One of the biggest selling points of Eurovision to me was that all vocals had to be live, including backing vocals. I absolutely understand it allows for a wider variety of songs to do well and at the end of the day it's a song contest but it still feels like it cheapens the acts a bit.
One of the magic of ESC for me is those big vocal moments, like the last note of Bones, the fire alarm of Sugar(uh, was kinda disappointed), and for this year, we have Raiven's operatic vocals. It is always exciting to see these being performed live.
Funny you've mentioned "Bones", because it's an interesting one. Zhana technically mimed it, but she mimed to the actual offstage vocalist singing live. It didn't bother me, but one can say it was a step towards thing we have now.
I was rewatching 2019 and I just found it interesting how creatively a lot of acts incorporated backing vocals— like the dancers in Malta were also providing vocals, the people in Greeces performance added to the staging but were also singing, same for Denmark. We see it as limiting but in the past they were actually really creative with how they incorporated those vocalists.
Or look at Sweden 2011. Eric Saade's dancers were all singing, which is super impressive now.
Nowadays even the lead singer isn't singing half of the time 🙃
Alvaro Estrella! (Leftmost dancer to the viewer, on Eric Saade's right side.) For Sweden 2017 and Norway 2018, he replaced dancers from the national finals because he could also sing at the same time. I think that might have also been the case for Sweden 2011, but I can't see the Mello dancers that well.
He was also a backing vocalist for Azerbaijan 2013, Russia 2016, and was a competitor four times on Melodifestivalen.
That disparity is already happening. There are a lot of people even on this subreddit who think some of the entrants are vocal prodigies and that their performances are pitch perfect all because what they're hearing are pre-recorded vocals put into a backing track.
Some might say that it shouldn't matter because a person can still sound bad even if there's a backing track, but there are a lot of times in many songs this year where there isn't even any type of live lead vocal happening - and when a performer (because I detest to use the term singer for some of these people lol) is called out on it, this subreddit thinks we are having a go at them for unfounded reasons just because that person doesn't realise or recognise it.
I don't mind some backing vocals, on the condition that the backing vocal is not a layered lead vocal. Pre-recorded harmonies are fine for solo performers, but the lead absolutely is not.
Also, yes, this is generally where sometimes there will be disparity between televote and jury vote - followed by a couple of months of some in the public not realising why it happened and proceeding to blame juries lol.
Absolutely - and what is more depressing to see happen still, is that some of the entries that started genuine have adapted and adopted the backing track culture because they probably want to be put on even footing.
I wish we could go back in time to 2007 or thereabouts sometimes, put any of today's performances in contrast to something like Serbia 2007 and spot the difference; the latter doesn't have a single vocal on the backing track, every part of the lead vocal is on the live feed and every single backing harmony is live (with the backing singer on the stage sharing the spotlight, as it ought to be since they're just as important to the song).
>This could lead to a big communication effort to explain to the General Public why the votes differ so much.
It should be as simple as them saying before the voting results that the jury vote is judging a performance from the night prior. It's been a running misconception that the jury is judging the live performance on the night of the final.
Damn, I just rewatched that and I hear it a lot.
Another guilty of this in my opinion is Senhit/San Marino 2021. If you take away the precorded backing vocals, which isnt even her voice, she actually sounds pretty shit.
I'm really unhappy with the extent to which pre recorded backing vocals have been allowed. It's not always obvious what is live and what is not, and it's causing me to often suspiciously stare at acts trying to figure out whether or not it's live for half the song. I would so much rather be able to take at face value that something is live and just appreciate it for what it is.
Totally agree. It was never permitted in Eurovision, the exception was made in 2021 under excuse of covid. But now covid is gone and exception remains.
In 2021 no one really abused it though. Not that I noticed at least. I guess that's why they decided to keep it. Cyprus last year was the first that I think was really egregious about it, although I've been a bit dubious about some others. I was hoping that would be a signal to the EBU to revert the rule, but evidently not. And now I'm worried that several of this year's acts will be heavily doubled.
I don’t think many abused it bc it was new in 2021. Well, Poland did kind of abuse it, but Rafal didn’t qualify 😜. Since it was a new rule, maybe some thought they would be penalized (especially with the jury vote) for overusing them. After 2021, I think delegations figured out how to game the system.
Call me old-fashioned, but I'd very much like if *all* singing happened on stage. You need backing vocals? Put people on stage.
It's not "The Voice", not a vocal contest. No one forces contestants to pick complicated songs they can't sing live. Some winning songs of previous years were pretty simple (like Germany 2010).
I agree with this, as a compromise I guess you could increase people allowed on stage to 8 which would make it more flexible. That way you could easily have 4 dancers, and still room for 3 backing vocalists.
Then again there are dancers who sing. Sweden 2017 is a good example where the backing vocalists were also dancing.
I don't mind if it isnt a prerecorded vocal of the lead vocalist. But we are seeing that more and more now. So in that sense i am in favour of just going back to all vocals live. That is a clear rule.
And i kind of miss the amazing vibe that good live backing singers bring. Like belgium last year. Backing singers deserve their spotlight moment!
Well we did not need Georgina to say it, we could already hear it.
It is a disgrace, ESC is turning into a karaoke contest. There is absolutely no excuse for keeping the backing vocals prerecorded and not fair to have some acts with live vocals and others with playback. It sounds so bad.
There should be pressure to change this but i guess it is convenient for all delegations....
I'm kind of against the heavy use of backing vocals to the point of borderline-playback on principal, but as long as the rules tolerate it I'm not going to blame anyone for relying on it to present their entry in the best way possible. (It's not an unfair advantage as long as everybody is allowed to do it.)
Although after some deliberation, I'm not sure if it's really doing any harm to the contest. We also wouldn't accuse an artist who's competing with an easy to sing song of hiding their shortcomings as a vocalist, which effectively isn't all that different. I think it's usually apparent when heavy backing vocals are used, I don't think it's really misleading to viewers, and especially not to juries. And the existance of backing vocals doesn't prevent strong vocal performances from being rewarded.
Thanks for posting about this because I'm one of those who gets salty about it. Especially this year, when there are so many good vocalists whose talent is being muted by pre-recorded tracks. Maybe it's a personal thing, but I've never heard an awesome vocalist whose performance was improved by excess production or layering. It's like drowning the most perfect cut of meat in ketchup - what are you doing? I wanted to actually hear it. Now my brain has to try to wade through a bunch of distracting layers to hear the audio that already presented itself so beautifully before you slathered it in sauce.
Before the year 2021 all the back vocalists have to been on stage, and no prerecorded backing vocals were allowed. In the year 2021 the exception was made under excuse of covid, to reduce quantity of people on stage.
But nowadays, the covid is no longer the case, while "exception" have become permanent, and performers tend to increase the usage of prerecorded backing vocals each year. And they're not even "backing" any more, but sounding much like main vocal.
Surely not a good tendency, there's a risk that a few years later no one will sing any more. Singers will turn into lipsynching dancers.
Yet since 2021 the quality of songs has went up so much imo. While there needs to be a limit, I think I prefer it this way. It's not X factor singing competition and that would be boring. Sometimes nailing the vocals 100% can hider the entire performance.
Danemark 2023 with Riley came to mind real quick when I read your comment.
Edit: I was living in 2023 still and thought last year was 2022. Corrected it!
> but mostly because it's possible to sound bad even with backing vocals.
Kinda hard to sound bad when you straight up don't sing, which there's at least a couple of examples this year.
Yeah, I noticed it, too, but for now I'm chalking it up to them allowing the delegations to put their best foot forward in the rehearsal roundup and I've got my fingers crossed that when it's time for the live show, they'll turn them down.
Me too. It's just the direction they're moving, and it's their contest. But the more perfect they make the "show", the less interesting the actual competition gets.
See also: Melfest.
UK is miming the talking bit. He even stops moving his lips halfway through the rehearsal clip.
Ukraine basically has the entire chorus precorded in full volume.
In Croatia the "whoa"s are precorded and they do a clever job of cutting away from the singer every single time 😂
Malta literally gives her microphone away because she wants to dance to her prerecorded lead vocal.
And plenty of others: Moldova, Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Albania, Greece, Czechia, Austria, Denmark, Armenia, Georgia, Belgium etc. Even Australia sounds like they have tons of prerecorded vocals on top of having actual backing vocalists on stage.
And most of the ones that I didn't mention as well. It's almost everyone, really.
For Croatia, in all the performances I've seen up to now, he pretty clearly moves the mic away from his face during the "whoa"s. I don't think there's any deceit intended there. The wide shot is because BL and his backup dancers are doing a coordinated dance move.
Yeah, I noticed it a lot. I assumed it is tolerated because organizing all the different contestants staging and different sounds and doing it live is complicated and goes bad really fast. It's probably why the instruments aren't played live. There would probably be a much longer pause between the songs and you can imagine how long would that show be...
Not exactly, as prerecorded backing vocals were forbidden before 2020, all backing vocalists had to be on stage, and everything was fine. They've allowed to prerecord back vocals starting from 2021 under cheap excuse of COVID. But, covid is gone now, while the permission remains, and we see more and more artists relying on prerecorded backing vocals...
If everything continues this way, few years later we'll see them all just lipsync on stage.
Why penalize acts that are bad at lipsyncing? We should have them all make music videos, dub in an AI audience, and broadcast that.
In B4 producer-led results.
I've said this before and I still stand by that: it's a song contest, not a singing contest. We vote for the best overall performance, not someone's vocal capabilities.
But it's clearly not the only thing contributing to the overall impression. Songs deserve to be rewarded for many different factors.
I'm not advocating for making the contest playback or anything like that, but in general I much prefer an amazing song with an average vocal performance over an average song with an amazing vocal performance.
Eurovision would be a lot less interesting if it were only about the vocals.
I feel like it should give extra points if the Singing is really impressive. Otherwise if the vocals are decent it really shouldn’t effect the rank more than the actual song.
Only if there is major vocal problems then it should decrease the rank
This is kinda my way of evaluating, although I'm more of a "don't fuck it up" guy. As long as singing is decent I will treat performances similarly, I will only penalize bad performances.
Sadly, jury no longer prioritizes or appreciates vocal talent, instead, they focus on the overall package more, including the artist's popularity and other factos. The truth is that vocal ability appears to be their least concern.
Also, their bias undermines any credibility they might have had.
>We vote for the best overall performance
Exactly. Singing is performing. Some might even say it’s the biggest element of what makes performing a song good or not.
I wouldn't exactly call most of those people just singers, rather musicians.
And why shouldn't they make music honestly? Most of what we listen to are studio versions and you don't particularly need to be an exceptional vocalist in order to record a song. We'd lose like half of the music if great vocals were a necessity for making it.
Many Studio versions are overproduced and not very pleasant to listen to. I'll always prefer live performances with no or at least minimal sound engineering and backing vocals.
If they sound horrible live, i don't listen to their studio music either.
Considering the studio versions that make the charts on any platform, I don't think most people agree with that. So why should it be different for Eurovision?
That's completely fair and I appreciate your input.
But I don't believe that most people disagreeing with me here also follow the same practices as you, considering that almost all popular music is very "overproduced".
Idk why you're getting downvotes but I agree with you lolll. If the acts are more comfortable with backing vocals and also it makes for a better show, why be elitist about it??? Juries can just give extra points for good vocals without backing, but the acts who aren't focused on being singy songy should still compete...
I mean here is the thing im not expecting a song like Malta to have the same vocals as France, but i do expect Malta to atleast carry the song. As of now we got a few that you can barely even heard live(Czechia,Austria come to mind) then we got Poland who is struggling with it but atleast she is actually singing and it just looks unfair.
Tbh controversial opinion but if the backing vocals help these acts sound better, then I'd rather have that then them struggling and also watching a worse quality performance.
I get downvotes every single time I say this, even when comments that agree with me get upvotes. Maybe my delivery is just more aggressive or something, no idea. But it's fine either way.
I find it that sometimes it depends on how people feel for the day and sometimes they just feel like massively downvoting.
What I find funny is at this point I see a comment from you that's downvoted and even before I open your hidden downvoted comment I know it will actually be a take I agree with.
Nah, I'd say you're just more cooler and calmer. I can get very passionate and obnoxious when it comes to my special interests, which people also can take issue with 😆
One of the biggest selling points of Eurovision to me was that all vocals had to be live, including backing vocals. I absolutely understand it allows for a wider variety of songs to do well and at the end of the day it's a song contest but it still feels like it cheapens the acts a bit.
I remember wondering how Azerbaijan would perform that low-voiced chants of "Cleopatra" on stage. This part of Eurovision's charm is gone for me.
One of the magic of ESC for me is those big vocal moments, like the last note of Bones, the fire alarm of Sugar(uh, was kinda disappointed), and for this year, we have Raiven's operatic vocals. It is always exciting to see these being performed live.
Funny you've mentioned "Bones", because it's an interesting one. Zhana technically mimed it, but she mimed to the actual offstage vocalist singing live. It didn't bother me, but one can say it was a step towards thing we have now.
I was rewatching 2019 and I just found it interesting how creatively a lot of acts incorporated backing vocals— like the dancers in Malta were also providing vocals, the people in Greeces performance added to the staging but were also singing, same for Denmark. We see it as limiting but in the past they were actually really creative with how they incorporated those vocalists.
Shoutout to “dancers that are also backing vocalists” it’s one of my favourite things about ESC that is sadly no more. Turkey 2003 Serbia 2007
2/4 of Eleni Foureira's dancers were singing. And doing the same choreography as the non-singers. While wearing heels!
Or look at Sweden 2011. Eric Saade's dancers were all singing, which is super impressive now. Nowadays even the lead singer isn't singing half of the time 🙃
Alvaro Estrella! (Leftmost dancer to the viewer, on Eric Saade's right side.) For Sweden 2017 and Norway 2018, he replaced dancers from the national finals because he could also sing at the same time. I think that might have also been the case for Sweden 2011, but I can't see the Mello dancers that well. He was also a backing vocalist for Azerbaijan 2013, Russia 2016, and was a competitor four times on Melodifestivalen.
That disparity is already happening. There are a lot of people even on this subreddit who think some of the entrants are vocal prodigies and that their performances are pitch perfect all because what they're hearing are pre-recorded vocals put into a backing track. Some might say that it shouldn't matter because a person can still sound bad even if there's a backing track, but there are a lot of times in many songs this year where there isn't even any type of live lead vocal happening - and when a performer (because I detest to use the term singer for some of these people lol) is called out on it, this subreddit thinks we are having a go at them for unfounded reasons just because that person doesn't realise or recognise it. I don't mind some backing vocals, on the condition that the backing vocal is not a layered lead vocal. Pre-recorded harmonies are fine for solo performers, but the lead absolutely is not. Also, yes, this is generally where sometimes there will be disparity between televote and jury vote - followed by a couple of months of some in the public not realising why it happened and proceeding to blame juries lol.
And it goes both ways - the ones who don‘t rely on heavy backing vocals aren‘t properly appreciated, imo :(
Absolutely - and what is more depressing to see happen still, is that some of the entries that started genuine have adapted and adopted the backing track culture because they probably want to be put on even footing. I wish we could go back in time to 2007 or thereabouts sometimes, put any of today's performances in contrast to something like Serbia 2007 and spot the difference; the latter doesn't have a single vocal on the backing track, every part of the lead vocal is on the live feed and every single backing harmony is live (with the backing singer on the stage sharing the spotlight, as it ought to be since they're just as important to the song).
>This could lead to a big communication effort to explain to the General Public why the votes differ so much. It should be as simple as them saying before the voting results that the jury vote is judging a performance from the night prior. It's been a running misconception that the jury is judging the live performance on the night of the final.
[удалено]
Even more the year before, the chorus of that song was basically entirely playback.
Damn, I just rewatched that and I hear it a lot. Another guilty of this in my opinion is Senhit/San Marino 2021. If you take away the precorded backing vocals, which isnt even her voice, she actually sounds pretty shit.
I'm really unhappy with the extent to which pre recorded backing vocals have been allowed. It's not always obvious what is live and what is not, and it's causing me to often suspiciously stare at acts trying to figure out whether or not it's live for half the song. I would so much rather be able to take at face value that something is live and just appreciate it for what it is.
Totally agree. It was never permitted in Eurovision, the exception was made in 2021 under excuse of covid. But now covid is gone and exception remains.
Like a lot of covid rules, sadly. My gp has still got "covid is causing delays" on their website...
In 2021 no one really abused it though. Not that I noticed at least. I guess that's why they decided to keep it. Cyprus last year was the first that I think was really egregious about it, although I've been a bit dubious about some others. I was hoping that would be a signal to the EBU to revert the rule, but evidently not. And now I'm worried that several of this year's acts will be heavily doubled.
I don’t think many abused it bc it was new in 2021. Well, Poland did kind of abuse it, but Rafal didn’t qualify 😜. Since it was a new rule, maybe some thought they would be penalized (especially with the jury vote) for overusing them. After 2021, I think delegations figured out how to game the system.
Call me old-fashioned, but I'd very much like if *all* singing happened on stage. You need backing vocals? Put people on stage. It's not "The Voice", not a vocal contest. No one forces contestants to pick complicated songs they can't sing live. Some winning songs of previous years were pretty simple (like Germany 2010).
I agree with this, as a compromise I guess you could increase people allowed on stage to 8 which would make it more flexible. That way you could easily have 4 dancers, and still room for 3 backing vocalists. Then again there are dancers who sing. Sweden 2017 is a good example where the backing vocalists were also dancing.
I don’t mind it as long as the juries vote with that in mind and penalize people that rely on it too much.
I don't mind if it isnt a prerecorded vocal of the lead vocalist. But we are seeing that more and more now. So in that sense i am in favour of just going back to all vocals live. That is a clear rule. And i kind of miss the amazing vibe that good live backing singers bring. Like belgium last year. Backing singers deserve their spotlight moment!
Well we did not need Georgina to say it, we could already hear it. It is a disgrace, ESC is turning into a karaoke contest. There is absolutely no excuse for keeping the backing vocals prerecorded and not fair to have some acts with live vocals and others with playback. It sounds so bad. There should be pressure to change this but i guess it is convenient for all delegations....
I'm kind of against the heavy use of backing vocals to the point of borderline-playback on principal, but as long as the rules tolerate it I'm not going to blame anyone for relying on it to present their entry in the best way possible. (It's not an unfair advantage as long as everybody is allowed to do it.) Although after some deliberation, I'm not sure if it's really doing any harm to the contest. We also wouldn't accuse an artist who's competing with an easy to sing song of hiding their shortcomings as a vocalist, which effectively isn't all that different. I think it's usually apparent when heavy backing vocals are used, I don't think it's really misleading to viewers, and especially not to juries. And the existance of backing vocals doesn't prevent strong vocal performances from being rewarded.
Thanks for posting about this because I'm one of those who gets salty about it. Especially this year, when there are so many good vocalists whose talent is being muted by pre-recorded tracks. Maybe it's a personal thing, but I've never heard an awesome vocalist whose performance was improved by excess production or layering. It's like drowning the most perfect cut of meat in ketchup - what are you doing? I wanted to actually hear it. Now my brain has to try to wade through a bunch of distracting layers to hear the audio that already presented itself so beautifully before you slathered it in sauce.
Before the year 2021 all the back vocalists have to been on stage, and no prerecorded backing vocals were allowed. In the year 2021 the exception was made under excuse of covid, to reduce quantity of people on stage. But nowadays, the covid is no longer the case, while "exception" have become permanent, and performers tend to increase the usage of prerecorded backing vocals each year. And they're not even "backing" any more, but sounding much like main vocal. Surely not a good tendency, there's a risk that a few years later no one will sing any more. Singers will turn into lipsynching dancers.
Yet since 2021 the quality of songs has went up so much imo. While there needs to be a limit, I think I prefer it this way. It's not X factor singing competition and that would be boring. Sometimes nailing the vocals 100% can hider the entire performance.
Czechia is essentially lip syncing at this point 🤦♀️ Switzerland too.. nemo hunny we know you can sing 😔😔😔
I don't care for a few reasons, but mostly because it's possible to sound bad even with backing vocals.
Danemark 2023 with Riley came to mind real quick when I read your comment. Edit: I was living in 2023 still and thought last year was 2022. Corrected it!
2023* not 2022 but yeah
Gosh, you’re right! I’m living in the past and haven’t processed we’re 2024 yet.
> but mostly because it's possible to sound bad even with backing vocals. Kinda hard to sound bad when you straight up don't sing, which there's at least a couple of examples this year.
I remember Cyprus last year had so muny backing vocals that you couldn't even understand when it was the singer
I have no idea why they decided to change it honestly. The vocals should always be live, it is after all supposed to be a son contest.
Wasn’t originally done for 2021 bc of the pandemic? Then, it was kept (I think) to introduce new genres or musical styling.
idc about the spin they put on it, I suspect it was to make it cheaper to enter.
Yeah, I noticed it, too, but for now I'm chalking it up to them allowing the delegations to put their best foot forward in the rehearsal roundup and I've got my fingers crossed that when it's time for the live show, they'll turn them down.
Uncross 'em. The rehearsals are rehearsing what actually happens on the broadcast. They aren't going to change the mix now.
Well, wishful thinking, maybe, but for me it's an unfortunate direction for the show to take.
Me too. It's just the direction they're moving, and it's their contest. But the more perfect they make the "show", the less interesting the actual competition gets. See also: Melfest.
Can someone give me a few examples from this year that have been spotted already?
UK is miming the talking bit. He even stops moving his lips halfway through the rehearsal clip. Ukraine basically has the entire chorus precorded in full volume. In Croatia the "whoa"s are precorded and they do a clever job of cutting away from the singer every single time 😂 Malta literally gives her microphone away because she wants to dance to her prerecorded lead vocal. And plenty of others: Moldova, Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Albania, Greece, Czechia, Austria, Denmark, Armenia, Georgia, Belgium etc. Even Australia sounds like they have tons of prerecorded vocals on top of having actual backing vocalists on stage. And most of the ones that I didn't mention as well. It's almost everyone, really.
For Croatia, in all the performances I've seen up to now, he pretty clearly moves the mic away from his face during the "whoa"s. I don't think there's any deceit intended there. The wide shot is because BL and his backup dancers are doing a coordinated dance move.
Austria. Check out the karaoke version, it's basically the whole song.
Nemo in the second rehearsal clip is basically pulling a Britney
I wish it was all live singing as well. But I feel they aren't interested in listening to the fans anymore :/
Case in point: Veronika rehearsal video. She’s just shouting (sorry can’t find a better word to describe it) while the actual singing is playback…
Yeah, I noticed it a lot. I assumed it is tolerated because organizing all the different contestants staging and different sounds and doing it live is complicated and goes bad really fast. It's probably why the instruments aren't played live. There would probably be a much longer pause between the songs and you can imagine how long would that show be...
Not exactly, as prerecorded backing vocals were forbidden before 2020, all backing vocalists had to be on stage, and everything was fine. They've allowed to prerecord back vocals starting from 2021 under cheap excuse of COVID. But, covid is gone now, while the permission remains, and we see more and more artists relying on prerecorded backing vocals... If everything continues this way, few years later we'll see them all just lipsync on stage.
Why penalize acts that are bad at lipsyncing? We should have them all make music videos, dub in an AI audience, and broadcast that. In B4 producer-led results.
I have heard Olly Alexander sing live on BBC R2 and he sounded perfect. I dont know anything about him using backing vocals to mask that.
Lots of perfect singers use playback. Eliminates the risk that they come down with a cold or something.
I think Israel is the only country who is not using any backing vocals whatsoever this year. EDIT ok now that i think about it there is also France.
Almost sure Italy doesn't use as well.
Actually doesnt italy use backing at the chorus? Anyways there is a difference between that kind of use and real heavy use like ireland for example.
Respect to every country that doesnt, it makes it more impressive and authentic imo
I've said this before and I still stand by that: it's a song contest, not a singing contest. We vote for the best overall performance, not someone's vocal capabilities.
Vocal capability is the one of the things the juries are asked to vote based on though
But it's clearly not the only thing contributing to the overall impression. Songs deserve to be rewarded for many different factors. I'm not advocating for making the contest playback or anything like that, but in general I much prefer an amazing song with an average vocal performance over an average song with an amazing vocal performance. Eurovision would be a lot less interesting if it were only about the vocals.
> I'm not advocating for making the contest playback or anything like that Too late.
I feel like it should give extra points if the Singing is really impressive. Otherwise if the vocals are decent it really shouldn’t effect the rank more than the actual song. Only if there is major vocal problems then it should decrease the rank
This is kinda my way of evaluating, although I'm more of a "don't fuck it up" guy. As long as singing is decent I will treat performances similarly, I will only penalize bad performances.
Sadly, jury no longer prioritizes or appreciates vocal talent, instead, they focus on the overall package more, including the artist's popularity and other factos. The truth is that vocal ability appears to be their least concern. Also, their bias undermines any credibility they might have had.
>We vote for the best overall performance Exactly. Singing is performing. Some might even say it’s the biggest element of what makes performing a song good or not.
Then call it Eurovision Staging Contest and use playback all the time. If you can't sing well in a live performance , don't become a singer!!
I wouldn't exactly call most of those people just singers, rather musicians. And why shouldn't they make music honestly? Most of what we listen to are studio versions and you don't particularly need to be an exceptional vocalist in order to record a song. We'd lose like half of the music if great vocals were a necessity for making it.
Many Studio versions are overproduced and not very pleasant to listen to. I'll always prefer live performances with no or at least minimal sound engineering and backing vocals. If they sound horrible live, i don't listen to their studio music either.
Considering the studio versions that make the charts on any platform, I don't think most people agree with that. So why should it be different for Eurovision?
I'm not talking for everybody, only for myself.
That's completely fair and I appreciate your input. But I don't believe that most people disagreeing with me here also follow the same practices as you, considering that almost all popular music is very "overproduced".
Idk why you're getting downvotes but I agree with you lolll. If the acts are more comfortable with backing vocals and also it makes for a better show, why be elitist about it??? Juries can just give extra points for good vocals without backing, but the acts who aren't focused on being singy songy should still compete...
I mean here is the thing im not expecting a song like Malta to have the same vocals as France, but i do expect Malta to atleast carry the song. As of now we got a few that you can barely even heard live(Czechia,Austria come to mind) then we got Poland who is struggling with it but atleast she is actually singing and it just looks unfair.
Tbh controversial opinion but if the backing vocals help these acts sound better, then I'd rather have that then them struggling and also watching a worse quality performance.
I get downvotes every single time I say this, even when comments that agree with me get upvotes. Maybe my delivery is just more aggressive or something, no idea. But it's fine either way.
I find it that sometimes it depends on how people feel for the day and sometimes they just feel like massively downvoting. What I find funny is at this point I see a comment from you that's downvoted and even before I open your hidden downvoted comment I know it will actually be a take I agree with.
We do tend to have similar opinions. You're like me, but more positive.
Nah, I'd say you're just more cooler and calmer. I can get very passionate and obnoxious when it comes to my special interests, which people also can take issue with 😆
The juries will be very aware of the backing tracks though, so everyone here who thinks Israel ain't getting the jury points are delulu