The Eurovision final, on May 11, 2024, crowned Swiss Nemo, the first non-binary artist to participate in the competition. For France, Slimane finished just off the podium. Ranking and assessment of an eventful edition…
The 68th edition of Eurovision, which took place on Saturday May 11, 2024, in Malmö, Sweden, crowned the Swiss artist Nemo, who came first in the public and professional votes. The singer was one of the first two non-binary artists in the competition, along with Irish contestant Bamby Thug. France finishes fourth in the Eurovision 2024 rankings, with Slimane. A beautiful, but cruel, place at the foot of the podium. Especially since the singer was second in the provisional ranking, following the votes of the participating countries.
The Eurovision final was marred by several scandals. While it was supposed to bring together 26 countries, one of them, the Netherlands, was excluded before the final, because of an inappropriate gesture by its candidate Joost Klein towards a camerawoman during rehearsals.
Eurovision 2024, an edition of suspense for France but also of scandals, will have been widely watched. A peak of 7.62 million viewers was reached during Slimane’s stint. This is the best audience for Eurovision in France since 2009.
Here is the final ranking of the Eurovision 2024 contest, with the number of points accumulated after the votes of the jurors of the participating countries and the public:
The Swiss singer Nemo is a young artist aged 24. He has been performing in musicals since he was a child. and also practices violin, drums and piano. His name, Nemo, means “person” in Latin. “My parents thought that if I was nobody, I could be anything,” he explained in 2018.
Nemo is also the first non-binary person to win Eurovision. “I broke the codes,” he said after winning the competition. “I don’t identify as male or female. I’m just Nemo. I like to think of gender as a galaxy. I imagine myself as a little star, floating somewhere inside. This is how I feel most like myself,” he explained. “I hope this competition can continue to encourage peace and dignity for everyone,” he said. Bambie Thug, the representative of Ireland and also a non-binary artist, will have finished in sixth place.
For Eurovision 2024, the French delegation had focused on an artist who had sold two million albums and won 5 NRJ Music Awards. It was in fact Slimane who was chosen to represent the tricolor flag in Malmö on May 11, 2024. “It is an obvious choice, but it is also a choice of a generous artist, “an authenticity which perfectly corresponds to what Eurovision expects”, justified the head of the French delegation, Alexandra Redde-Amiel. Enough to raise hopes of victory, or at least hope to do better than Quebecer La Zarra, 16th the previous year, Alvan
The song “Mon amour” was written especially for the competition. It is a melancholy ballad telling a tormented love story in a heartbreaking voice. A style that contrasts with the usually more exuberant performances of Eurovision. A style opposition out of step with public expectations? In Télé 7 Jours, Slimane seemed convinced by his song. “When I finished this one, I sent it to the WhatsApp group that I share with my team, telling them: ‘This is what I should do Eurovision with if I go there go’.”
Slimane Nebchi, his real name, therefore adopted a bold posture in the face of the challenge of Eurovision, as he also expressed in an interview for 20 Minutes. “Either you love deeply or you hate. Without boasting, whether for good or for bad, I will not go unnoticed”, he promised, without undue pressure: “I have the impression that everything the world is so aware that we haven’t won for a very long time that I almost have the feeling that they’re not asking too much of me, so that reassures me”… The scenography, minimalist, but sublimated by Slimane’s stage performance, lying on the stage at the start of the song and followed throughout the song by a steadicam, also aimed to leave an impression on the audience. Like an a cappella section added in the finale.
The result will be both brilliant and cruel since Slimane will finish in 4th position in the Eurovision rankings. The Frenchman will hold on to second place in the competition for a long time, thanks to the votes of the jury which awarded him 218 points. But the public’s 227 points will leave it far behind Switzerland’s Nemo, but also just behind Croatia and Ukraine, with 445 points in total.
Here are the 26 countries qualified for the Eurovision 2024 final with the participating artists and titles, in the order drawn randomly by the organizers. Slimane and France were placed in penultimate position at the very end of the evening:
The 11 countries eliminated in the Eurovision semi-finals were: Poland (Luna – The Tower), Iceland (Hera Björk – Scared of Heights), Moldova (Natalia Barbu – In the Middle), Azerbaijan ( Fahree feat. Ilkin Dovlatov – Özünlə Apar), Australia (Electric Fields – One Milkali), eliminated in the first semi-final, as well as Belgium (Mustii – Before the Party’s Over), San Marino (Megara – 11). :11), Denmark (Saba – Sand), the Czech Republic (Aiko – Pedestal), Malta (Sarah Bonnici – Loop) and Albania (Besa – Titan), eliminated in the second semi-final.
The list of 37 participants in the major European song competition was completed in mid-March, with the titles having the heavy responsibility of representing their respective countries during the final phase, from May 7 to 11, 2024. As every year, the Eurovision candidates and their songs will delight your eyes and ears in 2024. In every sense of the word.
Among the Eurovision participants who did not fail to stand out, the special mention undoubtedly went, as is often the case, to Scandinavia. The group that represented Finland in 2024 made an impression with an astonishing performance during the national selections phase. To perform the title “No Rules!”, the duo Windows95man (that’s their name) didn’t pull any punches. One of the two artists, sporting big glasses and a mustache, appeared on stage half-naked, simply wearing a t-shirt with the Windows 95 logo, a cap and flesh-colored underwear. After sending out 1990s DJ-style beats, he ends up grabbing a pair of shorts hanging from a clothesline and putting them on. We are obviously still waiting for a reaction from Bill Gates.
If during the final stages the Windows 95 logo was blurred, the Finnish candidate left his name in doubt for a while, as product placement was prohibited during the competition. And obviously, the Finns were not the only oddballs at Eurovision 2024. Dutch singer Joost Klein, before being excluded under unclear conditions, was also supposed to shock with “Europapa”, a completely crazy techno track, accompanied by words singing the unity of Europe. All with an ideal look to leave a lasting memory with the jurors. Eurovision in all its glory.
In addition to its somewhat excessive staging, Eurovision is, as we know, reserved for lovers of high-pitched voices. And the latter were still served in 2024, the number of participants who boxed in this category being numerous, with candidates from Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, Norway (and sometimes it was really loud)… Another candidate who didn’t only make friends: the Irish Bambie Thug, with her song “Doomsday Blue”. A kind of electro-punk-hardcore nightmare with an occult atmosphere that made even the most sensitive ears have a painful time. Bambie Ray Robinson, his real name, who says he practices witchcraft between two shows, still managed to bewitch a few juries by coming in 6th position.
To make you wince at Eurovision, looks and music are not the only allies of the candidates. Israel was able to see this with difficulty in being accepted into the 2024 competition (read above). The Spanish duo Nebulossa also arrived in Sweden, the host country of Eurovision 2024, with a discussed, even debatable, song. The track, which borrows from the purest disco kitsch style of the 1980s, was titled “Zorra”, synonymous with “slut” or “prostitute” in French. If the singer explained this title by her desire to “transform this word into something beautiful”, this did not delight the feminist associations who cried foul, several weeks before the final.
Also remarkable but for another reason, the representative of the United Kingdom Olly Alexander was also closely observed. Not only for the singer’s openly queer side, but especially because he appeared on French television, at prime time, a few weeks before the competition. Because Olly Alexander, former frontman of the group Years and Years, is also an actor and was in the casting of the British series It’s a sin, broadcast on France 2 in mid-March. A clear passage after a discovery on Canal in 2021 for this super mini-series recounting the ravages of AIDS in the 1980s within the homosexual community. This was not enough to seduce the jury since Olly Alexander will obtain a zero point from the public. With juries placing him 13th, he finished Eurovision 18th overall.
Finally, it’s difficult to look around the Eurovision 2024 candidates without spotting the Croatian candidate, Baby Lasagna, who obviously didn’t look for his stage name for too long. His track, “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”, was among the bookmakers’ favorites with less than two months to go before the finale and had once again made a huge breakthrough in the 48 hours before the show. A hybrid song between supercharged heavy-metal and electro, which proves that this 68th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was once again as diverse as it was surprising…
Croatia, with Marko Purišić alias “Baby Lasagna” and his rock song “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”, were the bookmakers’ favorites, a few days before the final, ahead of Switzerland, with Nemo and his song “The Code”. The latter will have crushed the predictions for a time before, finally, losing his place as favorite in the 48 hours preceding the grand final. The failure of the predictions must therefore be put into perspective.
The Dutchman Joost Klein, the Ukrainian duo Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil as well as the Italian Angelina Mango were not far behind. Israel’s Eden Golan and Ireland’s Bambie Thug will have broken through in the very last hours before the competition, thanks, no doubt, to the upheavals that shook up the preparations. Here are all the predictions compiled a few hours before the final according to the odds of around fifteen bookmakers:
Israel’s presence at Eurovision, in a context of tensions with Palestine, created a stir until the last hours before the big show, provoking protests from several artists and demonstrations around the Malmö Arena, where the competition was held. Several artists will call for an “immediate ceasefire”, saying they do not want to “remain silent”. Others will demand the exclusion of Israel, even going so far as to put their own participation in the balance.
During the selection phases, the choice of the artist to represent Israel will have started to raise questions. It is ultimately the singer Eden Golan, who will be chosen, with “Hurricane”, a honeyed love song (“Baby, promise me that you will still hold me”) to avoid any political interpretation. But on April 9, the organizers of Eurovision had to publish a long press release to denounce the “targeted campaigns on social networks” against certain participants. If she was not cited, the Israeli singer, victim of death threats on Instagram, was clearly on people’s minds.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), organizer of Eurovision, said it understood “the strong emotions (…) and the intense debate sparked by Israeli participation” and assured its support “firmly […] freedom of expression and the right to express opinions in a democratic society”, but stood against “any form of online abuse, hate speech or harassment targeting our artists or anyone associated with the competition”.
“The Israeli public broadcaster is a member of the EBU and can therefore participate in the Eurovision contest,” the press release also indicated, recalling in passing that the event is above all dependent on the broadcasting rights for the evening, paid by a fifty countries which provide most of its income. Beyond words, Malmö must have been the subject of a reinforced security system, to prevent any incident. The singer, who finally performed on May 11, was whistled during her performance and did not show up. not lasted on stage. Israel nevertheless finished 5th in the Eurovision 2024 rankings. More than half of the countries awarded 12 points to Israel, the maximum number. But after the jury votes, Israeli Eden Golan only obtained 52 points. She thus finished in 12th place in the public rankings. The French public still gave him maximum points, 12 points in total.
Dutchman Joost Klein was sidelined from rehearsals on Friday May 10, 2024 for an “incident”, without further details from the Eurovision organizers. He was definitively excluded the next day, at midday. The representative of the Netherlands had very pointedly shown his hostility to the Israeli candidate sitting near him during a press conference on the sidelines of the semi-finals, hiding her face with a flag and encouraging her to answer questions journalists’ policies.
But a source close to the production quickly reported that Joost Klein was involved in an altercation that allegedly took place with a photographer or camerawoman during the parade of flags, a highlight before the opening of rehearsals the day before the finale. Swedish public television SVT also reported a physical confrontation between Joost Klein and a photographer on Friday 10th in the afternoon. It was this incident which allegedly led the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organizer of the competition, to exclude the singer from the final rehearsals, then to ban him from the final.
The Dutch broadcaster of Eurovision regretted a “disproportionate” sanction, and said it was “shocked” by the organizers’ decision, on its X account. Avrotros the Dutch group NPO also described it as “very radical “. “This is a disappointment for millions of Eurovision fans in the Netherlands and other European countries,” he said. In the wake of Joost Klein’s exclusion, four countries, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland and Portugal, also threatened to withdraw to protest against the presence of Israel in the competition, without ultimately taking action.
Since its creation in 1956, France has won the Eurovision contest five times: in 1958, 1960, 1962, 1969 and 1977. Our country is therefore placed just behind Ireland, which holds the record with seven victories. In 1958, it was the singer André Claveau who won France’s first victory with the title “Dors, mon amour”. Two years later, in 1960, the artist Jacqueline Boyer achieved unanimous acclaim with the song “Tom Pillibi”.
In 1962, Isabelle Aubret won Eurovision with the song “Un premier amour”. Then, in 1969, Frida Boccara won the Eurovision contest with the song “Un jour, un enfant”. Finally, in 1977, the singer Marie Myriam was the latest to win by performing “The Bird and the Child”, a title that has become cult over time for the public.
The Eurovision 2024 semi-finals have been set for May 7-9. They were an opportunity for 31 participating countries to compete for the twenty places available for the grand final, in addition to the six places reserved for the organizing country and the “Big Five”, the five biggest contributors to the competition.
The date of the Eurovision grand final has been scheduled for Saturday May 11, 2024. As every year for several editions, the winning country of Eurovision has been determined by the votes of the professional juries combined with the votes of the viewers.
Eurovision 2024 took place at the Malmö Arena, a large hall with around 15,000 seats located in Sweden’s third city. This is the third time the city has hosted the event. On the microphone and on mondovision, comedian Petra Mede and actress Malin Åkerman were responsible for hosting the ceremony live. On France Télévisions, Stéphane Bern and Laurence Boccolini once again provided the presentation.
Among the new features of this 2024 edition, the competition saw the return of Luxembourg after an absence of more than three decades and the notable withdrawal of Romania.