Eurovision 2026

The Eurovision final delivered the goods last night: strong performances, an unusually balanced jury vote that left the competition wide open heading into the televote, and a somewhat surprising but certainly deserving winner.   When all the numbers are tallied, I think the fears of disastrous viewership numbers due to this year's "controversies" will be  mostly unfounded.  Historically, Eurovision viewership peaked in 2016, when 42 countries took part. From 2023 to 2025, 37 countries competed and audience figures remained remarkably steady. This year, five countries that participated in 2025 chose to boycott, but several others returned, resulting in a net decline of just two countries, from 37 to 35.

Early reports indicate that viewership is down, but countries representing 80 million people sat out, so some drop is expected.  Among participating countries, Germany's numbers dipped slightly but remained strong.  Numbers in France and the UK took a significant hit, but both performed poorly in the final: the UK got zero points from the televote, and France were near the bottom.  I actually felt a 

bit bad for both. I have followed LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER's YT channel for years and he's an incredible talent, but is completely the wrong guy for this kind of competition.  He tried hard but the UK organizers knew they were throwing him to the wolves, and the UK public hated the song, so why should anyone else get invested in it?  I liked the French song but the public obviously didn't, and Eurovision is all about forging an instant connection with a finicky public.  To sum up, viewership appears to have declined most sharply in countries who competed with sub-standard songs.  People are less likely to watch if they don't like the song and they perceive that their broadcaster is simply phoning it in with a poor song and/or performer.  Among the countries that fielded competitive entries, I'm sure the viewership numbers will turn out just fine.  

As for the boycotting countries, in last year's Eurovision, Ireland and Slovenia failed to qualify for the final, while Spain and Iceland finished 24th and 25th. Iceland were crushed by the jury vote and earned zero points, possibly due to the plagiarism scandal regarding their blatant rip-off of an Israeli song.  The Netherlands had a respectable 12th place finish.  What can we learn from these results? It's much easier to stage a "boycott" when your songs and artists have badly underperformed, necessitating a one-year reset.  Pointing fingers at others and engaging in a largely performative "boycott" as a cover for those failures is a convenient face-saving excuse, nothing more.  

As for Israel supposedly manipulating the televoting, they finished third, so I guess they didn't manipulate hard enough.  More surprising was their 8th place finish in the jury votes (what, were those voted manipulated too??)  I have yet to see any evidence that Israel engages in campaigning that is any different than what many other countries are doing virtually every year.   And all of it pales in comparison to the palm greasing that goes on every year in the lead up to awards shows like the Oscars.  

Instead of asinine conspiracy theories, let's just focus on the more obvious and sensible explanation: a lot of people really liked "Michelle".  Heck, even the protesters in the audience were dancing during the semi-final! And the mathematics of what it takes to win hasn't changed since my post from last year.  We should be able to agree on one thing however: no amount of campaigning could possibly undermine the integrity of the competition than opening the voting for the final before the first song is performed.

Linking Philadelphia soul and the Philadelphia Orchestra

I am completely unqualified to write about this topic, let's get that out of the way now.  However, a potential connection between the Philly soul sound of the 70's and the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra from the same era feels significant, and it's not something that I can recall reading about in any standard music history accounts.   

The Philadelphia International Records label was founded by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff in 1971.  It was an alternative of sorts (not sure whether it was termed as such at the time) to the Muscle Shoals brand of gritty, blues-heavy soul.  The Philly sound was lush, smooth, with complex orchestration and rich string accompaniments.  Songs by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, and Patti LaBelle became massive hits.  The O'Jays built an incredible discography, and for my money, stand out as one of the most underrated bands of all time.  One can draw a direct line between the Philly groups and the disco music that came to define the 70's.  

Somehow, all this great music went underappreciated by the industry at large.  Gamble and Huff won their first Grammy in the late 80's -- for Simply Red's cover of "If You Don't Know Me By Now".  Today, the Philly sound is rightly revered for the high quality of the music as well as the many innovations made by its creators.  

At the same time, the Philadelphia Orchestra had reached its peak under Eugene Ormandy, who served as its musical director from 1936-1980.  They made hundreds of recordings together during that time.  The orchestra's sound was wholly distinctive, due to its heavy, dramatic string sonority.  Ormandy was disliked by classical music critics, for reasons that look embarrassing through modern eyes.  He was a tremendous conductor in virtually all sub-fields of orchestral music.  Was the Philadelphia Orchestra's sound considered too kitschy, unworthy to be considered amongst the high art of other leading orchestras?  The likes of Karajan and Szell were steely traditionalists, proudly carrying the mantle of careful precision and skillful musicianship in the classical music world.  The industry marketed their recordings far more aggressively than they did for Ormandy's.  The whole "controversy" just feels silly now.  Many major orchestras of that era could reach a godlike tier on most nights, and Philadelphia was just as great as any of them.      

Philly soul and Philly classical were peaking in the same city at the same time, and their string heavy characteristics sounds were mirror images of each other.  This simply can't be a coincidence.  And yet I can't find any references to a specific connection between the two, or rock/soul criticism that makes the comparison.  

Thom Bell was the main orchestrator and arranger for Philadelphia international.  He gave a number of interviews throughout the years.  His RnR HOF page notes that he was influenced by Beethoven and Burt Bacharach.  He was classically trained and aspired to be a concert pianist.  By his own admission, classical music was his life growing up and he knew virtually nothing about pop music through his late teens.  Musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra played the string arrangements on the soul records he worked on.  It is inconceivable that he wasn't seeped in the sound of the Philadelphia orchestra by the time he began working with Gamble and Huff. However, I can't find any explicit statement by Huff, Gamble, or Bell about their classical influences.  They never claimed to be influenced by Ormandy and the wholly unique Philly classical sound.  

The closest thing I could find is Bell's "cheese steak" story.  According to him, it's not just that Philly has the best cheese steak sandwiches anywhere in America.  More than that, any mom and pop sandwich shop makes a better cheese steak than any restaurant in any city in American could hope to do.  Because the cheese steaks, according to Bell, are embedded in the Philadelphia culture in a way that no other city could duplicate.  And that's the origin of the Philly sound.  It's not taken from a specific time and place, passed linearly from artist A to B.  It was sewn into the fabric of the city.  One must look at the whole to appreciate the constituent parts.  And that whole obviously includes the Philadelphia Orchestra.