Sweden Feels the 'Euphoria' of Another Eurovision Crown
BRUSSELS—Sweden emerged victorious at the 57th Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Saturday night, its fifth victory in the history of the famously kitsch singing pageant.
Loreen, the winning act, and her song "Euphoria," an upbeat dance number, got 372 points, a landslide victory, and this with the highest number of 12-point scores—the maximum each country gets to award—in the contest's history. Russia's singing grannies with onstage dumpling-baking finished second with 259 points and Serbia's ballad "Nije Ljubav Stva," performed by Zeljko Joksimovic, was third, with 214 points.
"The song has good bones, a big buildup, musically it's very propulsive and she really worked on the performance," said Robert Tobin, a professor of foreign languages and cultures at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., who has written widely on Eurovision. Sweden will host the competition next year, taking the event to a less-controversial destination than the oil-rich former Soviet state.
Armenia didn't take part this year because of long-running animosity with Azerbaijan.
Human-rights groups, meanwhile, drew attention to the regime of President Ilham Aliyev throughout the competition. Azeri authorities criticized Loreen for meeting activists who accuse the government of evicting people to build the Eurovision stadium, and for making political statements, according to Swedish media.
This contributed to a slightly subdued range of songs this year, Mr. Tobin noted, adding to the general atmosphere in Europe in the wake of the sovereign-debt crisis, which has seen a move away from the highly theatrical performances of recent years.
"There was no giddiness, no silliness, I think because of the crisis people were being reserved," Mr. Tobin added. "The spirit of the time seems to be about ballads," and, with the exception of Russia and the Buranovskiye Babushki, six grannies with a combined age of 484 wearing the traditional dress of Udmurt province, very little reference to national and folk traditions.
Several of the ballads were performed in contenders' native languages, a reversal of the trend in recent years to sing in English. Estonia and Serbia took this approach, as did France—although France fielded an upbeat dance number with three male gymnasts doing back flips while Jakarta-born singer Anggun strutted around in a Jean-Paul Gaultier dress designed to make the most of the stage's powerful wind machine.
'Eurphoria' sung by Swedish entry Loreen wins the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. Video:
Still, none of the heartfelt ballads or super-short skirts and sexy dance routines put forward by Greece and Cyprus were enough to stop Sweden's landslide victory. The contest's return to Western Europe—it has been held in Norway and Germany as well in recent years—is in part a reflection of a return to jury voting for 50% of the final outcome in 2009, after accusations of years of political voting among Eastern European states.
Sweden has a strong history in Eurovision. Abba won in 1974 with "Waterloo" before going on to achieve global fame. The country's previous win was in 1999 with "Take Me to Your Heaven" by Charlotte Nilsson. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said last week that while he would stay "humble" ahead of the competition, his country has "a fantastic song."
The European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the competition organized by national broadcasters in the host nation, said the event had a world-wide television viewing audience of more than 100 million.
Sweden will host next year. Christer Björkman of the Swedish delegation told Eurovision, "We have several cities that are suitable, and several arenas where it would be possible.…The only thing that's sure is that it will be in Sweden."
"I felt like in a vacuum, like time stopped," Loreen said in a televised news conference following her win. "I hope that 'Euphoria' stays in the hearts of the people as long as possible."
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