Chapter 1: What controversies surround this year's Eurovision Song Contest?
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Chapter 2: How do political issues affect the Eurovision competition?
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Chapter 3: What are the top contenders for Eurovision 2026?
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Chapter 4: What makes Delta Goodrem's song Eclipse stand out?
Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm producer Rihanna Cruz.
I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.
Nate, Charlie, somehow the flowers are blooming once again. The calendar says May. Here on Switched on Pop, I think you guys know what that means. It's the campiest time of the year. The Eurovision Song Contest is upon us once again.
And usually it comes with those beautiful flowers. This year with some storm clouds as well.
Yeah, for those of you that aren't familiar, every year, the countries of Europe and assorted other locales gather to display the best songwriting that their country has to offer. That can mean whatever these countries want it to mean. The competition has given us such icons as Celine Dion.
¶¶ Abba.
And my personal obsession as of late, Dutch musician Joost Klein. Check him out if you haven't.
Welcome to Europe.
This year's competition is the 70th edition, and it's held in Vienna, Austria, following last year's win by the artist JJ and his song Wasted Love.
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Chapter 5: How does Søren Topegård Lund's For Vigar Hem compare to other entries?
Wasted Love
I love that if you are from the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, you must, in your Eurovision Song Contest song, bring in the opera.
Lots of operatic vocals in Eurovision writ large. This year, you mentioned storm clouds, Charlie. It's worth noting that while Eurovision seems to pride itself on being, quote unquote, apolitical, this year's edition is extremely politically charged, specifically focusing on the European Broadcasting Union's inclusion of Israel in the contest. Hmm.
This has been a hot button issue for the past few years of the competition. In 2026 specifically, there's been a notable boycott. Artists like Massive Attack, Kneecap, Brian Eno have all signed an open letter for said boycott. The 2024 winner Nemo even returned their trophy back to the EBU. Hmm.
And the countries of Ireland, Spain, Iceland, Slovenia and the Netherlands, all Eurovision powerhouses, have withdrawn their participation from the contest. So these are very real concerns that are impacting the general tenor around Eurovision this year and the way the competition is perceived.
for an event, which is so often very lighthearted. It's now very heavy. You know, as reporters, I feel like we need to cover the event in some way and including this boycott. How do you want to go about this this year, Rihanna?
Well, personally speaking, you know, I am not going to watch the competition this year. I'm sure a lot of viewers out there are holding off as well. There's ample reporting on the boycott in the history of Eurovision if people want to check that out. But I feel like Eurovision is music news and we are a music podcast.
Nonetheless, we do have kind of an obligation as we have the past couple of years to sift through some of the big submissions to the competition.
So for folks who choose to not watch, maybe this is sort of like here are the highlights of the things you need to know that you're going to skip out on.
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Chapter 6: What themes are explored in Achillas's Ferto?
And even if you don't want to listen to this podcast, you could skip to the end because we will have an unrelated bingo update for all here today.
Eurovision is such a crucible for the development of new sounds in global pop that despite the turmoil surrounding this event, I feel like we have to check in and hear what is percolating out there across the world. What are the sounds that we might hear? sort of proliferating throughout our pop charts in the future. Okay, so there's many countries that are choosing to participate in this event.
A number of them are at the very top of the game. You're saying we're gonna look at the top four. How are we going to evaluate them?
So there's a couple things that go into judging these songs. The showmanship of it all is definitely important. You know, all of these songs have a visual component in the contest, and that kind of shapes people's perception of the music. But the three musical aspects of each song are its vocal qualifications.
Mm.
The song's composition, you know, is it new and exciting? Is it pushing boundaries? And a general impression of the song. How does it make you feel? What does it leave you with? You know, are you going to be thinking about it 10 minutes from now when the next entrant is on screen? You know, you got to think about all of these things and put them together. It is a song contest after all.
So we will be looking at the songs sans the live performance.
OK, so we're getting rid of the visual because it's a podcast.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How does Dara's Bangaranga reflect its cultural roots?
Lyrics and music.
Yeah.
How good is the performance? And then a little bit of je ne sais quoi. That little extra. How's it make you feel?
Yeah, there's always a je ne sais quoi when it comes to Eurovision. So without further ado, let's get into it with the top four songs coming in at number four. We have the artist Delta Goodrum. and her song Eclipse, representing the not European but still participating country of Australia.
One touch, one kiss, all my life for a night like this. The world stands for us, only love exists when we get there.
The Eurovision Song Contest eclipses just Europe. As a reminder, the European Broadcast Union includes nations including in North Africa, the Middle East, and one of the associate members, not a current full-fledged member, is Australia, who somehow gets to still participate. This song feels like classic Eurovision. It's got the soaring strings. It's got the build into the anthemic chorus.
It's got lyrics that when you first listen to them, you're like, yeah. And then you listen to them again. You're like, what? Like, what does it mean when we eclipse? Like, I don't understand. Like, doesn't one thing eclipse another thing? So how do you eclipse together as a verb? If someone could explain that to me, I'd be very grateful for a lesson in astronomy. So great place for us to start.
Delta Goodrum. Amazing name, by the way.
Yeah, I had never heard of Delta before. Apparently, she is one of Australia's highest selling female artists of all time.
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Chapter 8: What are the highlights from the Switched On Pop bingo update?
Her debut album in 2003 sold millions of copies and stayed at number one for 29 weeks. I could see it as like if Christina Aguilera was the American entrant if we were in Eurovision, you know, kind of like on the same plane, maybe of fame. But this song has an 8% chance of winning, according to Bookies. Anything can happen. These are pretty good odds for the Eurovision bookmakers.
Eclipse has good, mature vocals. I think they're delivering in that department. The song goes from this ballad as we hear at the beginning of the song.
Maybe that's your definition of eclipsing, Nate.
The opening line, shadows in the moonlight, dancing with the sun, planets are aligning to love as one.
So when we eclipse is when we come together as one. So there's no light emerging. Our bodies are perfectly together. Am I reading this correctly? I still find it inscrutable. But I do love the opening line, shadows. Very dramatic. It's funny that it doesn't sound, I don't feel like I have my ear on the sound of Australia, but the beginning is very sort of like,
It feels like 50s Hollywood, Lawrence of Arabia. It feels like it's hinting towards like more Middle Eastern style sounds, but with orchestra and harp and it's very over the top.
Yeah, I know that we're not considering the visual aspects of the song, but you're kind of on the money, Charlie, because the music video is her playing the piano in the middle of a desert. So I think that's kind of the vibe that she's going for.
Australia has many deserts. Yep, that works.
So the song starts in this ballad space, and then as we move into the chorus and get to the end of it, we move into this folk-pop, almost stomp-clap beat. There's this massive chorus and stacks and stacks of vocals.
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