Before we jump into our ranking and discussion of individual entries, here are some fun general observations this year that have been interesting to see!

Languages:

This year has the highest number of songs to include non-English lyrics since Eurovision lifted the national language restriction in 1999. Here are some particularly honorable mentions:

Sweden is sending their first song in Swedish since the national language requirement was lifted in 1999. Of course, it took a trio of Swedish speaking Finns to pull it off. (Finland was also the most recent country to send a Swedish song back in 2012).

Germany is sending a song in German for the first time since 2007 (though it is performed by an Austrian duo).

This doesn’t mean that every song in a non-English language is in its country’s primary national language. Estonia is sending a song with some (dubious) Italian. Finland’s entry has a German chorus. 

And, it’s a big year for the French language. The Netherlands, Israel, and Australia all have at least one line of their songs in French. And of course France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland’s songs are entirely en français. 

Pre-Season Drama:

From the very first national final of the season, back in November of 2024, there has been DRAMA. Montenegro announced the winner of their national final, only for it to come to light that the song had been performed the year before, therefore automatically disqualifying that song from competing in Eurovision. 

From that point forward, many national finals had withdrawals and disqualifications – the biggest being Moldova withdrawing from the contest completely. Finland had a band that broke up in between artist announcement and the national final. Serbia saw a number of acts drop out in support of the massive student protests occurring at the time. The strangest disqualification probably was the Lithuanian act that got replaced because the song they were going to compete with was being performed by a different artist in the Croatian national final. 

Hopefully, that will be enough drama for the year, and Eurovision finals week in May will go smoothly 🤞

Hanging from the Ceiling:

A strangely large number of entries involve performers hanging from the ceiling in some capacity. 

This is all made stranger by the fact that Eurovision has not previously allowed acts to include flown elements in their staging. We will have to see if these acts are forced to adjust for the big stage.

A Close Competition:

Overall, it feels like anyone could win this year. There is not a clear front runner or runners, nor are there any clear non-qualifiers. Anything could happen come May, and much remains unknown.

We have seen this in our own rankings. U & C’s individual rankings this year do not agree as much as they have in the last couple of years – and there are some songs where we really don’t agree. Some of our individual top 10 songs are in the other’s bottom 15 😱

A fun quirky feature of this year’s entries is that some of the catchiest and most memorable songs are songs that we just don’t love. In an open field like this, the performance and staging will play a large role in determining the success or failure of most acts. Besides the few countries known to stick to their national final staging (looking at you, Sweden), we will likely not know what each act’s staging will look like until a week or so leading up to the final.

It will be exciting to see what the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest brings in May!