I Went To EUROVISION & Had The Best Time Ever!

I have a confession to make.

In between all the rock, pop punk and metal music I normally listen to, there is one massive anomaly in my music habits: EUROVISION.

I don’t remember how old I was when I started watching Eurovision, nor WHY I started watching it, considering it’s not something either of my parents would have ever encouraged.

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For my American and non-European readers, you might be wondering what on earth the Eurovision Song Contest is – this wildly cheesy, epic competition is held every year with most countries in Europe sending in an entry. Eurovision is where ABBA made their name, winning for Sweden back in 1974.

If you want a dose of how insane Eurovision is, check out three of my favourite entries here – Finland in 2006, Ukraine in 2007, and Moldova in 2011. Or if you want GOOD Eurovision, here’s Denmark in 2009, or of course the UK’s very own Eurovision legend from 2022, Sam Ryder.

Eurovision has been so ingrained in my life that I actually think it inspired me to travel – seeing all these far-away countries being represented on TV through song, making me look them up and feeding me with wanderlust before I even knew what wanderlust was. I remember seeing Montenegro and wondering where on earth that was, and whether everyone who lived there was a weird metalhead!

Certainly, the main reason I want to visit Moldova is because their Eurovision entries are all so fun and batshit crazy! (As well as the performance on the link above, they are also responsible for Epic Sax Guy!!)

One way or another, it feels like Eurovision has always been part of my life. From cheesy songs of the 90s, to watching it in my room throughout my teens via commentary with a couple of pals on MSN (MSN!!!!!), I don’t really remember when it wasn’t a staple part of my calendar.

These days, our Eurovision parties are legendary. We’ve had some epic drinking games that we still talk about with friends (that time we all had to down full drinks because someone actually gave the UK points?!). Last year, we had one of our favourite ones yet, culminating in Sam Ryder almost winning the whole thing! A VERY exciting moment in our household!

This year, there was no party at our house. Instead, I WENT to the party!!!

Never in a million years did I think the UK would get to host Eurovision again. Eurovision in the UK became synonymous with “nul points” – for many years we uh, did not do well. Last year, there was only one winner, with Ukraine smashing the public vote in protest of the war, however for obvious reasons they were unable to host the show this year, passing the mantle to the UK for this momentous occasion.

When the host cities were being decided, it was between Liverpool and Glasgow, and obviously we were all gunning for Glasgow. How epic it would have been for one of Europe’s biggest events to be held less than an hour from our house, in a venue that was literally featured in a film about Eurovision.

Alas – Liverpool won the bid.

And fair enough. Liverpool has all the music history to warrant hosting one of the world’s biggest music events. The city embraced the occasion completely and I’m sure did Ukraine proud. We made plans with friends to go down to Liverpool, but with accommodation in the city being beyond ludicrous, we planned to stay outside the city and go in to the Eurovision village (fan zone) to watch the final in an unmatched atmosphere.

Then all our plans fell apart. The most unexpected thing of all happened:

I GOT TWO FREAKING TICKETS TO THE EUROVISION FINAL!!!!!!!!!!!

I was absolutely gobsmacked. It sounds ridiculous, but the feeling of getting those tickets is something I’ll never forget. I literally CRIED.

For weeks, I looked out for people on Twitter who would also be going. Nobody. Nada. It was going to be me, my friend and the bots, it seemed. I have NO IDEA how I managed to be so lucky. They reserved a lot of tickets for Ukrainians, so apparently there were actually only about 3,000 tickets for sale, for people all over Europe. INSANE.

I was absolutely buzzing for weeks. I bought a totally ridiculous dress and you could not wipe the grin off my face.

I never usually listen to the songs in advance, partly because I like it to be a surprise on the night, and also partly because I don’t want to be disappointed if any of my favourites don’t make it to the final (I’m looking at YOU, Malta!).

This year, I listened to them all. I watched the semi-finals. It was almost perfect except for Malta not getting through. To me, this was a very strong year, and I had a clear favourite from the first listen – anyone who knows me will guess which one that is!

Overview of the Eurovision final

Again, for my readers who know nothing about Eurovision, the final is comprised of 25 or 26 acts – 10 from each of the semi-finals, 5 automatic qualifying countries, and the previous year’s winner. (The “big five” auto qualifiers are France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK, which is why we rarely put any effort into our entries.)

This makes for a seriously epic evening of performances. The votes then open, an interval act takes place, and once the voting closes, the fun really begins! The hosts speak to a delegate from every single competing country to announce the points. Some of these are very predictable (Scandinavian countries voting for each other etc) but there are sometimes some shocks (Greece not giving Cyprus 12 points this year! The entire audience gasped!). See also the time we had all just filled our glasses and then Slovenia gave us 12 points out of the blue and we had to down our drinks!

Each country awards points to 10 other countries. The jury votes dish out 1-8 points, then announce the 10 and 12 points for their top two. In recent years there’s also been a public vote which massively sways the overall points, and they’re announced at the end to give each country their final position one at a time.

What it’s like at the Eurovision final

I imagine every event is slightly different, so I can obviously only talk about my experience and can’t claim to be an expert on attending Eurovision as a whole. We had standing tickets, which was both good and bad – good because we could get as close to the front as possible, but also it meant being stuck in a spot all night, and on our feet for six hours.

Queueing & getting in

We spent the day in Liverpool, but obviously we were there for Eurovision, so we headed over to the venue around lunchtime to see what was happening. I was really surprised to see there were maybe five people queueing. It was nothing like a huge arena concert.

Feeling relieved that we wouldn’t have to worry about queueing mega-early, we grabbed some lunch and got changed – I wasn’t going to wear that dress all day! We got back to the queue around 4.30, just in time for the queue to be moved into the barriers. Which meant we were actually stood up for eight hours. Without a toilet*.

(*yes, there were toilets in the venue, but am I going to lose my spot or miss ANY of the performances? Absolutely NOT.)

The entrance opened at 6.30pm on the dot, and tickets were scanned from people’s phones. I was REALLY worried about this, as I’d heard of people being turned away from the semi-finals because their tickets wouldn’t load. I’ve had this problem at another show, and I really, really hate not having physical tickets for things any more. I had prepared everything – I had Ticketmaster open, I had it saved and opened on my Google Wallet, and I kept making sure they were ready.

Once we were through, there was no time to breathe a sigh of relief, because we had to go round to the back of the venue to the doors, which had everybody running. And then, once those doors were opened… it was pandemonium. We’d made friends with someone in the queue, and I lost both him and my actual friend within seconds. Thankfully I found her, but I never saw him again. Danny from Canada, if you ever read this, I hope you had an amazing time!

At the front – is it the best spot?

My friend had made a beeline for the front and SOMEHOW made the last spot on the barrier. It’s really hard to tell what the best spot is, because even though we were at the front, we couldn’t see much of the middle stage, which is where I’d been aiming. However that filled up first, so we set up on the front barrier.

Obviously this totally depends on the stage set-up that year, as sometimes there isn’t a middle stage, however in that case there is no way we would have been on the barrier as there would have been way less barrier space.

The first thing that struck me was that it was really a TV show, not a concert, and that became apparent quickly. We couldn’t hear the hosts a lot of the time, or any of the interviews with artists. The performances were full of cameras whizzing about and cameramen running around the performers, and during the times when videos were on screen between the acts, people were wheeling entire sets off the stage and immedately wheeling the next ones out, preparing them at lightning speed.

While it was nothing like watching it on TV, seeing this side of Eurovision was mindblowing. What an absolutely phenomenal production!

Being at the front meant we could see everything up close, with crew and even performers in front of us preparing for the next song. I found it all really fascinating. And the absolute bonus? We had Dadi Freyr walk right past us. Alesha Dixon spoke to us on her way past. We got to pose with the actual Eurovision trophy. And I GOT A FIST BUMP FROM SAM FREAKING RYDER!

Here’s a selection of photos from the night (I didn’t take many, to be honest):

The hosts

I was quite surprised that they chose four hosts for this year’s event – usually there’s two or three. This year, they had one Ukrainian host and three British, which I also found a bit odd considering it was Ukraine’s year.

However, they were all brilliant choices. Who here has seen Ted Lasso? It’s one of my favourite shows of the past couple of years, and we had Hannah Waddingham who was BORN not only for the role of Rebecca, but also for hosting Eurovision! We also had Alesha Dixon, who’s a top UK TV host, and of course, Eurovision stalwart Graham Norton.

I grew up with legend Sir Terry Wogan commentating the UK broadcast of Eurovision, which is actually half the reason it was so popular in the UK. Throughout the night, he would get ever more drunk and take the piss out of everyone on screen. When he finally retired, Graham Norton was a very, very worthy replacement, and carries on the tradition of being hilarious about everyone.

So it was strange being there and not having his commentary, and instead having him on stage in front of us.

The acts – a rundown

Alright, let’s start with my favourite: FINLAND!

Kaarija has been one of the favourites since the start. But it’s one of those songs that is so completely nuts that it could have gone one of two ways – it would either do really, really well, or it would flop. I would never have expected him to win, to be honest.

He didn’t win – but he did get the highest public vote of all time, if you exclude Ukraine last year. For someone who DIDN’T EVEN WIN, that is incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a huge crowd reaction for a Eurovision performance, either. It was nuts.

This was one of the more controversial results of recent years, and has been completely polarising across the Eurovision community. To me, it doesn’t matter that he didn’t win. Verka didn’t win, and Verka is a Eurovision legend.

Sweden – I’ve got to be honest, Loreen barely scraped my top 5. I knew she would win (she was the favourite because she’s won before), and in fairness her performance was brilliant. The song? It’s a generic Swedish pop song. It’s not bad, but is it a winner? Jury says yes, by almost double anyone else of the night. Which just seems a bit over the top to me, especially when Kaarija got 140 more points in the public vote.

She deserved to win, just perhaps not in the way that she did – but the reaction was so angry that I ended up feeling a bit sorry for her because she also didn’t deserve not to win!

Norway – a very strong year for the Nordic countries, Norway was my second favourite; a badass Viking warrior queen. (Okay, it helped that I fancied her, but let’s not tell everyone that.)

Loved the song, loved the costuming, loved her voice.

Austria – POE POE POE POE POE! This catchy number was a brilliant start to the show, but perhaps not for them because the first couple of acts generally never do well, and they were robbed of a good position. This was probably my third favourite song! The only issue is I’m not convinced it translated well on stage – so here’s the music video instead! I dare you to not have this stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Australia – yes, for some reason Australia has taken part in Eurovision since 2016. I loved this rock track and genuinely have it on my playlist. They put on a brilliant performance too, with a fantastic backdrop, a keytar and a car – one of the best of the night. I’m really glad a rock song got into the top 10! (Also the lass on guitar is from Scotland!)

Slovenia – moving away from the most popular ones, Slovenia was one of my favourites. Just a genuinely great pop rock song from a lovely group of guys. They didn’t get a great result, but they’ve won a lot of fans!

And finally, there’s one more entry I can’t possibly skip over. This year’s most truly INSANE entry: Croatia.

They were like a Balkan Monty Python and completely bananas. My manager messaged me about one of the other acts being weird, and I replied saying “just wait for Croatia.” Throughout Croatia’s performance, he messaged me three times, with an increasingly frantic “oh my GOD”.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t do great in the jury vote (second last!) – and then the public vote threw them whizzing across to the left hand side of the leaderboard.

Other ones I loved – France (very catchy, very French, grew on me each time I listened to it), Belgium (really fun performance by a lovely guy), Serbia (perhaps a bit of an acquired taste – synthy, creepy cyberpunk).

A special mention also to the interval acts – we were treated to some of Eurovision’s recent best, including Sam Ryder, Netta, Dadi Freyr and Duncan Laurence.

I was especially excited for Sam and Dadi, but the highlight, hands down, was Liverpool’s signature song to Ukraine:

Something I will never, ever forget! And turning round to see everyone walking out onto the stage – I had to nudge everyone around me to look as we were all facing backwards to watch Duncan – as everyone in the arena sang “you’ll never walk alone”, what a beautiful moment.

My experience of Eurovision

Eurovision was just as good as I’d hoped it would be, if not better. It was genuinely one of the best nights I have EVER had! The atmosphere was amazing, the people in the queue were lovely, everyone was having a great time and the show itself was phenomenal. It was nothing like any show I’ve been to before – I’ve been to plenty of concerts and I’ve also been to TV show recordings, but this was in its own league.

It was VERY different to watching it on TV. I couldn’t go every year as I have so much fun watching it with friends and enjoying the commentary and also sitting down (lol). For me, I’m taking this as a once in a lifetime experience.

We were also really lucky because my sister lives in Manchester so we were able to get accommodation where Liverpool costs were prohibitive. We also managed to get parked in Liverpool by booking a space in a car park, and my friend took her car. This saved worrying about public transport at ~1am.

From what I gather, most years it isn’t this hard to find accommodation and/or tickets.

I’m mostly writing about this because I’m still riding off the excitement of the show, but I hope it’ll also be useful for anyone thinking of going to Eurovision who doesn’t know what to expect, because I struggled to find much information online with first-hand experiences!

Anyway, it’s going to take a lot to top that. What a perfect, wholesome, wonderful night. Here’s to next year, wherever we watch it from!