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Alright, so Peter had this idea epiphany idea..? thing… he was thinking through. So we’re just gonna hear him out.

This is actually kinda fun.

Okay, onto the show…

TLDR: The music is really actually fucking awful, and I'm not sure if there even could be a business for this. But the shitty music is (purposefully) going to save your country’s economy.

So, the Eurovision song contest just announced 2024 winner last night. It was Switzerland's Nemo with "The Code".

Americans really don't care. We find this contest so fucking weird we had to have Will Ferrell explain it to us in a Netflix movie in the pandemic.

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Excuse me, what the f*** is going on?

Yeah, alright.

Eurovision viewership has been dropping the last few years, fueled by or just perhaps coincidentally timed with the cancellation of the 2020 contest. 

It seems that the break, which coincided with a Will Ferrell film being released (telling a story that could be sarcastically described as the moneyball of europop), may have prompted some to ask "why are we even doing this?".  

Viewership has dropped around 12% between 2021 and 2022, which coincided with Russia being banned from the contest and presumably not broadcasting it publicly to the ~20M people they did before. 

Sir, this is a serious newsletter

Yeah no…it’s not. Anyway…

Even if viewership hasn't dropped in an unexpected way, the songs and artists themselves aren't all that well-known or popular, even in Europe.  

This has resulted in a strange strategy among the competing nations to perform songs in English (90% of winning songs since 2000 have been sung in English), resulting in very cringe lyrics and messaging that simply tries to cast a wide net of appeal. in recent years this has extended to genre; in this year's contest many of the top 5 front runners were self-described as genre bending. To those with ears, this means random tempo changes, weird dubsteppy sound effects and production that makes everything sound a little like One Republic.

Croatia's best effort, a singer-songwriter who goes by 'Baby Lasagna,' was the clear popular choice by the public. this was reflected in the public betting markets (where they had an implied 57-67% chance of winning), and in a somewhat strong showing on streaming metrics. 

However, his song was bad. And I mean so bad, I listened to it twice to make sure it was actually as bad as i first thought. it only got worse.

Croatia didn't have any history of winning, but the public loves an underdog story and can surely still remember their fierce campaign to second place in the 2018 FIFA cup. 

Ireland, who is tied for most wins with the host country Sweden (7), very obviously didn't care to win and nominated an absolutely atrocious act (Bambie Thug) this year that made me literally say "JFC"  Bambie Thug's music sounds like sequences from moderately disturbing exorcism films.

The only song that structurally resembled a song was France's submission, but neither the public nor the jury got very excited about formulaic amid all of the sensationalized and extreme stage performances in the competition.

Okay I’ve gotten this far so please get to the point. Also…wtf did you do all week for this?

Researchers have shown that winning the Eurovision has positive correlation with improvements in tourism and entertainment sectors of winners' economies, which in theory creates a decent incentive to sponsor popular acts that are a good representation of the country's art scene.  not a hard concept to grasp. 

Will ferrell even wrote a movie about an outside bid winning the contest in 2020, a year that coincidentally (OR WAS IT?) saw the contest get canceled due to the covid-19 pandemic. A major plotline dealt with the contest's potential for perverse incentive on the part of countries to field shitty acts. 

What AI Made This Week

Sick Fits by Ahmed

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We have no gas in the tank left this week. Enjoy this shitty compilation.

Have a great week!

Ahmed and Peter