2024

• Hosted in: Madrid, Spain

• Won by: Georgia – To my mom by Andria Putkaradze

While most of us expect for France to repeat what Poland did in 2019 and 2020, the country, shockingly, decided against hosting. Actually it wasn’t shocking. This past decade, La France have dominated this field, except for one edition that is 2021, but even then France was leading at some point. However, their broadcaster has argued it was a little too much, calling it “a French monopoly on Junior Eurovision” (which is what I named the 2020-23 saga after). And so, it is reasonable for runners-up Spain to host the 2024 contest, exactly 20 years, if you can believe it, since Maria Isabel won the contest with her song “Antes muerta que sencilla”. Don’t worry, Maria is alright. Also, in an equally shocking move, the United Kingdom have decided against participating this year. This is quite surprising given that they have respectable results in the last two years. Though one plausible reason on why the Beeb withdrew is the same as ITV’s: lack of viewership. Well, see you in 17 years’ time!

However, the floods that hit the country earlier that year, especially in Valencia, has put this contest in very, very bad taste. Our hosts did address this though, send out thoughts and prayers, with one of them wearing a black ribbon which looked like a microphone from afar, one of donning a black flower, and one of having nothing at all, despite being a Valencian herself. No offense to the families of the victims of the floods obviously, I’ve experienced it myself. It's rough.

Since the contest loves playing with things, for the first time since 2017, there is a change on the voting procedure. The jury votes are no longer by country by rather by the 12-point ladder. The procedure would start by adding the 1 point given by each national jury and going up the ladder as we go. The 12 points remain being announced by each spokesperson and how the online votes are presented also remain the same.

After we add all of the jury scores sans the 12 points, we find… what?! France as the leader?! You’re kidding me! Unfortunately, after all of this we somehow couldn’t escape the French in this contest, which have sent us a pop song, “Comme ci comme ça” by Titouan Hervo, which sounds shockingly and slightly better than the other winning entries (minus J’imagine, we still love you Valentina) and could fear of another French victory, which at this point could even break the contest.

However, this was proven wrong when the first 12 points were announced. Having seen France tying them as the most successful countries in Junior Eurovision history, the Georgians retaliate: With 11-year-old Andria Putkaradze singing a strong, emotional ode to his mother, “To my mom”, more powerful than “Mzeo”, while being on par with “Golden hour”. With five douze points in a row, they might be on the way to overtake the French entry and averting a potential Armageddon. 

However, when it came to the French jury, being represented by Lissandro (hey, we know you), he gave the points to Armenia. Their entry, “Cosmic Friend” by Leo, as you can see (or not), has space theming, with the song itself being another pop song. What made it stood out here is the use of AR (not AI, we’ll get to that) projecting images only to the viewers at home. Which begged us the question: When will the contest adopt AR? We’ve seen them during 2020 (we don’t talk about who won there but no offense to Valentina lovers of course) and a bit of 2022, but when will we see every participant adopt it fully, downgrading the experience of watching it in person?

The next jury, North Macedonia, have other plans, they put their high marks to the Ukrainian entry. Their entry is “Hear me now” by Artem Kotenko, a powerful dance-pop, Matrix-like entry, praised for both staging and emotional weight. While somehow at one point during the performance he trapped himself in a box and shouted at the viewers, even though we didn’t understand anything. Questionable? Yes. Yes, please. Poland also gave the Ukrainian entry 12 points, overtaking France first, with Georgia giving out 12 points to Armenia. Thus ending the first half of jury voting in third place for the Georgians.

Before we continue, let’s list some honorable mentions: Malta gave us a love ballad while performing in front of the sun (not sure what’s the message there), our hosts has a vibrant tribute to Lola Flores, which even the Wiwibloggs ranked it as their #1 pre-contest favorite, though Chloe Delarosa bizarrely promoted her tour during the performance. The Netherlands, oh god, the Netherlands, they had the most uncreative names for a song AND group ever, “Music” by Stay Tuned. No wonder why they finished 12th. Finally, North Macedonia told us to RUN RUN RUN!

Second half now. After another 12 points to Georgia, the German spokesperson unexpectedly gave 12 points to the Portuguese entry, or was it expected? It’s been 22 editions of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest and there’s not a single edition without a ballad. Though as I mentioned in my previous entries, it’s JESC tradition anyway. It was an emotional, stirring ballad about hope, her performance resonated deeply with viewers. Hence why Portugal won the online vote too. Unfortunately, this was their only 12 points that night as business went on as usual. As the rest of the points went to Georgia, so much so their point tally overflown. Thank every single deity in the universe no one gave 12 points to France as Georgia topped the jury vote.

Of course, that never tell the full story. Take Albania for example, being voted the 5th most popular songs amongst the juries, the 4th-from-bottom position in the online vote brought them down to 7th. North Macedonia (you know, that run run run song?) went from 11th to 16th while Cyprus went from 12th to 15th, still finding their form, by the way. Thankfully, this year’s contest was considered to be France’s embarrassment, losing their podium spot to Ukraine and Georgia kept their first place finish even after the online vote. Disaster averted. Andria Putkaradze walked away as the greatest Junior Eurovision winner of all time, while Georgia once again became the outright most successful country in the contest. Somewhere in the commentary box, Valentina threw her pair of headphones. (we still love you)

That was a lot of fun, same voting procedure next year, please? Pretty pleeeeeeeease?

Presentation and format

After France declined to host, the first time last year’s winning country didn’t host since 2018, the contest flew to la Caja Magica in the capital of Madrid. The show was hosted by Ruth Lorenzo, who represented her country in the 2014 adult contest, Marc Clotet, an actor and model, and Melani Garcia, who competed in the 2019 JESC. Up until this point, all contests since 2016 has been held on a Sunday, so it's surprising to see the show being held at a quite cold Saturday night instead.

We’d like to thank the organizers, not just for hosting the event during hard times, but also thank god they didn’t adopt the permanent “United by Music” slogan like the adult contest and instead continue to have unique themes every year, this year it’s “Let’s bloom”, and the stage at a floral theme in it, accompanied by the contest’s first vertical LED screen since 2012. This year’s trophy was bafflingly changed: Now to a conclave disc on top of a column. Was that supposed to be a microphone?

As aforementioned, there was a new voting procedure this year, announcing the points by points in the 12-point scale, starting from the 1 point then going up from there, ending with the 12 points which, of course remains being announced by the spokespeople. Not counting the pandemic-hit 2020, for the first time since 2012, the spokespeople did not show up on stage, in fact, their announcements are pre-recorded. I see you’re saving money, huh? The scoreboard is also unique, each country’s point tally is now a column filling up as points add up, arranged from left to right by performing order. Basically the 1964-65 scoreboard turned on its side. When it’s time to announce the online voting results, the scoreboard returned to a more traditional, horizontal self-ordering one, with the progress bar theme kept. Reception on this procedure was mixed, but it's not as bad as the postcards!

The show was opened with the common song "Let's bloom" featuring all participants alongside Zoe Clauzure, Sandra Valero and Maria Isabel (see I told you!), an instrumental variant of the song was used for the postcards, which consists of the image of the contestant alternating between real footage and AI-generated imagery. It isn’t even the most advanced one at the time, the AI still ruins big time, including the classic hands. This unsurprisingly met with backlash. Estonia, Germany and Poland also allegedly used AI for their staging, which, alongside the theme art no doubt made this year the laziest JESC ever! The North Macedonian postcard was interrupted midway by Ruth ranting in the green room. I like this idea, Ruth Lorenzo as detox from AI.