Blaming so-called bloc voting for our lack of success overlooks how music differs between east and west in Europe
A PERENNIAL feature of our experience of Eurovision is the commentator’s injured insinuation that what is called “bloc voting” is undermining a contest designed to find the best song.
The premise is that the voting criteria applied by some countries are more about geography, politics and neighbourly loyalty than music. The impression is of promises exchanged in darkened rooms.
This is baseless. I know there have been countless academic treatises “proving” or “disproving” the bloc voting hypothesis, but, being invariably based on studies of actual voting patterns, these inevitably result in tautological conclusions, the pattern itself being cited as its own proof.
A recent article in The Irish Timesreported the findings of a mathematician, Marcus Weber, who analysed the last 10 years' results, identified six clusters of "bloc voters" and placed Ireland in a "bloc" with Denmark, Finland, UK, Iceland, Monaco, Norway, Sweden and Slovakia.
What or where the “bloc” is remains unclear, since this list does not suggest any recognisable geographical, political or cultural entity. Moreover, Weber appears to have treated votes in either direction as having equal significance, whereas in many instances the flows are unidirectional and therefore exhibit a particular significance.
The most consistent feature of recent Irish voting patterns has been our support for certain former eastern bloc countries, especially Lithuania. In 2009, we gave them 12 points in the semi-final, enabling them to scrape through to the final, in which we gave them 7 points, the same as they got from Latvia, their nearest neighbours. Altogether, they got just 23 points. In last year’s semi-final, we again gave them 12 points but they still failed to go through. In this year’s final we gave them 12 points, but they ended up near the bottom of the table. Clearly, the factor here is the machinations of the Lithuanian diaspora in Ireland, which has been enthusiastic enough to appropriate the Irish vote and achieve impressively disproportionate results. It’s almost entirely one-way traffic.
As for politics, the argument is easily disposed of. This year, Bosnia and Herzegovina received 12 points from Serbia and 7 from Croatia, who also gave Serbia 8 points. In 2007, when Serbia won the contest, it received 12 points from all other former Yugoslavian countries.
A factor rarely mentioned is the dissimilarities between eastern and western pop music, which by and large turn on two different tracks. In the West, we like our pop in major keys, whereas the eastern ear tends to prefer minor keys. Eastern and mid-European music also goes big on syncopated rhythms, as compared to the typical straight-4 beat of much western pop. These factors, together with the prevalence of short, interspersed riffs played on ethnic instruments using the harmonic minor scale, give eastern pop music a different flavour to ours.
The winning songs of the last 10 years have been in minor keys, with Azerbaijan’s winner this year finally breaking that pattern. Running Scared was a power ballad which would have appealed to us perhaps 30 years ago but nowadays leaves us cold. Ireland gave no votes to Azerbaijan, which has no significant diaspora here. The song also received zero votes from the UK, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.
From an Irish perspective, then, there are two kinds of songs that do well in today’s Eurovision: songs that sound dated and songs that go over our heads. Last year’s German winner seemed to sneak in through the taste contradictions, but interestingly Lena failed to make a mark this year with a better song.
The real issue, then, is musical. Eastern countries have come to pop music relatively recently and still regard it as a novelty. Combining elements of their own folk music with western pop ideas, the eastern countries have created new sounds that delight them but are not our cup of tea. Our ears are poorly attuned to their tastes in music, which seem either too folksy and unfamiliar or too similar to things we’ve already tired of.
For these “new” countries, Eurovision offers an opportunity to rewind the spool of Western pop culture and reinterpret it from within their own cultures. For us, Eurovision is a dated, kitschy take on pop music so, because we have become so bored with ourselves, what used to be ours now belongs to them. This is why they vote for one another and why their immigrants in western countries assiduously use our voting opportunities to vote us into the lower half of the table.
Jedward's bid this year was our best attempt in years. It appealed to younger tastes, and the exuberance of the twins was almost impossible to resist. Lipstickwas also, incidentally, in a minor key. But while we made minor inroads into the eastern vote, most of our big votes came from western countries.
All this serves to expose a major contradiction facing our future attempts at Eurovision: to have a chance of bringing home the trophy, an Irish entry has to survive a domestic process operating in a different musical timezone to the majority of contestant countries and Irish voters are likely to reject at source anything with a chance of winning Eurovision for us again.