Italian rockers win Eurovision, Latvia's Samanta Tīna finishes in the last place

Sandris Vanzovičs schedule24.mai 2021

By the jury vote, the group Måneskin was third, but the Italians won by a lot in the audience vote. By the way, the word "måneskin" in Danish means "moonlight" - the band's bassist Victoria De Angelis has Danish blood flowing in her veins © Scanpix

The 65th International Eurovision Song Contest ended in Rotterdam early Sunday morning with the victory of the Italian rock band Måneskin's song "Zitti E Buoni". For the Latvian representative Samanta Tīna, it was a total fiasco - the last place in the competition of all 39 member states.

In the difficult-to-understand marathon of summarizing the results - first, the jury votes of all 39 member states were announced, but then the votes of the spectators of each country were thrown in one bag - the tension was maintained until the last moment. Arriving at the finish line, two contenders remained: Swiss Albanian singer Gjon’s Tears, who the jury selected as the winner (267 points) and Italian rock band Måneskin, who placed third by the jury (206 points). The audience convincingly preferred the Italians, while Barbara Pravi from France, a fan of Charles Aznavour, placed second.

The band Måneskin has existed since 2015 and has been formed by four high school friends: lead vocalist Damiano David, bassist Victoria De Angelis, guitarist Thomas Raggi, and drummer Ethan Torchio. The band has released two albums, successfully participated in the local X Factor and even sensationally won the Sanremo Music Festival, thus automatically qualifying for Eurovision. Italy last won this competition in 1990, while hard rock musicians had previously only won in 2006 with the Finnish band Lordi. However, the Finns were representatives of the old school "hard & heavy" style, while Måneskin plays in a modern rock style - they could serve as a warm-up act for, for example, the current top rock band Greta Van Fleet. At the press conference after winning, David was spraying champagne around: “I remember how we started playing just on the streets. It is unique. We are just four friends playing music that we love. And it's priceless."

Italy's victory is also a heavy hit below the waist for all those who are still trying to guess some long-gone Eurovision format - a boisterous rock band singing in Italian should not theoretically even take part in the contest, never mind winning.

But again, the bookmakers' predictions turned out to be worthwhile: I have no idea how they calculate the possible result, but in general they were only slightly mistaken: much higher places were predicted for Destiny, who reminds of the American singer Lizzo (it was sad seeing the 18-year-old girl's reaction to the viewers' destructive assessment) and Bulgarian Billie Eilish - Victoria, but lower - for the explosive Finns. It is possible that the Finnish nu-metal band Blind Channel might have even won if their votes had not been taken by their counterparts from Italy, but we will never know.

The bookmakers had also correctly predicted Latvia's chances of entering the final, namely that we have none. However, no one thought that the results would be so dramatic. Looking at the results of both semifinals published after the end of Eurovision, it became clear that Samanta Tīna placed last not only in her semifinals, but also in general. The song "The Moon Is Rising" scored only 14 points by Georgian (5 points), British (4) and Estonian (1) TV viewers, as well as the Moldovan jury (4). In our semi-finals, the hopeless Georgian took 16th place, who managed to score 16 points, while in the other semi-final, Ireland was last with 20 points. Due to the fact that Samanta's song was created in a special songwriting camp, attracting the most talented songwriters and producers, a dazzling costume was developed for the singer, an elegant performance with bright lights was prepared, resources were invested in a PR campaign (mostly within the country) etc., etc., it cannot be called anything but a fiasco.

Latvian TV viewers had given the highest number of points to their neighbors - Lithuania (12), Russia (10) and Finland (8). Next are Italy (7), Ukraine (6), Iceland (5), Switzerland (4), France (3), Norway (2) and Sweden (1). In turn, the Latvian jury decided like this: Switzerland (12), Iceland (10), Italy (8), Ukraine (7), Lithuania (6), Bulgaria (5), Finland (4), France (3), Malta (2) and Russia (1). The Latvian jury consisted of management guru Guna Zučika, super guitarist Kaspars Zemītis, radio personality Magnuss Eriņš, singer Patrisha (Patrīcija Ksenija Cuprijanoviča) and composer Valts Pūce.

It should be noted that the composition of the jury was selected according to the criteria set by the representatives of the international broadcaster EBU - there must be a certain number of women and men, different ages, different creative industries, etc. If there is no shame to be felt about the votes of our jury, then the votes of professionals from some countries (let's emphasize - professionals!) were, to put it mildly, surprising. Toms Grēviņš, the host of the TV live stream, also wondered how in many cases the jury can give points to neighboring countries, leaving people's favorite songs even behind the Top 10. The jury's rating was introduced precisely to reduce the possible voting effect of neighboring countries, but it seems that at present the jury is implementing this neighborhood policy even more than TV viewers. The EBU will have some food for thought.

Eurovision 2021