2020

 

• Hosted by: Poland

• Won by: France – J’imagine by Valentina

This is the first part of the “French monopoly” saga: 2020 has been a very, very weird year. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers don’t feel right to host live events in front of a packed audience anymore. With the cancellation of the adult contest that year, all hopes of finally consuming proper Eurovision went to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest towards the end of November, which was also compromised. The show would have its base at a television studio, not a venue, at the TVP Headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, and most of the contestants performed in a similar set at home, with only Malta, Serbia and Ukraine showing up. Not even Poland are in the same place as the hosts! Ironically this was one of the ideas for the adult contest that same year to go ahead before being politely rejected.

The contest also saw its smallest number of contestants since 2013: A mere 12, also due to the pandemic, though COVID-19 concerns of traveling are mainly cited as a reason for withdrawal, so it’s on them when the contest switched to a remote format!

Despite unable to capture the glitz and glamour of what they had last year, the event shockingly still attracted a tiny amount of masked audience to the studio, equivalent to how many people lining up to visit a popular tourist attraction. The studio has no space for a green room – fair enough, they stayed at home anyway, what should we call those, the green rooms, plural?

The contest welcomed the grand debut of Germany, the last country of the OG “Big Five” that had regularly appeared in the adult contest to not participate in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. They started their debut with a bang, and by a bang I meant that they sent an emotional ballad named “Stronger with you”. It is usually something that you would hear in a reality show but nevertheless Germany had to start by tasting the wooden spoon. They finished last. Though given that the contest only has 12 participants, not bad, actually!

The million-dollar question is, will Kazakhstan get their revenge after an unforgiving bottle in Polish soil, or will they flop again? This associate member here sent in Karakat Bashanova with her song “Forever”, another, even more emotional ballad, presumably because they couldn’t move on from the 2019 contest, and took advantage from the fact that they’re at home by using the most sophisticated staging available, including breakable props, one of the world’s largest junior dress, prop wings and a star just hanging around. Unlike 2019, Kazakhstan has came close, but their chances of winning the contest was blocked by France over and over again. And ended up 2nd place for the second time in a row. I feel bad for the Kazakhs at this point 😭

The number of douze points from the juries are pretty even. Kazakhstan got 2 douze points, while Belarus and France got three. Belarus’ entry is Arina Pehteriva’s “Aliens”, with the song in general being about aliens invading the world, and sounding like a trailer for a disaster movie. Surely her songwriter wore aluminum foil heads, the voters didn’t, who sent Belarus to 5th place. Meanwhile, the Netherlands got us a Totally Spies/The Wiggles/Fource (Dutch entrant from 2017) combo of Unity, yup that’s their group name, who decided to court voters by singing a song about “Best friends”. Again, voters argue that they aren’t, sending the Dutch in 4th place.

It’s been a very long time since the results from the public are consistent with the jury voting. Maybe we should’ve trusted the system when it was introduced back when there were audiences, glamour, and too much dabbing (aka 2017) after all. This year’s bottom five from the juries is also the bottom from the online vote, with the exception 2nd to last, which is Serbia from the juries and Georgia from the public. Georgia is a victim of another robbery this year, being voted 4th by the juries, but went down as far as 11th by the online voters. This goes to show that you still wouldn’t trust the online voters.

 

In the entire history of the JESC, there was never any undisputed winner, there was some that deserved more than the actual winner, and that the actual winner wasn’t better than some. That couldn’t be truer with the current voting system where there’s disagreements between the jury voters and the online voters. However, this year, both sides finally agreed on a song: J’imagine by Valentina Tronel, a song about how much she missed about life before the pandemic, hence the name, combined with the fact that she’s adorable. 

France topped both the jury vote AND the online vote, with an online vote being a landslide, a whopping 252,000-vote margin from the next favorite song from the online voters, Spain, which equates to a 39-point margin, the only entry to have scored triple figures in the online vote. She finished with a nice round number of 200 – the only Eurovision event winner to do so, and, before you say anything, she’s not from Nice, she’s from Rennes. Little did she know, her win would start a new reign of terror, slowly and surely...

Though, in the end, attention wasn’t really on the performances, mostly, people still want to hug Valentina anyway, but on the interval acts. As this was served as compensation for the canceled 2020 adult contest, Duncan Laurence was joined by Roksana Węgiel and Viki Gabor, the contest’s last two winners, to perform his 2019 adult contest winning song “Arcade”. However, he wasn’t physically there, only chroma keying made it looks like he’s there, though the false lighting and incorrect angle (which led to one of his feet somehow floating and made him look flat) gave away anyway. 

The organizers didn’t care, though, as this was taken to the extreme by having ALL participants appearing through the same chroma keying technique to sing the contest’s theme song “Move the world!”, leading to the studio audience seeing an empty studio with some music. Thankfully, Alicja Szemplińska did show up, and not as a virtual cardboard cutout, to perform Poland’s “would-have-been” entry for the 2020 adult contest “Empires”

With the contest coming back to the land of the baguettes after who knows how long, let’s hope there will be 10 more people in the audience next year…

Presentation and format

The show had its base in Studio 5 at the TVP Headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, a building that looks like it came out of a Pablo Picasso painting. All but three acts are performed from home with a consistent setup: A raised circular stage, and a stripy ball that resembles the contest icon, representing the movement of the world and its theme “Move the world!”, demonstrating how small acts lead to big impacts. As this is the first time a country hosts two consecutive editions, Ida Nowakowska, on the right, retuned from last year to host again, the first host to do so consecutively, this time joined by Rafał Brzozowski and Małgorzata Tomaszewska. The latter later represented her country in the 2021 adult contest. 

ALL acts, including those filmed in Poland, are pre-recorded, as the performance cut to a live link of them at home after it has finished. Hence the reprise is just a replay of that same recording. Some traditions had to be broken just to accommodate COVID-19 standards: This includes the parade of nations now merely just a compilation of pre-recorded messages from the contestants, and the handing of the trophy to the winner, which was still in Viki Gabor’s possession even after the winner was announced, because, y’know, Valentina’s in France. But thank goodness no bumpy rides and it was shipped to her smoothly.

Speaking of bumpy rides, this is the first Eurovision event under the executive supervision of Martin Osterdahl, aka Mr. “Good to go”, who would have this role for both major contests until 2025 after a shaky tenure.

Due to the limited number of participants, the number of entries viewers are allowed to vote online is three, no more, no less. This modification, surprisingly, persists to this day. In the scoreboard, the 12 points are now added before every other score to still make it less predictable. Other than that nothing in the voting procedure has changed. Which is surprising since the 2012 and 2013 contests had their spokespeople read ALL points due to also having 12 participants. This results in the 2020 contest being as short as 1 hour and 58 minutes.

Despite these constraints, the postcards continued to being used, which returned to its original 1970 purpose of bulking up of the length of the show instead of acting as filler for the preparations of the performances. Each postcard took place in a different location in Poland. They all began with a short clip of the upcoming performer creating a heart with their hands or otherwise gesturing to the camera, followed by an extended sequence involving dance troupes dancing around cardboard models related to a certain profession. Each postcard ended with the upcoming performer giving a gift to a worker in that profession. Valentina gave a balloon to a random baker.

Writer's note: I've sent Valentina this blog, not necessarily this page, via Instagram DMs. To see if she actually replied, and how many days it has gone since, check out the Welcome page and scroll down, and the FAQ page, also scroll down. If you're reading this, Valentina, welcome to nostalgia.