2019

 

• Hosted in: Gliwice, Poland

• Won by: Poland – Superhero by Viki Gabor

For the entire 16-year history of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, no country have ever won the contest on home soil, by extension no country have ever managed to defend their title. The closest to this last time out is when Georgia finished runners-up in 2017, mainly because the online voting robbed them from going twice in a row.

That finally changed when Poland – yes, Poland – slayed the competition once again. And for the first time ever, the online voters finally know what a decent song is (or was that Polish viewers) and voted Viki Gabor’s “Superhero” first. The song is a dynamic pop anthem blending Polish and English lyrics with an empowerment message—"saving the planet" theme praised for its maturity. It blended the languages so well you wouldn’t even notice!

There is, however, an EBU associate member still desperate for winning a Eurovision event – no, not Australia, it’s Kazakhstan. Knowing what sticks and what isn’t, they sent in Yerzham Maxim with a dramatic pop‑power ballad featuring powerful vocals and over-the-top staging, with live holographic effects. At first, it worked, receiving douze points from seven countries, Poland included. However, when it comes to the online vote, they only got the 5th highest score, dropping down to 2nd place, the best result from an EBU associate member in any Eurovision event.

If you’re wondering how Australia did, they did… okay. They got us Jordan Anthony and his song “We will rise”, another hopeful and emotional anthem, with Jordan himself starting his performance by cosplaying as Duncan Lawrence. They finished 8th. 8 points over them is Italy, who sent another song that made Vincenzo Cantinello sound like an after-afterthought, and still didn’t win.

With a last place finish in 2018, will the Welsh capitalize by finishing in higher positions? Yes. This year they went from bottom place to… second to bottom. It was also an okay entry, a song named “Heart beating” with a not-so-memorable refrain, and sounding like a YouTuber’s first attempt on the music industry. It did scrape a few points from the juries, a grand total of nine, and 26 points from the online vote, the lowest for any country, ending up 18th. They only beat Malta, our wooden spoon winner of 2019, who got 2 points from the jury vote and 27 from the public. Even worse is Portugal, no points from the public, but the 43 points are enough to finish above Wales.

Despite being the 12th most watched programme on S4C that weekend, their execs aren’t really impressed about their flop results in 2 of their appearances, and so opted to not compete for the contest ever again. Wales would return, albeit as part of the United Kingdom, in 2022. Ireland were thankful to have fared better than Wales, with their haunting Irish ballad finishing 12th.

It’s weird to call the “big three”, well, the “big three”, since they only dominate 2003 and 2004, otherwise it’s a playground for ex-Soviet countries. Nevertheless, this is the first time since 2014 that a member of a bygone era appeared – Spain! Freaking Spain! If you remember, they withdrew from 2007 onwards since the program didn’t align with the broadcaster’s values, but the JESC is growing, and so are they. They returned with Melani Garcia’s “Marte”, another emotional ballad about environmental protection, and thanks to that, they got back to a position where they belonged: 3rd place. We’re SO back.

As the JESC staying in Poland, and the country’s on their way in equalizing Georgia on number of titles, surely they’ll make it three, right?

Presentation and format

The show was held at the Gilwice Arena in, you guessed it, Gilwice, Poland, and hosting duties was handled by Ida Nowakowska, Aleksander Sikora and Roksana Węgiel. The latter meant for the first time ever, a reigning JESC winner hosted the contest. The show made use of a kite graphic, with a similar one donning the relevant country’s flag appearing on the DOG replacing the performing order. Despite a brief abolition in 2018, the EBU continued giving out first refusals for the winning country to host the next year's contest to this day.

How the online votes are presented are also changed this year, going from ascending online vote order to ascending jury vote order, with the next receiving country always be the lowest scoring country that is yet to receive any public votes. This was used in the adult contest earlier that year.

The postcards consist of the participant looking through a telescope seeing activity taking place around Poland, Viki Gabor is watching a bunch of people playing table football… on a literal football pitch. I have problems processing…