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An analysis of Danish diversity in Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song contest televised worldwide on an annual basis. Since its inception in 1956, Eurovision has had fifty-two participating countries, most of which are members of the European Broadcasting Union. Denmark has participated in the contest since the following year, 1957, and has won the event in 1963, 2000, and 2013. In this blog post, I will be evaluating their winning 2013 entry, as well as those of the years that bookend it, as well as judge Denmark’s attitude on diversity and what these performances suggest about the country itself.
            Denmark’s 2012 Eurovision entry, “Should’ve Known Better,” was performed by Soluna Samay, a Guatemalan singer who moved to Denmark at the age of ten (Soluna Samay, n.d.). The song itself is seemingly about losing faith in God, though the only real hint towards this in the inclusion of “inshallah,” Arabic for “if Allah wills it,” in the bridge. However, after all these years of trying to find truth in her life, she feels that she has had to give up too much of herself. She feels that she no longer has a home to go back to and was never able to find her place in the world, ultimately losing her faith in Allah and that she “should’ve known better” (2012, Denmark). According to the Eurovision website, the song “could easily have been written about Soluna’s own life and that [made] it easy for her to personify the meaning of the song” (Soluna Samay, n.d.). However, the song’s ambiguous wording makes it difficult to ascertain any definitive meaning the lyrics may carry. That is not to say that the lyrics are particularly complicated in themselves, however. They carry with them an air of informality, using improper words like “cuz” and dropping prepositions left and right (2012, Denmark).
This overall idea of lacking a sense of belonging carries over to the performers’ costuming. Samay wore a gaudy outfit typical of Eurovision, contrasting with the more casual clothing worn by the “band.” Alternatively, Denmark may have had no costuming budget that year and asked them to bring whatever was in their closets back home. The staging is not of any particular note, with most of the performers swaying in place, besides the backup singers performing on a red couch. Something that really captured my attention on my first viewing was that the drummer poorly pretending to play her instrument, (2012, Denmark) as live instrumentation is strictly forbidden by Eurovision.
“Only Teardrops,” the winner of Eurovision 2013, was performed by Emmelie de Forest, a native of the North Denmark region (Emmelie de Forest, n.d.). The song is seemingly about a relationship that has taken a turn for the worse (2013, Denmark) and well represents de Forest’s background as folk singer (Emmelie de Forest, n.d.). The singer realizes that she still loves her partner, but recognizes that they’ve both been hurting each other for a long time. Rather than completely writing him off, she desperately wanted them to start over without repeating the same mistakes.” The stage projections are what can be best described as a rain of sparks and droplets of molten, coalescing into a roaring fire at the bottom of the screen, couples well with the lyric “The sky is red tonight, we're on the edge tonight, no shooting star to guide us.” This line comes with the implication that tonight in a make or break moment for their relationship, and that they are both lost with a light to guide them (2013, Denmark).
While de Forest herself is clothed in a simple white dress, the rest of the performers are dressed in black clothing. The instrumentation is limited to several sets of drums and a single flute played pervasive throughout the piece. De Forest interacts with the flute player during the lyrics “So come and face me now, here on the stage tonight, let’s leave the past behind us,” while he stares impassively on. This implies that he is the other component of this relationship (2013, Denmark). Unlike its predecessor (2012, Denmark), “Only Teardrops”’s clear message and simple costuming gave me a clear understanding of its message upon my initial viewing (2013, Denmark). something made difficult by “Should’ve Known Better”’s confused messaging (2012, Denmark).
            Finally, I will take a look at 2014’s “Cliche Love Song,” performed by Anis Basim Moujahid. Better known simply as “Basim,” he was born in Denmark but is of Moroccan origin (Basim, n.d.). Something of note is that the Danish performers this year were by far the most ethnically diverse of the three performances I’ve examined, and this diversity was wrapped up in a neat bow with the unfurling of a massive Danish flag near the end of the song. However, this message of unity has nothing to do with the song proper (2014, Denmark), and was likely imagined by me reading far too much into a performance that fails to subvert the cliches it sought to avoid. To be clear, the love song is an established staple of the Eurovision Song Contest, as exemplified by the fact that these three concurrent performances are of the genre. After all, love is a concept easily understood by international audiences.
Described by Basim as having a “hint of soul and R&B” (Basim, n.d.), the song’s lyrics are especially stuck in the moment and instantly date it to 2014 with mentions of contemporary artists like Katy Perry. Like many love songs, it's about a girl, how she looks, etc. All the while, its pretentious enough to point out these cliches, but fails to offer even the slightest attempt to subvert them. If that were all the performance had to offer, I wouldn’t still be talking about it. Luckily for me, and my word quota, the performance itself more than makes up for the song’s lackluster lyrics. Basim is a true showman and known how to capture the attention of his audience with his charisma and style, in addition to the fact he and his sharply-dressed group actually dance, during which it rains red rose petals (Denmark, 2014). When all of these factors are taken together, this piece was provided with a new, necessary energy, that is if you can ignore the song’s tired message.
Through these three separate Eurovision performances, we can see that the people of Denmark were willing to allow ethnic, if not thematic, diversity into their Eurovision performances to represent them on the world stage. Samay is a naturalized Dane, while Basim is ethnically Moroccan, making de Forest the only of the three who was born in Denmark and is what census information would identify as ethnically Danish, though this only really reflected in their 2014 performance. However, the country seems to be unwilling to take any real chances and experiment with its Eurovision performances, though it at least dabbles in different musical styles.

References
Basim. (n.d.). Eurovision Song Contest. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://eurovision.tv/participant/basim/info
Basim. (2014). Cliche love song (Denmark). Eurovision Song Contest 2014 Copenhagen. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=188&v=fn8DzOcpQas
De Forest, E. (2013). Only teardrops (Denmark). Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Malmö . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=k59E7T0H-Us
Emmelie de Forest. (n.d.). Eurovision Song Contest. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://eurovision.tv/participant/emmelie-de-forest/info
Samay, S. (2012). Should’ve known better (Denmark). Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Baku. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nR9nsKTx4g
Soluna Samay. (n.d.). Eurovision Song Contest. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://eurovision.tv/participant/soluna-samay/info

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