Beth Ray Writes

On Friday, BBC 1 are presenting a Eurovision special “Eurovision 2024: Graham Meets Olly” at 10:40pm. This is a chance for the Eurovision fans to see the music video for the UK’s entry song “Dizzy” for the first time in full, sung by Olly Alexander.

Now I am a BIG Eurovision fan. I have been for years and with Liverpool hosting last years competition on behalf of Ukraine, it really ignited my obsession with the competition further.
Before last year, I had never known other countries have to compete in the semi-finals in order to gain their place in the final. So last year I decided to research as many entries as possible and enjoyed watching them the days prior to the final, compete it out against each other and to see which countries would make it through.
Eurovision is HUGE in Europe whereas in the UK it has never really made quite the same hype as in other countries. I plan to write more about why Eurovision is such a big deal, but for now I wanted to mention the hype is already starting to build and how you can start watching to see which will be your favourite act. If you go on the official Eurovision Youtube channel you can watch the music videos for all the participating artists as they’re being released and some of the live performances of some of the acts already. It’s amazing seeing how different the artists are, from song choice, to performance style and how some present themselves very seriously and other artists have a very fun approach.

So as I prepare to hear UK’s song entry, I will start listening to the official Eurovision podcast on Spotify and keeping an eye on the YouTube channel.

My favourite performance so far is Finland’s entry Windows95man, a performance about not conforming to rules, wearing lots of double denim and fireworks. Take a look below to see what I mean.

Which acts are you looking forward to watching? How do you prepare for Eurovision?

I’m definitely going to be writing more about this as we approach the final on May 11th.

Thanks for reading,

Beth