My Eurovision Passport: Steven Newby’s journey to the Song Contest Written by Steven Newby on November 22, 2011 | 2 Comments

We continue our series of asking our lead writers a simple question… “Why Eurovision?” With his tickets and visa in hand for Armenia and the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Steven Newby is next to answer.

Believe me, I have asked that very same question for years.  It’s camp. It’s kitsch.  It’s political. It’s the musical equivalent of painting by numbers with its over-simplified bubblegum style pop and ridiculed by the vast majority of people who watch it. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Whether you agree with any of the statements above or not there is no doubt that the Eurovision Song Contest is successful, nothing of a similar scale existed when it was conceived back in the 1950s as an international San Remo, and it is still very much true that nothing today can really compare. Where else are you going to see a show remotely like it with the splendour mixed with gold sequins, dodgy accents and over-excited acts and crowds screaming out their lungs?  I love it. And yes, I’ll tell you why.

My love affair started way back in 1981, something captured my attention. I have always loved countries, the disparate cultures and languages that make up this wonderful sub-continent called Europe, Evropë, Europa, l’Europe,  Ευρώπη,  Европа.  I have always been fascinated with the way these countries interact with each other, forming alliances and making foes, trading with each other, and warring with everyone else.  Europe has so much history and borders have moved so many times over the centuries, containing their people and cultures like fences protecting their cattle.  We are so much more mobile these days, we cross borders and settle in another country where we don’t necessarily speak the language, we learn to ‘get on’ with people we don’t understand linguistically and culturally.

This is what captured my imagination while watching Bobby, Cheryl, Mike and Jay stomp to victory while cheekily stripping and singing about being decisive and going for what you want.  I loved the fact that other countries had voted for that song, they liked the melody and lyrics, they understood the ethos of the song – or Cheryl’s legs, I’m not sure.  But more importantly, as I thought at the time, they liked us!  They’d crossed our ‘musical border’.

I was 10 years old and this triggered so many interests for me that have survived well into my adulthood.  I still love the interplay between nations, not just musically but also in sports like the Olympics and athletics championships.  The politics involved in forging international friendships as well as internal struggles against oppression and tyranny. To this day I can’t believe it was Eurovision that set me on this road into discovering the world to the extent that I have travelled to nearly 90 countries globally, seeking out some of the sights and sounds I have seen on television over the last 30 years.

It’s all very romantic I know, but this is how I view the world.  I have become even more in love with the whole debacle as I have grown older, even if you’d think it would be the other way around.  I couldn’t wait at the end of each contest for the next, I longed for the 3 hours so go slowly so I could savour every second.  Pre-2000 of course very little existed about it on the internet, the only time you got to preview the shows in the UK was when Terry or Bruce introduced the 20-some acts tucked away on a Sunday afternoon show on BBC1, when the songs were severely cut to satisfy scheduling and viewing audience pressures.  These days it isn’t 3 hours of course, there are the semis and months of build-up online, frantically scrambling to connect to Albanian TV to catch the Festival winner as it is usually the first to be decided just after Christmas.  This all builds up into a plethora of live internet shows in February where your head spins when trying to decide which ones to watch and miss.  Three hours has become six months.  How fabulous is that?

Attending Eurovision 2008

I still get embarrassed when I tell my non-Euro friends or colleagues where I go every May.  Actually going to Eurovision in 2005 brought a whole new dimension I could never have dreamed of.  And the fact that I was ‘behind the scenes’, meeting the acts and making so many like-minded friends just blew me away.  I was meeting people like me, I was no longer an outcast and I didn’t have to worry that I was bopping along to Boom-Bang-A-Dinge-Dong-Dum-Tek-Tek splendour.  Others were too, and many of them.  I was in heaven.

Kiev, Eurovision 2005

So when I’m asked “Why Eurovision?” as others look at me as if I am demented, I remember all the reasons I have listed above.  I also think of all the wonderful people I have met since Kyiv in 2005 and that fact that I would never have become acquainted with any of them if it hadn’t been for this wonderful outlet of fabulous Euro-visionness.  I wouldn’t have made some of the life decisions I have or travelled to some weird and wonderful corners of the globe, I wouldn’t have opened my ears to a wider European music taste, particularly Scandinavian pop or eastern European folk.  It has enriched me on so many levels.  That’s why Eurovision.

Thanks Cheryl and friends.