31 May 2012
Ireland’s best Eurovision placing of the 2000s was actually in 2000, when a man with a mullet sang a soft rock power ballad called ‘Millennium Of Love’ and finished sixth. (Bambie Thug has since equalled that sixth-place finish in 2024.) One place above him was a German comedian in a yellow cowboy hat and glam-rock gear, singing a novelty disco song in a made-up dialect. Today, even the semi-finals are of a higher standard than that. Eurovision has become youthful and energetic, once again launching new stars such as Måneskin but now also rooting itself in modern dance-pop and in recent years presenting a line-up of genuinely good songs. As a non-ironic fan of pop music, I find 2020s Eurovision essential viewing, and back in the days of mullety soft-rock power ballads I never thought I’d be saying that. If we had to pick a turning point for Eurovision’s fortunes in this regard, I’d say it was Loreen’s ‘Euphoria’ – the first Eurovision winner to top the Irish charts in twenty years and the first non-Irish Eurovision winner to do so in thirty.
How did ‘Euphoria’ do it? Well, it has two undeniable strengths. Firstly, while its intro and verses are wispy trance, that cathedral-vaulting chorus is an anthemic dancefloor belter: a boom-bang-a-banger, if you will. Secondly, there’s Loreen herself. The football-speak cliches of commitment—going all-in, leaving nothing out there, giving it 110%—don’t do justice to her performance. She wills herself into becoming the physical manifestation of that chorus, inseparable from its soaring, swooping intensity. How can we tell Loreen from the chorus of ‘Euphoria’? We can’t.
‘Euphoria’ was a clear winner of Eurovision 2012, though that’s damning Loreen with faint praise: her less-than-illustrious competitors on the night included Jedward, Engelbert Humperdinck and the folk-techno Russian grannies. She’s since come back for a second win and a seventh for Sweden, matching the respective records of Johnny Logan and Ireland, with the less combustible but equally compelling ‘Tattoo’ in 2022. Were she to return with a song just as good as ‘Euphoria’ or ‘Tattoo’ for a third win and break our records, even the most ardent of green-jersey-and-white-suit-wearing Irish Eurovision fans would find it hard to begrudge her, much.
