interval acts included a satirical Swiss stereotype skit and a Céline Dion video message, teasing a return that never materialised. One suspects she was wise to stay away; even her Titanic heart couldn’t survive this shipwreck of taste.
Clive James, were he still with us, would have skewered this as a “gladiatorial contest with music as an afterthought,” and he’d be right. Eurovision 2025 was not about songs but about moments—JJ’s soaring notes, Vikman’s golden phallus, Cash’s gleeful trolling. It’s a world unto itself, sealed off from pop culture, where ABBA remains the lone gold standard in 69 years.
As Graham Norton’s wry commentary tried to keep up, one could only marvel at the absurdity: a continent united not by music, but by its willingness to embrace the ridiculous. See you in Vienna, or perhaps Salzburg, where the hills are alive with the sound of nul points.