After allowing Israel to take part in this year’s Eurovision song contest amid calls for them to be boycotted, organisers will be scrutinising the country’s entry for political messaging – particularly whether lines such as “they were all good children” could refer to the current conflict in Gaza or hostage situation. All the more so since last night, when Israel’s national broadcaster KAN revealed that the song is called October Rain. In its rules, Eurovision is described as a “non-political event” that “shall in no case be politicised and/or instrumentalised and/or otherwise brought into disrepute in any way”.
Israel’s culture minister insists the song is “not political” and KAN said it would reject any call to alter the lyrics. Whatever the intentions, there have been plenty of other songs that have snuck in around the rules.
Italy 1974
Gigliola Cinquetti’s song Si – a really quite good Bacharach-ish sweeping ballad – sees our heroine pondering a breakup, but she decides to commit and say “yes, yes!” to love. No problems here with the Eurovision organisers, but unfortunately the contest coincided with a referendum on divorce in Italy – the song was deemed pro-marriage propaganda and banned on Italian radio and TV. In characteristically glum British fashion, a re-recorded English-language version featured Cinquetti telling her man to leave.
Greece 1976
I don’t have the mid-70s Eurovision rules to hand but I can’t imagine a song directly lamenting Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus getting through the net today. Mariza Koch doesn’t hold back, referencing refugee camps and even the napalm bombings against Cyprus in the 1960s; Turkey, who weren’t competing, censored it in their TV broadcast and replaced it with a nationalist Turkish song.
Turkey and Norway 1980
In 1980, Turkey was in political crisis and unlike other countries in the region, was having to import most of its oil. You would have expected them to do something fluffy and escapist at Eurovision but no, it confronted its woes head on with Ajda Pekkan’s Petr’oil, which anthropomorphises petrol in a – quite literally – high octane love song. Only at Eurovision! Take it away Ajda:
When you came, as if a sun has dawned
Illuminating my day and night, my life was wonderful
Now, all of a sudden, everything has changed
Without you, life is difficult and hard[hand gestures intensify as the chorus drops]
Lovely petrol, sweet petrol!
I need you now, petrol!
Elsewhere that year, Norway incorporated the traditional songcraft of the Sami people, and sang in solidarity with Sami activists on hunger strike outside the Norwegian parliament over the construction of a hydroelectric dam.
Georgia 2009
As will become clear, you can get away with some pretty blatant stuff at Eurovision but here’s one that didn’t get through. We Don’t Wanna Put In is a disco number about Georgia rejecting a certain Russian leader, while making overtures to join the EU with all the finesse of a 17-year-old boy at closing time: “I like all Europe countries and I love Europe-ah / say: give me sexy, ah!” The title was clankingly obvious and the line “Imma try to shoot in”, coupled with a gun-to-the-head dance move, could be read as an incitement to assassination – it never made it to the final.
Armenia 2015
Armenia’s song Don’t Deny was trailed by Eurovision organisers as being about happiness “when people are united and live in harmony with themselves, their families, love relationships and so on”. But Turkey and Azerbaijan said the title was a political statement pointed at them about the 1915 Armenian genocide, and also cited the – admittedly fairly obvious – music video with families in early 20th-century outfits intercut with images of empty chairs. Armenia duly changed the song title to the possibly even more accusatory Face the Shadow, but everyone was mollified.
Ukraine 2016
Ukraine have rightly been given a little more leeway than most in the last couple of years: 2023’s Heart of Steel was a reference to the battle at the Azovstal steelworks, and there was a patriotic tinge to the mother imagery in 2022’s contest-winning Stefania. But they have been even more stridently political in the past. Their entry in 2005 was Razom Nas Bahato by hip-hoppers GreenJolly, which had been an anthem of the previous year’s Orange Revolution – Eurovision organisers made them alter the lyrics before allowing them to compete – and Ukraine won in 2016 with 1944, a song about the ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars that year by Soviet forces. Meanwhile, 2007’s Dancing Lasha Tumbai by drag performer Verka Serduchka earned grumbles from Russian listeners who thought nonsense phrase “lasha tumbai” sounded like “Russia goodbye”. Serduchka denied it, but has since used those very words in performances after the Russian invasion.
Iceland 2019
Performed in Tel Aviv, Iceland’s Hatari gave us one of the all-time great Eurovision tracks in 2019, the nihilist techno-pantomime evil of Hatrið Mun Sigra – “hatred will prevail” – and its screamed commands: “Universal obfuscation! Unilateral execration!” Offset with lamentation in the chorus, the song was clearly aimed at fascism, and the band made an even clearer political statement by waving a Palestinian flag during the voting – they were fined €5,000. Madonna also displayed a Palestinian flag that year during her guest performance though paired it with an Israeli flag in a show of hoped-for unity.
Croatia 2023
The authoritarian president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, was the subject of the country’s 2021 entry by the band Galasy ZMesta who, having supported him at political rallies, sang: “I will teach you to dance to the tune, I will teach you to peck the bait, I will teach you to walk the line, you will be happy with everything”. They were duly banned. A rather more veiled and critical Lukashenko reference then cropped up in Mama ŠČ by Croatian comedy-rockers Let 3, whose music video featured them on a tractor dressed as dictators – a nod to the tractor Lukashenko gave to Vladimir Putin as a birthday present.
Switzerland 2023
Perhaps it was easier to swallow from the militarily neutral Swiss, but the most strident anti-war messaging amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict came in their entry Watergun by Remo Forrer: “I don’t wanna be a soldier, soldier / I don’t wanna have to play with real blood … Can’t turn and run / No water guns / Just body bags that we’ve become.” Forrer’s interviews are also an object lesson in how ostensibly neutral Eurovision entrants have to hope people can read subtext: “My generation has to live with the consequences of decisions that we didn’t make. It’s frustrating, but I still have hope that changes are possible.”
