Mysteries of the Euroverse!
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I'm Brooke Gladstone with On the Media's Midweek Podcast. This week, we talk about a 70-year-old global phenomenon involving music and politics about which I knew absolutely nothing.

Well, recently I was asked by my old friend Charlie to take part in a new podcast born of his love of and obsession with Eurovision, an international song contest organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, with some reps from some 70 countries. Maybe you already knew that. But did you know that exactly 50 years ago, ABBA won the contest for the song Waterloo?

Now that I understand that what was once, in fact, a mystery to me actually means the world to tens of millions of others, I offer up this episode of the podcast Mysteries of the Euroverse, because maybe some of you out there will find this as intriguing and bizarre as I did. Here's my friend Charlie and his friend Magnus.

Something you're going to hear us reference a lot in this episode and future episodes is Rule 271. Yeah, that songs and acts need to be apolitical, right? Eurovision was started in the aftermath of World War II. And part of at least the self-mythology of Eurovision is that the goal of Eurovision was to try and help stitch Europe back together. You know, what's the EBU's...

favorite line. It's like stitching Europe back together through the universal language of music. The way the EBU talks about that history is they marry it to this idea that the festival is apolitical, right? Because there had been too much fighting and too much arguing. Yeah.

And I think that actually that's the opposite of what really happened. I was very surprised to find out that the idea that an act should be apolitical did not come about until the year 2000, right? When you think about those other European institutions that were founded around the same time or before, right, the UN, what became the EU, those are bodies for...

for navigating disagreement, right? Right, and I would say that, you know, I think it's fair to say in the first 44 years of life,

you develop a strong identity. I wouldn't know that. But I do think for something that is seen as such a big part of the identity of Eurovision, 44 years, it didn't exist. When Eurovision was created, it was a time when everyone had to be able to gather on the TV for one set of programming. And I think because of that, people had to be more

comfortable being uncomfortable. And I think the thing about Eurovision is in times when you see that shows can't live up to the viewership of their, you know, heyday or whatever they would call it, Eurovision really still has those numbers. Yeah. It really brings together everyone. And I think that the thing that we're really going to be tracking over this episode is if you're bringing everyone together, to what end?

We're going to talk about what I would say a more political version of Eurovision looked like, which is basically up until the year 2000.

We're then going to talk about how and why that changed in the late 90s, early 2000s. And then finally, I think we're going to talk a little bit about why we might be returning back to the model that existed from 1956 up until the year 2000, and why that actually might be a good thing given what's changed about Europe in the last 23 years. I think many people might say, oh, you know, it was apolitical in culture and then it came apolitical by rule. Yeah.

But I think really what we're going to dig into now that it wasn't apolitical biculture. Right. And that's really defined by the fact that politics is very present in the very first edition of the contest. One of Germany's songs that they sent that year, it was sung by this man, Walter Andreas Schwarz. His father was murdered by the Nazis. He himself was persecuted by the Nazis. And the song is...

about how his country that he was representing was not properly dealing with its recent history. -

Imagine if you were watching American Idol and someone walked out and sang a song that was like, I cannot believe there are still memorials to the Confederacy in this country. When I talked to Jean-Philippe Detender, who is the deputy director of the EBU, he made a really strong argument for not making politics explicit. Letting these values sort of exist underneath the surface, and then you can maybe bring more people into the fold, and that's how you achieve unity. And literally the

The history of this contest starts with a German Jew stepping on an international broadcast and saying, "My country is not dealing with what happened to me." I do think in Europe there's been a much stronger willingness to say, "I am ashamed of what my family history has taken part of." I think it's also important to highlight the fact that Germany sent that number.

Germany as a broadcaster was willing to have the debate. Yeah. And then the EBU on top of that. And forgotten, it is still today. Oh, the poor people.

In the waning years of Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal, which, you know, longest lasting authoritarian rule in Europe, Portugal sent Fernando Tordo with a song called "Torada," which was an attack on the regime that used the metaphor of a bullfight. ♪ Entram guizos, chocas e capotes ♪ ♪ E mantilhas fresas ♪ ♪ Entram espadas, chifres e derrotes ♪ ♪ E alguns poetas ♪

There's another moment of the EBU saying, listen, if the Germans want to decide whether they want to criticize themselves, have at it. Yeah. You know, in Portugal, it's like, if this dictator wants to try and stop them from sending this number, that's a Portuguese issue, right? So you don't have as much fighting between nations. Although you only need to look at something like Maritza Koch's Pani Amo, Pani Amo. Pani Amo

which actually was a criticism of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, right? And so this is a Greek singer criticizing Turkey, and it really has kicked off this long, tense back and forth between Greece and Turkey. In Italy in 1974, Gigliola Concetti's song Si...

You know, at the time, Divorce was on the ballot in Italy. So it was a pro-divorce song. Italy censored its own act. Like, they didn't show their own act on TV. They were worried about it swinging the election, right? Sings.

Every country except Italy saw Italy's entry. Yes. Yes. And, and not only that, they came in second place. Yes. Behind this little, tiny little band called ABBA. And also I, I, I'm not going to say that their song is extremely political, but still a song about war, not about peace. Okay. Um, I,

You know what? I'm going to table the argument over whether Waterloo is a political song. All right, we got to move on real quick. The worst moment, I think, of the early years of Eurovision was when Francisco Franco hosted the contest in 1969, right?

He basically got what he wanted, which was a huge advertisement for his regime that made it look progressive. It was this huge gift to a dictatorship. Franco actually bribed

the jury in the year before. Even though Eurovision might argue, we didn't pick it, they won, this happened, you know, they found out about the bribes too late. I don't know. There are many arguments you could make, but you still let it happen. Yeah. Because here's the thing. There's requirements for the size of the arena. Yeah. There's a requirement for that an international airport needs to be nearby. If you're going to put

other hosting requirements on countries, like maybe not killing your own people through extrajudicial killings should be a requirement. So, you know, going back to our chronology here, you know, we had the fall of the Iron Curtain, right? Because you had this

a whole new set of countries that suddenly were being integrated into the contest. And who also were kind of changing their identity and affiliation. Right. Europe needs to talk about politics again. Maybe Europe needs to sing about politics again. How international relations, not just accidentally, but directly gets involved in Eurovision is really wild. I know. It's oppression set to music. Yeah.

When you think about the idea that Eurovision songs should be apolitical and this being codified in the year 2000, thinking about that broader political context is important, right? And it's this idea of the end of history. Essentially, there was no competition to small-L liberalism and democracy.

Right. I think that we all really internalized this, that it was not super important to have big conversations anymore. This all goes hand in hand with the EBU's desire to expand the contest, to commercialize it more. You know, the early years, the EBU and the member broadcasters having this self-conception of being government licensed public broadcasters. Most European countries are smaller than the U.S.,

In a lot of these countries, the reason you had a TV license and a public broadcaster was because there wasn't enough commercial interest, first of all. And then you get to this era where commercial TV channels start launching. And in Norway, many people talk about this. Well, I have three TV channels that don't charge me money. Why should I pay a TV license? Right.

And so there became this pressure for viewership. So there is like publicly we have a responsibility behind closed doors. We really want to make sure that viewers are tuning in. If you want to win in the cultural space, go after young people. Right. Right. And that's what the new TV channels did. Yeah. The commercial TV channels, they went for young people. You know, if you think about the stereotypes of different youth generations, right?

Late 50s, 60s, 70s, what we're talking about, broad brush, are the hippies. Dylan, Joni, all those, right? And then, yeah, and then in the 80s and 90s, like Gen X was considered to be deeply apolitical, right? Now that we see Gen Z and the level of engagement that you get from them, there's a way in which

the rules of Eurovision probably have just changed to keep up with the audience. So Eurovision had adjusted to this new apolitical reality, I think. And then, you know, in 2008, right, we had the global financial crisis, which if you think about the end of history, it's like suddenly you have a financial crisis that shakes everyone's belief in this globalized market system. Right.

we don't have major land wars in Europe anymore. And then 2008, we get the, you know, Russian Georgian war, right? Which is an early indication that, you know, maybe Vladimir Putin isn't just this like great guy who's going to bring like market capitalism to Russia and be less drunk than Boris Yeltsin was, you know? And then, you know, in 2008,

and nine we have netanyahu's return to power in israel a year later in 2010 we also get you know orban's 2.0 in hungary which is also more authoritarian right and then four years after that right we have erdogan uh becoming prime minister in turkey and capping off that period from 2008 to 2014 of course is uh putin's invasion of crimea we are again looking at a fractured europe

But now we're looking at a fractured Europe where the institution designed to exist in that world has tied its own hands. It's easy not to implement a rule, but it's hard to remove one. I kind of feel like they're all sitting there being like,

We're political. Yeah, we're seeing where this is going. Probably doing it right now for some reason. They're scared to pull the trigger. You don't have a band like Let Three, right? They constructed a statue of Angela Merkel taking a dump. So you don't have that band come and sing a song that is very directly a reference to Putin.

that calls him a moron and a crocodile. In a competition where you're heavily featuring Ukraine. But I think that's the problem with the rule still being on the books. It really does mean that they're kind of flying blind right now. And I think it does leave people with the impression that certain countries are allowed to voice their opinions and others aren't. Totally. I think that's the challenge. Eurovision is doing the exact same thing that all of these other institutions are.

have to do, which is regain their ability to think about themselves as liberal institutions where speech is something that we value, right? Europe is coming apart at the seams and we need some fucking power ballots, okay? But I think it is that thing of like, in the modern day we live in,

where one member of your broadcasting union invades another member, you can't go back to a time where that hasn't happened. That is now part of your identity and your future if you want to continue existing as an organization. I think that's a great place to end this segment. And with that, let's get to our guests. First is Ukrainian singer Jamala as she tells us about her Eurovision win and her latest album.

which is really a response to Putin's attempt to erase the history of Crimean Tatars. The album, Karam, is a collection of Crimean folk tunes backed by a full orchestra and a group of Crimean folk musicians. And actually, shortly after our interview, Russia officially banned Jamala for her activism.

Wow. That's insane. That's crazy. And then we talked to Brooke Gladstone, host of On the Media, and we really get into what makes this song political and how Eurovision can best approach an increasingly divided Europe. All right. So first, we're going to listen to part of Jamala's 2016 Eurovision hit, 1944, and then jump right into the interviews.

SINGING CONTINUES

We've got a very special guest with us on this episode. She is not Gaga. She is not Amy. She is Jamala. How are you?

Thank you so much for doing this interview. I am so excited to get to talk with you. I'm such a huge fan of all of your music. So I guess I just want to start right off. You competed first to get into Eurovision with Smile. Oh, the Smile, it was...

It was me in that time, at that moment. It was a huge inspiration for me. Charlie Chaplin's song, Smile, Smile through your heart is aching, smile even though it's breaking. It really resonates with me in that moment. And nowadays I see that the song is still alive. But on my concert, I didn't sing it.

Because it's not me nowadays, because it's not resonating with me today. As you know, a story about the Bob McFerrin, Don't Worry, Be Happy.

That sad that stop pushing me to sing this song, sing this song, because it's not me in this moment. When you talk about the change in who you are as an artist from Smile to now, do you think of that more in terms of how you've changed or how the world has changed or both? I think it's both.

In that moment, I had a huge inspiration from Amy Winehouse, by my town records, 60s. I was in Kiev, today I'm in Warsaw, today I'm a mother. All these things inspired me a lot. They changed my mood, and that's why my music is like that.

I did want to talk about Karam. What was the research process for that? How did you find the folk songs? How did you go about choosing which ones went on the album? I can say that I worked on this album over decades. This album is my desire to create a strong voice

from my homeland Crimea, to tell a story that was previously unknown, rewritten, forgotten. Because each song in this album is from a different part of the Crimea Peninsula, from Yalta, St. Ropel, Sevastopol, Jankoi, from sea to the mountains.

I found more than music, more than unique melodies or nomadical. I found characters. For me, it was inspiration from Game of Thrones, Seven Kingdoms. And each of these kingdoms sounds different.

In this album, the song from the seashore, from the Yalta, Sudak, Alushta, they are full of emotions. They are so romantic. Something completely different than people from mountains.

Can you imagine all these composers like Avatar by James Horner? They have illusion on some folk song. I have even better. I have these songs and they are real. And these songs are more than hundreds years. And I think you've said this before, that even not

Understanding the language. When you listen, you feel those emotions. You feel the sort of universality of this song written so long ago could in a contemporary world still speak to people. And more than 80 musicians joined to the work on this album and

Five of them are folk musicians, Crimean Tat, are folk musicians. And then the full war started. We almost lost it. The album remained under the fire in Kiev. Literally, literally, it was under attack.

How were you able to rescue it? My friend, my sound engineer, sound producer, Sergei Khrushchenko, he was in Kiev in that moment. And then the Russian full-scale invasion started. He called me and said, oh my God, Jamala, forgive me, I didn't save you.

All information are in a recording building. I tried to save it and he did. Wow. Yeah. And unfortunately, he died in this January because it was really hard for him to leave. Yeah.

with all these horrible things in our life nowadays. I'm so sorry to hear that. Thank you. Obviously, this brings up Putin's war. And I was thinking that

So much of what it seems that your project is and so much of what you do, both with Karam and with 1944, is about history, right? Preserving history. The image that everybody remembers of the roots in the tree in 1944, and then the whole idea of taking all of these folk songs and preserving them. Why is preserving history so important to you as an artist, particularly right now?

If we are taking away meaning in pop music, it will be just noise. I think artists can speak about social issues, about pain in a slightly different language.

Especially in this moment, humanity is going through very difficult times. Pandemics, wars, natural disease. And all of this is reflected in pop music. It's our way to speak with each other. That's why I adore this contest. I decided to tell the story about my great-grandmother.

to tell the story about Crimean deportation. Because my kids are fifth in my generation who forced to flee because of the Russian aggression. Because my great-grandmother was deported with five kids in her arms in a cattle train to Central Asia without any chance to survive. But she survived.

She survived. After I released this song, Russians tried to say that it's political and so on. But in the beginning, for me, it was the moment when I can say that I can spread this story, not just for Ukrainians, for the whole world to see. I think that's why people find Eurovision, right? Exactly. Because...

They understand me exactly what I'm fighting for. I performed in this national selection in Berlin and we collected more than 67 million euros for Ukraine. It was Eurovision community. Yeah.

They asked me to sing 1944 in this national selection in Berlin. I said, oh my God, how can I sing? I'm so sad. But they said, we can collect money for Ukraine. I said,

But OK, I'll try. And again, it was Eurovision. You know, because we're a podcast that talks mostly about Eurovision. How do you think the organization can continue to support artists who are doing the kind of work that you're doing? And are there changes that you would like to see? We can't lose our empathy.

Why I decided to leave in 1944 part without any language, English or Crimean Tatar, despite of that it was the very first time that Crimean Tatar language sounded on the stage. I decided to show that this part, it's emotional language. You will understand me without any words. You will understand my pain.

And that's why on your question, I believe that Eurovision Song Contest, not just about the fast, about the pink colors. Of course, it's a good feature of this contest. But at the same time, it's a great platform for showing that we are human beings. It's a good platform to show

This month is LGBTQ rights. We are all together. Another month is about someone else. It shows us a little that we are not alone in this fucking world.

That's the perfect place to end because I really, I think that speaks to why people come to Eurovision and certainly why I fell in love with your music is just the humanity that pours out of everything that you do, which I think is so lovely. But so thank you so much for taking the time. Okay, so we are here with Brooke Gladstone, who is the host of On the Media on public radio. Her list of accomplishments are like

way too much to talk about here. But I do want to highlight a couple of things that are very relevant to our podcast. She's written two books about the relationship between the media and democracy and history. That's a comic book and a pamphlet.

A graphic novel that I would pull out, except it is holding my microphone upright. But I also want to highlight that Brooke spent several years reporting from Russia in the immediate aftermath or a few years after. One year after. One year after. 92 to 95. Of the Soviet collapse.

the perfect guest for our Eurovision podcast. Absolutely. Especially because I know absolutely nothing about Eurovision. It was like America and soccer in the 1950s when I come along. I've seen an occasional clip, and it's usually about a controversy. Someone who has had an intensely political record either elevated or suppressed, and there is a very

powerful global reaction to it. And that is really the perfect segue into what we're going to do today. Well, I was going to say, this is why you bring a radio host on. She does your segues for you. But yeah, so this episode primarily concerns this rule that Eurovision is a non-political festival and that all acts must not be political. That's...

insane on its face. Because anybody who knows about... Well, anybody who understands about art, it's usually propelled by a kind of passion for the life that an artist is living. And I want to say right now that we can just end the episode. Too much praising. Well, it is that interesting combination, I think, with Eurovision, that it had a political purpose of...

bringing Europe back together after the Second World War through the universal language of music, which you'll hear them say a lot. It's stitching Europe together under the banner of these sort of internationalist values. Well, stick, yes, precisely. That's it. You have to have some agreed upon values. Yes. It's the problem with keeping the United States of America stitched together. Those values have atomized. There's

There's actually, like, speaking about America, there's, like, a parallel that I keep thinking about to the Supreme Court. Like, the idea that textualism is just, like, we're looking up these definitions and we happen to choose this dictionary. And what it allows, like, the Supreme Court to do is hide the underlying values underneath their decisions, right? It takes it out of the realm of articulated debate. But I do think part of why we're talking about all of this now is also that

You know, for a while, those values that Eurovision claimed to represent were kind of taken for granted. It was the end of history. We thought democracy had won. How old is Eurovision? Eurovision was started in 1956. Yes. Well, this is the thing that's so interesting about, you know, when the American Idols and those kind of competitions came out.

Eurovision had been doing this for already, you know, 50 years almost at that point. Spoken like a Norwegian. Exactly. So everything we just talked about goes into the game we're going to play. Because as a very serious podcast, we deal with very serious political issues via trivia games. Yeah. So the game is called Is It Political? Yes.

So we're going to describe a Eurovision song, and then we want you to tell us if you think the European Broadcasting Union, also known as the EBU, saw the performance as a violation of Eurovision's rules and sanctioned, censored, or rejected the performance in any shape or form. Sounds good? Sounds good. Okay, so first up we have in 2013...

The Finnish singer Krista Sigfrids submitted Marry Me, which centered around a lesbian wedding. Mm-hmm. For context, gay marriage was illegal in Finland until 2017. Oh. Marry me, babe. Oh, oh, oh, oh, no. Oh, oh, oh, oh, no. Oh, oh, oh, oh, no. Oh, oh, oh, oh, no.

Yeah, so the iconic moment of that is the gay kiss at the end of the song. And you said that gay marriage was illegal.

And this song was called Marry Me. Yes, correct. I'm going to say not political. She nailed it. Yes. Partly it's because the landscape was changing so absolutely convulsively at that point. You could barely keep up. And so it was about love.

It was two attractive white women kissing each other. I mean, you know, what could go wrong? Which actually is what the EBU said in response. Verbatim. Verbatim. Really? So we're going to move forward to our next video, which is 2003, Brooke. I don't know if you were still following Russian pop culture then, but the group Tattoo. Mm-hmm.

at Eurovision and ended their song with a same-sex kiss.

Different night, different people. Does he want or doesn't? Does he love me or not? The early 2000s were a great period for lyrics, let me tell you.

Okay, 2003. Yeah, so this is a decade before the Finnish song. But not sanctioned by the government. Yes, actually. Sanctioned by the government. Okay, it's just about the kissing? Yeah, it's just the kiss. I'm going to say not political.

They called it political. So actually, the one thing that I did not say in my setup is that they actually were not allowed to perform that kiss at Eurovision. What was the explanation? Eurovision said that they were a family show. This is just homophobic, basically.

It's not about illegal institutionalized. This is just a kiss in 2003. Exactly. You know, in 2003, it was considered a political issue. Lawrence v. Texas was recently overturned, right? Yeah. Eurovision can back away from its values. I should have paid more attention to the time. I needed to think of what else was going on. So that brings us to the next entry, which is in 2009. Georgia submitted its entry

We don't want to put in. In the direct shadow of the Georgian-Russian war. The lyrics that you just read. Yes. We don't want to put in. We don't want to put in. Yes. Now, was there reference to the war? We don't want to put in. Uh-huh. So, what do we think, Brooke? Some good stuff. Just good stuff. We don't want to put in. Put in. Put in.

Oh my God. She's just in love with the song.

I mean, it's so obvious, but it's a disco song. Right. We don't want to put in. We don't want to put in. Come on, it's political. Yes, yes, it is. It is. It definitely, as a double entendre, has definite vibes of Britney Spears' If You Seek Amy, where you're like, it actually doesn't work the other way. Yeah, okay. Staying with our Putin theme...

In 2016, Ukrainian artist Jamala submitted the song 1944, which told the story of her great-grandmother being expelled from her home during Stalin's ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars. So it's Jamala, who had just fled her home in Crimea after the invasion, performs this song. Strangers are coming...

They come to your house They kill you all and say we're not guilty Not guilty Where's your heart? You're ready to rise You think you're a god But everyone dies Don't swallow my soul Out of souls

Yeah. So what do we think? So political. I know, right? It was not political. And in fact, because it's historical, because it's a historical, right. And it's a personal family story. I mean, it was 2014. I mean, two years later.

You talked to her? Yes. Oh, cool. She's amazing. Quick plug. Her latest album is this orchestral arrangement of these Crimean folk songs. So it's very much Putin is trying to erase our history and erase the idea that Crimean Tatars have been here forever, creating this giant album that sort of researches and preserves all these folk songs as a sort of direct response. Like, it's kind of, it's, again, another reason why sort of

art, storytelling, history, if you try to take the politics out of it, you're left with a very sort of small

I think also it's interesting because before they banned that gay kiss, there was an openly trans woman who won the competition. And I think the argument there is that she was just existing while the kiss felt like a protest. I do understand the impulse to try and thread that needle. Yes. Because it's...

it could instantly dissolve into nothing but another front for warfare, whether cultural or social or political. These sorts of international forums

are perfect places, and especially any place where artists gather and presume to speak for their generation. For their generation. No, and I think you're right, which is actually why I think I'm not... There are people who see this as a censorship issue, and I'm much more on the side of... I actually think that...

Eurovision should go farther in terms of just articulating what its values are. And so you have- Well, the trouble is, is that they're not consistent, Charlie, as you've demonstrated to me during these contests. Yes, you're right. They're inconsistent about these values. And maybe that means that they don't actually believe them. But like I interviewed the deputy director general of the EBU and

From his point of view, these are all values that they believe in, and it's just important to keep them implicit so we invite people in and we don't repel people. It's worth putting in context the Ukrainian winner. Because they won, they are now the host for the next year's competition. And Russia sent an artist...

who had violated Ukrainian law by visiting Crimea. And this was kind of a masterful PR move on Putin's part as she was wheelchair-bound. So all of the press around this was, look at these Ukrainians refusing to let in this Russian pop star,

because she visited part of Russia that's maybe sort of Ukraine, and look at her, she's in a wheelchair. Russia basically pulled out of the competition that year. But the EBU was happy to have them back the next year. Thank God. Yeah, and also ever since the annexation of Crimea, when they would call Russia for their votes, people in the audience would boo. And what was the apolitical EBU's response to that? To introduce anti-booing technology on the broadcast. Yeah.

There's really no way to win this because even if you're a good game player and you realize, okay, these are the rules, it changes every time. The point of this is not that Brooke is a bad game player. Yes, yes. I think if anything, this is designed to prove the inconsistency. We do have one more. Okay. We can't talk about political controversy in music without talking about Madonna. Okay.

And in 2019, Eurovision had Madonna perform during the interval act. She actually wasn't a contestant. Not in the competition. And in 2019, the competition was in Israel. Essentially what happened was in the middle of her medley, two of her dancers turned around to reveal that one had a Israeli flag on his back and the other had a

Palestinian flag. So there were also some tensions leading up to this because it was announced without the EBU that the competition was going to be in Jerusalem.

Who announced it? The winning artist from Israel saying, see you next year in Jerusalem. And then... Just like Passover. Yeah. And then Netanyahu also... Yes. Each host country has to whittle it down to two viable options. And the EBU picks between those two. So the EBU's way of handling it was not to say anything about, we can't host this in Jerusalem. They just picked Tel Aviv. Cool.

a great way to avoid the controversy. I think the problem was they do this thing called postcards where you show off the host country. Quite a few of their postcards were filmed on disputed territory. Who's they? The Israeli broadcaster. Who's a public broadcaster associated with the Israeli government. Yes.

What is the penalty for being ruled political? You don't you get kicked out of the contest. So so different different things. We don't want to put in. I was not allowed to perform. The competitor who pulled out a Palestinian flag on stage. It's a live broadcast. So they got fined. Madonna. Well, let's watch. I mean, we'll watch Madonna. We can talk about what happened. OK.

Here we go. You know, I think, I mean, the controversy over Israel is all well and good, but I think we should discuss

auto-tuning because it sounds horrible. All of the press about this afterwards was Madonna used auto-tune. And I was sitting there being like, wait a minute. Okay. So I'm going to say that mostly because I feel like you gave away that this was judged political. Yes. This is now a performance that is not included in

in official EBU materials like the DVD. And I think, and also, you know, during the dress rehearsal, she didn't do that. So it's like a surprise. The run-through. Yes, exactly. So this was deliberately a surprise. Yes. So they were going to penalize her just for defying the rules of the... Yes. You know, what you have is an institution thwarted.

and they won't tolerate that. I think that it probably was on the fact that she violated their rules. I think particularly given that Israel was using it as a platform to justify settlements. Well, using it as a platform to normalize its position in Europe. Yes, yes. Like they're very explicit, right? So you put an organization that wants to keep its values implicit up against a country that is totally comfortable saying like,

no, no, no, these are our values. We own this territory. Like, you're going to get, your platform is going to get used for stuff that you claim to keep your hands clean of. Look at the reason why Turkey's out of the competition, right? They've said that as long as a bearded drag queen can win the competition, which happened in 2014, they want nothing to do with it. Like, Turkey's a perfect example. In the election that just happened, Erdogan's opponent, Erdogan,

made it part of his platform that he was like, I'm bringing Turkey back into Eurovision, right? And so it's like, it's in that context, it was very clear what Eurovision stood for. So this has been, you know, your... Maiden voyage. Maiden voyage. Your Eurovision introduction. What are your impressions? I think it's like so many things, a perfect prism for...

to look at a very fractured part of the world. Well, every part of the world is fractured, but here you really have a chance to see it play out on a stage. This is a real dumpster fire sometimes. It would be interesting...

to know if there were years when they didn't have these kinds of controversies. Was there a time of calm? It's so hard in 2023 to recall that time. I guess it's the end of history. It's 1991 to, you know... Right, that brief period. Yeah. You know what would be...

so good for the world now that I understand what Eurovision is, if it became kind of global vision? You know, it is actually a thing that Jamala talks about a lot in the context of why Eurovision should be a little bit more permissive about the politics is that it's like the potential for it as a platform to communicate and

particularly from countries or peoples that get ignored by the media. Like the entire global South, as they like to say these days. It would be an opportunity to endow those people with complexity, to show them in full color rather than the black and white that they're usually depicted. I see it now, after my maiden voyage, as another avenue for...

learning about each other. But any institution that's run by bureaucrats, however well-intentioned, it's going to fall on its face again and again. But I guess it's a tribute that it still, that it keeps going. Yes. And in that, Eurovision is a metaphor for the world. Yes. Yes.

With that, we should say thank you so much, Brooke, for being on the podcast. This was amazing. My pleasure.

All the mysteries of the Euroverse. Charlie Sohn and Magnus Ries are hosts of Mysteries of the Euroverse. Join us on Friday for the big show this week. And in the meantime, sign up for our newsletter at onthemedia.org. Or follow us on threads. See you Friday. I'm Brooke Gladstone. All the mysteries of the Euroverse.