Nemo of Switzerland became a unanimous jury winner, while Croatian Baby Lasagna won with the public
It won’t be an exaggeration to say Eurovision Song Contest 2024 turned out to be one of the most controversial. From calls for a boycott of Israel’s participation in the contest to pro-Palestinian protests the whole Eurovision week in Malmö to sudden disqualification of Joost Klein from The Netherlands on the day of the Grand Final, Eurovision 2024 will be remembered as a particularly tense one.
24-year-old Swiss singer Nemo, who won the contest with the song ‘The Code’, snatched massive jury votes – juries in 22 countries gave Switzerland a full score, 12 points. Interestingly, Nemo only came fifth with the public, with Croatian Baby Lasagna, Israeli Eden Golan and Ukrainian alyona alyona and Jerry Heil coming, respectively, first, second and third with the public.
The Eurovision winner’s song goes “I broke the code”, and that wasn’t the only broken thing on the night of the Grand Final. As soon as Nemo received the Eurovision glass trophy, they immediately broke the fragile prize! The audience could clearly hear the sound of the glass breaking, as Nemo carelessly placed it on the floor.
In the follow-up winner’s conference, Nemo had his trophy back, repaired. But the singer linked the incident with the imperfections and controversies surrouding the contest this year. “The trophy can be repaired – maybe Eurovision also needs a little fixing from time to time,” Nemo said.
What the non-binary winner referred to is the fact that EBU didn’t allow him to bring a non-binary flag to the flag parade in Saturday’s Grand Final. Nemo says he basically had to “smuggle” his non-binary flag into the Final after receiving a reply from EBU it was not allowed on stage.
“I had to smuggle my flag in because Eurovision said no, but I did it anyway, so I hope some people did too. But come on, it’s clearly a double standard,” they said.
One of the most regrettable Eurovision moments was, however, the disqualification of the Dutch singer and a top 5 favourite to win the whole contest, Joost Klein. Klein was disqualified following a verbal threat to a female photographer of the production team, who persistently continued filming him, even when instructed not to.
Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS criticized EBU’s decision to prevent Klein from participating on Saturday evening.
“An incident occurred after last Thursday’s performance. Against clearly made agreements, Joost was filmed when he had just gotten off stage and had to rush to the green room.
At that moment, Joost repeatedly indicated that he did not want to be filmed. This wasn’t respected. This led to a threatening movement from Joost towards the camera.
Joost did not touch the camera woman.”
On top of that, several Eurovision 2024 artists experienced bullying and critical comments behind the stage. For instance, non-binary Irish singer Bambie Thug who was against Israel’s participation in Eurovision, had to deal with shameful and hurtful comments from Israeli team members.
When Thug tried to include pro-Palestinian messages in their staging, they got a resounding no from the EBU. After the contest, Bambie told a reporter: “I just want to say that we are what Eurovision is. EBU is not what Eurovision is. Fuck EBU, I don’t even care anymore. Fuck them””
According to the Eurovision winner, the “whole experience was really intense and beyond pleasant all the time.” They add: “There were a lot of things that didn’t seem to be about love and unity, and that really made me sad. And at the same time… there was so much love here, too.”
Showcasing the latter, we could see how sweet and honest were the hugs in the green room between Nemo, Portugal’s Iolanda, Ireland’s Bambie Thug, Greece’s Marina Satti and more. Enjoy some of these touching moments in the video of the winner’s announcement below.
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Featured photo: EBU/Sarah Louise Bennett
