Barring one final song, we have a full slate for Eurovision 2023. There are no more surprise internal drops (hi Azerbaijan); no more shocker NF outcomes (bye Lithuania); no more Saturday nights yelling at the television. We are now in several weeks of relative calm before the pre-parties start and performances will be analysed and staging will be leaked.
And I just want to remind all of us: Taste is subjective.
What does that mean? Well, every song will have a fan. The song I love will be hated with a passion by others, and vice versa. I mean, just look at the reaction to Croatia. But a person’s love for a song is a single data point. It’s not a proxy for their wider personality. So let’s avoid throwing around broad charges of tastelessness.
What it also means is that our criticisms of the songs should seek to go beyond our personal preferences. For example, I’m a banger slut who is unsympathetic to sadboi ballads. So when I talk about these, I’m going to try and let people know my preferences upfront so they can take my caveats with a grain of salt.
And our criticisms of the song should by no means be extended to the personal artist. Don’t tag them or contact them personally to throw hate their way! This doesn’t mean that we can’t criticise bad behaviour but we don’t need to be pouring onslaughts of hate into personal social media accounts. Keep the complaints to group chats! Or blogposts!
And finally, I hope that we can celebrate the musical diversity* we’ve got in Eurovision 2023. We have pop girlies. We have boy bands. We have art pop. We have ethnobangers. We have soulful, shirtless young men. There’s something for every taste there!
I am excited. Are you?
*Eurovision in 2023 has a whole bunch of musical diversity. But actual diversity? Our many wonderful bands are heavily skewed male. And the stage is also looking very, very white, which doesn’t reflect the racial and ethnic diversity that exists in modern Europe. Expect more blog posts on this later.
dudepoints.fun 