Eurovision event review

On 27 April 2023, the Popular Music Research Unit (PMRU) at Oxford Brookes University hosted the Postgraduate Student Eurovision Event, inviting papers from postgraduate students around the UK as well as welcoming back Dr Dai Griffiths, recently retired from Oxford Brookes, as the keynote speaker. The event was held in honour of the UK hosting the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of the contest’s 2022 winner, Ukraine. 

Dr Jan Butler, co-founder of the PMRU and Senior Lecturer in Popular Music, introduced the event, which kicked off with three ten-minute student ‘position papers’ on various aspects of the Eurovision Song Contest. Tianshu Kong (University of Leeds) began by suggesting “The Positive Impact of Online Voting on the Promotion of Migrant Social Identity in Europe”. Kong spoke about the role Eurovision plays and its potential in community-building, sparking an engaging discussion on the song contest’s voting practices, how it has developed over time and where it could possibly go amongst the attendees in the subsequent panel Q&A.

Abigail May Parker (University of Nottingham) took a more specific approach by focusing on “ABBA at Eurovision: Taking a Chance on a Historical Encounter” – the legacy of Swedish pop group ABBA and how their winning 1974 Eurovision song “Waterloo” marked a historical change for the song contest in many ways. Most notably, by singing and winning with a song in a language not of their home country (English), seemingly setting a precedent for future Eurovision-winning songs. 

Presenting the final postgraduate paper, Kirsten Etheridge asked the question perhaps on most people’s minds when it came to the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest: “What Does It Mean to Host the Eurovision Song Contest on Behalf of Another Country?” The paper remarked on the process of organising the monumental (and expensive) event in the UK and what considerations were in place to appropriately honour the culture and music of Ukraine. 

The keynote speaker of the event, Dr Dai Griffiths, delved into the construction of Eurovision songs in his paper titled “Key Change Towards the End: Select Adventures of the Elevating Modulation in the Eurovision Song Contest, 1956-2006”. While elevating modulations  – changing a song’s key signature in an upwards direction at the end of a track (usually) – are a familiar element of popular music, Griffiths’ research analysed the presence of this prevailing technique in the context of the Eurovision song contest. It was a captivating microscopic look into the theory behind music at Eurovision over the course of the contest’s history as the paper demonstrated correlations between the use of modulations in a song and its success in competition. Griffiths’ paper concluded that elevating modulations have experienced ebbs and flows in popularity over the years, occurrences of which peaked in the 90s before declining in the 2000s. 

Prior to the event, all attendees and contributors were required to nominate their favourite Eurovision song – from any year. The top 5 songs suggested were played at the end of the event in a more casual ‘watch party’ setting, during which everyone was able to participate in a live voting activity, almost simulating the Eurovision Song Contest voting procedure. Neck and neck with ABBA’s “Waterloo”, Iceland's 2020 entry, “Think About Things” by Daði Freyr won by a whisker.

Overall, the Postgraduate Student Eurovision Event was a well-organised and incredibly engaging afternoon about all things Eurovision that brought together diverse interests in the same international event. It inspired lively discussions, debates and questions amongst attendees, and was equally engaging for those who have followed the progression of Eurovision for many years as well as those who had only just discovered the multifaceted cultural song contest phenomenon. 

Review by Katherine Lai, UG student, Oxford Brookes University