2017

 

• Hosted in: Tbilisi, Georgia

• Won by: Russia – Wings by Polina Bogusevich

After a quite extravagant voting system that was used in 2016, the procedure was normalized by 2017. Sort of. While the audience gets to vote and influence the results again, the old televoting system did not came back, instead the contest introduced the new “online voting”, with all votes from the public now being handled solely on JESC’s website, free of charge. Organizers have found a problem in this system, however, as there is no viable solution to block viewers from voting for their own country – but they call it a feature anyway, making it the first time a Eurovision event allowed viewers to vote for their own country, which no doubt caused concerns about manipulation. At the very least, they can finally open the vote to all countries with an internet connection, not just the participating countries.

Unfortunately, how each country, as well as the Rest of the World, voted for via online voting has never been made public. All we know is that Netherlands topped the televote- I mean online vote with 112 points, the only country to have scored triple digits in the online vote. Every year we’ve seen at least 3 ballads about love… this year the Netherlands decided to send a boyband and a catchy love song titled, you guessed it, “Love Me”. The juries, however, aren’t impressed with their colored jackets, dancing, and of course, song. Who only gave the Dutch 9th place, landing in 4th place overall. The boyband, Fource, would have their female equivalent of Unity representing for the Netherlands also in 2020.

This year saw the grand return of Portugal, who made their first appearance since 2007 and whom their win in the adult contest earlier that year encouraged them. I’m confused about their entry however – why wouldn’t they take what works in the adult contest and stick with it? It works for Georgia last year, in fact it’ll bring even more tears than Mariam… uhhh what’s her last name again? Regardless, they sent Mariana Venâncio with her song, and this is true, “YouTuber”. Brand names and knockoffs is something you would expect from late 2000s-early 2010s Armenia, not 2017 Portugal! Everyone else certainly agreed. Despite having questionable results in the online voting, 9th place (forgive them, even Portuguese viewers can vote for her after all), a jury result of 2nd to last brought them down to 3rd to last. Surely they’ll withdraw next year, right?! (spoiler: no)

The contest saw two equally bad robberies. First is our gracious hosts Georgia, who got us another ballad. Not Mariam Icantspellhersurname levels of emotions, but those reminiscent of the early days of Junior Eurovision. They topped the jury vote, but when it comes to the online vote, again despite their own viewers able to vote for them, only manages to scrape 12th. I repeat, 12th. At the very least, they get 2nd place overall (not bad for a defending champion!), even worse is Malta, who got us a song about Nostalgia… again. In their defense, “Dawra Tond” by Gianluca Tolia is an upbeat pop song, not some outdated jazz. They got 2nd in the online vote but once again the juries aren’t equally impressed, who voted Malta for 13th place. Sending Malta down to 9th.

Meanwhile though we got two guitarists – Ukraine’s Anastasiya Baginska’s co-performer and Ireland’s Maria Iside Fiore. Neither of the guitarists have a microphone attached to the instrument – making it incredibly easy to fake it… Maybe. In the end, these two went for both spectrums: Ukraine finished 7th while Ireland finished 15th, second from last. Meanwhile, if there’s an award of most consistent entry, give it to Australia, they finished 3rd in the jury vote, online vote, and overall. Poland also finished 7th in both the jury and online votes, but only managed 8th.

In the end though, where you finished in the online or jury voting doesn’t really matter – all it matters is the overall result. So coming on top is Polina Bogusevich with her song “Wings”, a soaring power ballad written by Taras Demchuk, showcasing Polina’s strong and mature vocals at just 14. Despite finishing 6th in the online vote, 66 points was enough for Russia to overtake Georgia, winning the contest for the first time since the Tolmachevy Sisters in 2006 – and they’re adult Eurovision entrants now!

With Russia taking the trophy, surely we’re finally going to Russia, right? RIGHT?! (This is called foreshadowing)

Presentation and format

After 3 Junior Eurovision wins, Georgia finally hosted the JESC at the Olympic Palace in Tbilisi. The show was hosted by Helen Kalandadze and Liza Japaridze, the latter, better known as Lizi Pop, is the first kid to become the main host of the contest since the annoying Ioana Ivan in 2006, and also the first former Junior Eurovision entrant to do so, having represented Georgia in 2014. This would kickstart a tradition where former JESC contestants would host the contest since, even if it takes a while to implement. Lizi dabbed a lot during the show like it’s a bygone era.

Polina was lucky enough to become the first recipient of the new Junior Eurovision trophy – and this time it’s permanent! Designed by the same designer as the adult contest, the trophy is parallel to it, being a more modern, much smaller glass microphone with colored lines inside it symbolizing the flow of sound. It would stay there until 2024. And no, no one managed to break it fortunately. This year the maximum percentage allowed for a song to be performed in a language other than their own went from 25%, as this has been the case since 2009, to 40%.

2017 saw the adult and kids’ jury being merged, resulting in the abolition of the latter that has been used as a pan-European panel in 2012 and as country specific ones in 2016. Now the juries consisting of 3 music industry professionals and 2 children. Audience involvement, as aforementioned, came back in the form of online voting, which is opened to all countries worldwide, not just the ones participating in the contest, free of charge (anyone who proposed reviving an idea of donating televote money to charities are no doubt baffled). Viewers are able vote for their own country while the juries, obviously, still can't. However in the early days, viewers are only able to vote for no less than 3 entries, and no more than 5.

Due to the presence of the Rest of the World vote, the number of votes from each country did not convert to standard Eurovision points a la 2016, but instead the number of votes each country get are converted into points based on percentage of total actual votes. The lines were open beforehand and closes at the start of the show, only to be open again for 15 minutes after the very last song have been performed. This type of online voting persists to this day.

The postcards now start from activity in the host country, followed by the contestant introducing themselves and their song. This would be last time the contestants did this as tradition since 2004, being barred on only 3 occasions. Russia’s postcard featured people playing on the seaside of Batumi, with one of them buying a souvenir boat, before Polina Bogusevich appears holding that same boat.

The introductory captions, bizarrely enough, featured the image of the upcoming artist.