Israel Wins the Eurovision 2018 Song Contest With an Experimental Sound
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This year’s Eurovision was a tense contest. It came down to three countries — Cyprus’ Beyoncé-inspired song, Austria’s sexy singer and finally Israel’s avant-pop masterpiece. And when the votes came in, Netta from Israel was crowned the Eurovision 2018 winner.
This year’s song contest took place in Lisbon, Portugal, thanks to last year’s winner, Salvador Sobral, who won with his song “Amar Pelos Dois.” Sobral was Portugal’s first win, and performed his song at the interval this year’s finals.
This year’s vote was close — when the expert panels were done, the three winners were Austria in first place, followed by Sweden and Israel. But when the final televote came in, Austria fell to third place, while Sweden came in seventh. Instead, Cyprus rose to second.
But it was Netta who was the Eurovision 2018 winner with her song “Toy,” a pop song with an interesting sound. The verses are built out of vocal loops and a drum track; Netta got some good-natured ribbing for some of the sounds she make being similar to a chicken clucking.
Though Netta sometimes performs under her full name, Netta Barzilai, she went by the mononym for Eurovision. She came to Eurovision after winning HaKokhav HaBa, an Israeli song contest and “Toy” is her first released single.
Israel has won before, in 1978 and 1998. With their win in 2018, we’re going to see how early bookies are taking bets on the winner of Eurovision 2038.
Netta’s win wasn’t the only excitement at this year’s Eurovision finals. During SuRie’s performance representing the United Kingdom, a man stormed the stage, took the microphone and said “Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom. Rise up!”
The man was rushed off-stage and later arrested. It’s believed that while he’s European, he’s not British. Not only that, but it’s believed the same man invated the National Television Awards this year and The Voice last year.
SuRie was given an opportunity to perform her song again at the end, but she declined.
Like last year, however, there was much less in the way of spectacle. Most of the staging was relatively straight-forward. The one exception was DoReDos from Moldova, who recreated the look and feel of an ’80s music video live with fake doors and body-doubles.
And finally, one of the most fun parts of Eurovision is watching the inevitable utterly awful act — and this year, that came courtesy of the Netherlands, with an absolutely awful attempt at a country song. And not only was the song garbage, the singer had the pure chutzpah to name himself “Waylon,” after one of the greatest country singers of all time.
Somehow, the Netherlands didn’t come in last — that was Portugal, the hosts of this year’s competition. And, honestly — that song’s not that bad; while it’s not very memorable, it’s not offensively bad, either. Certainly not worthy of last place.
