The Eurovision Song Contest had endured its fair share of embarrassing on-stage moments over the years.
The contest is not without its flaws as we saw last year with the majority of the stage branded "The Sun of Death'. Turin's centrepiece was promised as a revolving marvel but in the end, stood dormant and effectively ruined the impact of countless performances.
Though a lot of technical difficulties cannot be controlled or happen away from the camera, including overcrowding or audience fights, there are a few memorable mishaps that occur directly on stage.
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The trouble with live television is that you are not always in control of what may go down and over the years, the European Broadcasting Union has had its fair share of embarrassing moments.
Backing track problems
Azúcar Moreno opened the 1990 contest, taking to the stage with his entry, Bandido. The issues came when the backing track and the orchestra were meant to start together but by some bizarre mistake, the track went out of sync with the orchestra which in turn made the singers miss their cues to come in.
They left the stage briefly before being allowed to restart due to the error not being their fault.
The first-ever nul points
Following the same pattern of technical difficulties, Jemini (2003) entered on behalf of the UK singing the song Cry Baby. They finished the competition with zero points in total and their performance is regarded as one of the worst in the show’s history.
During the performance, they were off-key and claimed that it was a technical fault and they couldn’t hear the backing track. Not the finest entry for the UK.
James Newman (2021) would set another record for somehow scoring nul points once again even after the European Broadcasting Union revamped the voting system. They explicitly stated the new format would mean no artist would ever again leave with zero, but James defied the impossible.
Wardrobe malfunctions
On a different note, there was an interesting blunder during the entrance of the Grand Final in 2009 by Dima Bilan who was the winner the previous year. It was meant to be a dramatic entrance with a harness attached to his back but as he landed, he tried to fling it off and was unsuccessful as it got caught between the harness. It took several of the dancers to help him recover from the embarrassing moment.
in 1985, Eurovision was hosted by Lill Lindfors in Sweden. During the show, she suffered another wardrobe malfunction which resulted in her losing the bottom half of her dress. Apparently, it was pre-planned as she has a dress ready underneath, but for a moment she gave the nation a heart attack!
Stage invaders
During 2010's performance by Spanish artist Daneil Diges, during the song Algo Peqeñito, an intruder ran onto the stage. Usually, security is at its highest levels during these shows to prevent streakers, however, serial Spanish disrupter Jimmy Jump ran onstage and joined in with the dancers, making it all the way to the centre stage but was quickly chased away by security.
The United Kingdom's SuRie also faced an invader in the shape of a protestor. I(t effectively halted the performance but the contest allowed her to restart from scratch near the end of the running order.
Winning tumbles
1999 also saw an interesting failure during the last moments of the show. The winner of Eurovision that year was Dana. As she lifted the trophy, she seemed to lose balance and when the weight of the trophy was too much she awkwardly fell over on live television.
Even though she won, I’m sure she imagined her acceptance speech going differently.
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