Say Yay, Say Si: Exploring the English Speaking Song Contest Written by Jasmin Bear on March 23, 2016 | 3 Comments

No matter the time of year, I am always far-too-frequently thinking about the Eurovision Song Contest – its history, its significance on a global scale, and what possessed Dima Bilan to willingly perform in public with a mullet. Often, I cast my mind back to the beginning of my obsession with the contest and wonder why I fell in love with it in the first place, particularly when the year was 2006 and the aforementioned mullet should have turned me off then and there.

Why? High on my list is this: the contest exposed me to a myriad of foreign languages, and through that exposure I discovered an authenticity and allure in world music that my Enrique Iglesias’ Greatest Hits album lacked. Sometimes, languages other than English are simply more suited to a particular genre – bonjour, French ballads – or they shield us English-with-a-hint-of-Melodifestivalen-Swedish speakers from clichéd lyrics. Whatever the case, a song in Armenian, Ukrainian or anything in-between will usually appeal to me on the basis that it isn’t in English.

Junior Eurovision, saviour of the language rule? (image: junioreurovision.tv)

That’s why the extensive use of the English language in this year’s Song Contest has me concerned for the Contest’s future. Within the next few years, could we witness an entirely English competition? It certainly seems more likely than, say, Ireland scoring an eighth win within the same period (though so do many things). If you spat out a mouthful of something just then in order to scream ‘Are you insane?!?’ at your screen, consider this: even countries that have remained loyal to their native languages prior to 2016 are now caving, quite possibly for what they perceive to be the sake of Eurovision success.

By crunching the language-related numbers of contests past; determining why English has become Eurovision’s go-to tongue; contemplating the language choices of countries competing in 2016; and weighing up the pros and cons of the modern English-dominant ESC, we may be able to see what the mass substitution of ‘chanson’ for ‘song’ means for the future. Is my fear of a fully-English competition well-founded, or will there always be a saviour in possession of lyrics most of us need to Google Translate?

The English Effect On Eurovision From 1999 To Now

It would be wrong to insist that the Eurovision Song Contest is lacking native-language entries without evidence. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your stance – there’s a wind-machine’s worth of evidence to back up the claim, and it tells us that a trend of opting for English has indeed emerged over time.

Let’s check out some key years of the contest, including 1999 (the year that followed the most recent removal of the language restriction) and 2014/2015 (to see where we’ve been at lately in terms of language) before we lift the lid on Stockholm’s situation to date. Listed below is the percentage of songs performed entirely or partly in English during those and select other editions of the Eurovision Song Contest.

1999 – 61%
2003 – 73%
2006 – 78%
2010 – 65%
2014 – 90%
2015 – 85%

Sure, the increase of English and part-English entries has not been completely steady. But the statistics above – and the fact that the percentage of non-native language songs has only dipped below the 65% mark once since 2000 – prove that English has been a clear choice for the majority of contest competitors since that pre-1999 rule revision. So how does the 2016 Contest stack up?

Well, a whopping 93% of the songs that will compete in Stockholm will do so entirely or partly in English. In fact, the ‘partly’ percentage is negligible, with only five countries – Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy and Ukraine – opting to mix tongues. This makes 2016 the contest with the highest-ever amount of English-inclusive entries, just ahead of the 2014 Copenhagen show. Had the 2013 Malmö edition not seen just 56% of entries employ English to some extent, I’d be inclined to blame Scandinavia.

If you’re a lover of languages other than English in Eurovision, and that 93% has depressed you more than news of Ralph Siegel returning to the recording studio (hypothetically…apologies for the heart palpitations), then you might take comfort in the following: Austria’s Zoë will perform in French, a first for last year’s hosts; Bosnia & Herzegovina are sticking with Bosnian for their comeback track; and Ukraine’s Jamala will belt out her choruses in Crimean Tatar, marking the ESC debut of the language. So it’s not all doom and gloom for those of us who want to hear less ‘love’ and more liebe, liefde, ljubav and ljubezen.

The Method Of Madness: Why Take English Over Your Own?

Of course, by ‘madness’, I mean ‘mad scramble to select then switch to English’. When we look back at the 1990s – specifically, at Ireland’s hat-trick of ESC wins during that decade – it’s easy to assume that the English language advantage played a part in the Emerald Isle’s success (especially in a time when an artist could be threatened with disqualification for deviating from their national language during a dress rehearsal). Adding clout to that claim are the UK’s silver medals of 1992 and 1993; and the knowledge that, in ’92, the top three songs were also the only songs competing in English. Fast forward to the current contests of zero language limits – and consider how that 1992 trio of Ireland, the UK and Malta fared last year in Vienna – and you’ll see why abandoning national languages in favour of English is a practice that occurs on a regular basis.

The triumph of English-language songs in the 2000s and 2010s may be part of a merry-go-round, motivating participants to follow each other’s footsteps and hop on. In 1999, the percentage of entirely or partly English songs in the top ten was 80%. In 2006, it was 90%; in 2014, 100%; and in 2015, 90%. Shocking as these stats may seem at first glance, they do correlate with the percentage of English-incorporating entries competing each year. If the majority of last year’s entries had not been performed in English, yet 90% of the top ten had been, then there’d be a) cause for concern, and b) an even more obvious reason for the likes of Spain – a country that, in 55 pre-2016 years of contest participation, has consistently sent wholly or mainly Spanish-language songs – to be saying sí to a totally English entry this year.

The more English entries there are participating, the more English entries are statistically likely to end up in the top ten. The more English entries in the top ten, the more appealing English is going to seem to countries that have struggled to squeeze onto the left-hand side of the scoreboard. And so it (quite possibly) goes.

It is true that Eurovision has crowned nine English-language winners in the last ten years – but the exception, 2007’s Molitva, remains a testament to the notion that a song should be one part of an exceptional package to be a contender. If that song is strong enough, and the staging supporting it contributes to a cohesive, crowd-pleasing whole, it can win no matter what language it is performed in. Still, the odds will fall in favour of English-language entries as long as English-language entries are predominant. When a country is torn between sending a song that represents their musical culture, and sending one that is more likely to attract points (should striking a balance prove elusive), it’s understandable that they would lean towards the latter.

Stockholm In The Spotlight

Let’s refocus on that 93% – the percentage of entirely or partly English entries being sent to Stockholm. Remove Australia, Ireland, Malta and the UK from the equation (all of whom share English as a primary language) and you’re still left with a staggering figure of 84%. Among the countries adding to that percentage are several that have transitioned to English; one that made the decision to opt for English from the start with explicit reasoning; and another that is ditching their native language for the first time. Shall we name some names?

Albania’s Eneda Tarifa won December’s Festivali I Këngës with ‘Përrallë’, but she’s singing ‘Fairytale’ at Eurovision. She said herself that English allows an artist to connect with a wider audience – but given that Albania achieved their best-ever result with an Albanian-language entry, I for one am unsure whether their tendency to switch tongues is helping or hindering their progress. It doesn’t appear to have given them good fortune in the past, and I suspect that’s due to the switch robbing their songs of a mysterious je ne sais quoi. (or whatever that phrase is in Albanian).

Iceland’s Greta Salóme is back for a solo shot at ESC success, and again, she’s vetoed Icelandic in favour of English: ‘Raddirna’ reverted back to the original ‘Hear Them Calling’ between her Söngvakeppnin semi and the final. Last year, English emphasised the repetitive structure of María Olaf’s Unbroken. This year, I believe it’s a detriment in a different department – think once more of a song being stripped of its x-factor.

Montenegro’s Highway are hoping their country will qualify for the third year running – but rather than performing in Montenegrin á la Sergej and Knez, they’re going all-English too. They explicitly stated that to be part of their strategy, but it could easily backfire. The boys could sing with both feeling and clarity in English…or we could experience another ‘farting tears’-esque mondegreen.

Lastly, the big one – Spain’s Barei. The singer was chosen by the Spanish public to represent them with ‘Say Yay!’, the Song Contest version of which features no Spanish whatsoever. The Royal Academy in Spain were not amused, blasting the decision to discard a language spoken by millions, just as they did when Ruth Lorenzo settled on a bilingual version of ‘Dancing In The Rain’.

Given that Barei will be the first Spanish act ever not to pack any espanol in her suitcase, an adverse reaction was to be expected. Imagine how the Academy would have reacted had Xuso Jones’ ‘Victorious’ been…well, victorious in Objetivo Eurovisión – a predominantly English-language, Swedish-penned song devoid of all Latin flavour. As things stand, ‘Say Yay!’ is quite possibly the least Spanish entry in Eurovision history, but could be the country’s best hope in years. Is that a coincidence, something to do with the language/genre pairing, or none of the above?

The Delights And Downsides Of English-vision

It’s no secret: many of the songwriters and artists involved in Eurovision 2016 didn’t hesitate to go all-Anglais. But what are the upsides of this for us fans, and what are the aspects we’ll complain about voraciously on social media?

One could say that the extensive use of English in Stockholm has homogenised the Contest’s line-up, making it difficult to detect the national identity of competing countries in their songs. Compare the 2016 entries of Cyprus and Finland to their 1998 counterparts, and you might agree that the mandatory language rule still in place in the latter year gave ‘Genesis’ and ‘Aava’ a sense of ethnicity missing in ‘Alter Ego’ and ‘Sing It Away’. And, getting back to Barei as another example – if ‘Say Yay!’ was to be performed in Spanish, would that not have bestowed on the song a cultural calling card that would have flown an identifiable flag? Sometimes, language can be the only indication of a country’s identity, and to lose that can result in same-same competitive fields.

Still, in the case of San Marino’s 2016 entry, it seems that the English lyrics have far less to do with the strength of the song’s national identity. Turkish Serhat’s ‘I Didn’t Know’ has been composed by a fellow Turk, written by a Greek lyricist, and arranged by French and Belgian-African musicians. If there’s to be any essence of San Marino in the entry, it’s likely to be somewhere on the stage, á la the Celtic symbols often favoured by Ireland when choosing their backdrops. Acknowledging that is to acknowledge that language is not the be-all and end-all of expressing national identity.

Feeling comforted yet? If not, think about the increased accessibility the English epidemic will provide Eurovision 2016’s viewers with. Music might be considered the universal language, but with English being widely spoken as a primary or secondary language throughout Europe and other territories where the contest is broadcast, it is an almost-universal language of its own. In Stockholm, where our slogan will be ‘come together’, it’s apt that more of us will be able to sing along with Barei as she says yay (rather than decir sí). It might be seen as lazy for native English speakers to want a greater volume of artists talking their talk, but for bilingual viewers, it does make the contest more accessible, and more of a place where they can find common ground.

There is the small matter of the price tag on that common ground, however. With so many 2016 entries written in/rewritten in English to “maximise audience appeal”, is this year’s contest less about entries that are authentic representations of a country’s musical culture, and more about entries that are likely to succeed? Consider the tendency of certain countries to do their entry shopping in Swedish department stores. Then tell me you weren’t convinced that, given her choice between an Armenian-penned song and a Swedish-penned song, Iveta Mukuchyan would opt for the latter when selecting Armenia’s entry (spoiler alert: she didn’t). The nationality of songwriters is a separate subject for a separate article, but my point is, if the decision to follow the crowd in the hope of winning over another means sacrificing authenticity and identity, then I think it’s a poor one.

Speaking of authenticity: English aplenty may see a decrease in the overall authenticity present in 2016 performances. When you know an artist isn’t fluent in English and they take to the stage sounding as if they’ve been taught their lyrics phonetically, awkwardness ensues for everyone involved. That makes me wonder how much awkwardness we’ll see on stage in Stockholm, from artists who I suspect would be more at ease singing in their native tongue – i.e. Highway (their heavily-accented English-language performances on The X Factor Adria left a lot of ‘The Real Thing’ to be desired).

Finally, we can’t forget that English has undoubtedly robbed a few 2016 songs – including the aforementioned ‘Fairytale’ from Albania – of mystery, intrigue and beauty. That could be great news for the handful of non-English songs we do have so far, which should stand out purely because they are the black sheep of the herd.

Can We Ever Say Non?

So, is Eurovision really heading in an English-only direction? No one can say for sure – particularly not me, a person so bad at predicting that someone could rig the results in Stockholm and staple them to my forehead and I’d still guess them wrong. But, based on the mostly-increasing percentages of English-featuring entries, and the quest for Eurovision success that is becoming a priority for so many countries, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a day when not a single word of a non-English language is uttered on the Eurovision stage (mandatory French from the hosts aside). How many of us would be able to pull a Nicole and make a little peace with that?

It depends on whether you’re open to the idea, or view it as a problem to be solved. If the prevalence of English in Eurovision 2016 is a problem in your opinion, then there really is only one way to solve it in the future – by coaxing/bribing the EBU to reinstate language restrictions, either fully or in some capacity (the Junior Eurovision 75%-native language rule could be an option). Though I do often mourn the loss of languages from the contest, I wouldn’t go that far. Oppression will not help Eurovision to progress, and we can certainly resign ourselves to searching for national identity and diversity in other places. Because, while language can be an important part of a country presenting their culture on an international platform, there are other ways to wave one’s metaphorical flag.

Still, to the countries we’ll see at Eurovision next year, I say why not consider sending a non-English entry? Why not put faith in a song that connects with English speakers on a non-verbal level? Remember: though it’s been a while between drinks, you never know, you may have the next Molitva on your hands…presuming you also have a suit rental company on speed dial.