#not to mention that they average the 5 juror rankings so it kind of discourages individual thought anyway

[peaceowatermeln]

you wanna know what my thing is about the jury? well too bad, i’m gonna tell you anyway.

two words: elitism and subjectivity

so, the point of the jury is that they (supposedly) have more music knowledge and therefore are better and more impartial judges of music, right? (i mean… we know that’s bullshit but that’s the design)

well here’s the thing. like most art forms, music is subjective, meaning what someone thinks about a song is influenced by their own taste, opinions, and feelings. this doesn’t magically disappear once you learn… i dunno, how time signatures work, for example. someone with music knowledge would be able to hear a song with something musically neat in it and go “hey, that’s neat” but ultimately that doesn’t change if the sound of the song lines up with their own taste.

(and as someone with a music degree, lemme tell you, having music knowledge doesn’t make a listening experience any more helpful or enjoyable.)

so, in our eurovision setting, where the entire point of the contest is to rank songs and crown a winner based on what is the most universally liked, and everybody voting (including our beloved juries) has their own opinions and biases about music and what is appealing to them, why are juries held as these objective elites with The Facts of what good music is? why are the opinions of 5 people who can maybe acknowledge a cool drum pattern worth the same as the opinions of the rest of a country’s over-18 population?

because they’re more impartial? sure jan.

#tip your waitresses i’m here all week #with my eurovision thoughts and opinions #but also thoughts about like.. the music industry and being an artist and all that fun stuff #you have probably all come to this conclusion yourselves #and someone has probably said this better #but yeah #there’s also something to be said for staging being a more important factor than the song itself just in the voting stages #i also have a lot of thoughts about sweden as a pop songwriting factory and curating the pop standard which is its own kettle of fish #not to mention that they average the 5 juror rankings so it kind of discourages individual thought anyway #shout out to maqwell’s 2023 song ranking video for helping me solidify these thoughts #eurovision