Eurovision needs better singers

A few quick comments on yesterday’s Eurovision song contest, which was won by an Italian heavy metal band. Some may think this out of my lane, but the event all too clearly reflected current international realities. San Marino and Australia are represented, but not Kosovo? Israel but not Palestine? No Turkey but Greece and Cyprus voting for each other? No Bosnia, because they haven’t paid their bills? It all sounds very familiar to me.

Then there was language. The hosts said “good evening” in the languages of many countries, but everyone spoke English except, of course, a French presenter. The accents were more American than British. That is understandable in the music world. The Europe Union communicates well in a language that is not native to any of its current members! Like much of the rest of the world.

What isn’t so understandable is how a heavy metal band wins in 2021. During ten years living in Italy I never once listened to heavy metal, which in any case strikes me as a throwback. Did today’s young Europeans really sit at home during the epidemic refining their taste for rock and roll in that direction?

I heard a lot of wonderful music in the 1970s, 80s and 90s in Rome, from Roberto Murolo to Luciano Pavarotti. If you don’t know who Murolo was, here is a sample:

If you don’t know who Pavarotti was, try this:

Neither would have had half a chance at Eurovision, but I guess that is beside the point.

Eurovision isn’t meant to be high art, either folk or operatic. We used to call its category “camp.” I suppose some will hear “Ziiti e Bouni” as “artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess,” which Wikipedia tells me is Susan Sontag’s definition of camp:

But it sounds more “noisy and terrible” to me. “Rock and roll will never die” the lead singer shouted when given the award. Or is it already dead?