{"id":22052,"date":"2015-05-21T23:58:02","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T21:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=22052"},"modified":"2017-10-23T15:10:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T13:10:12","slug":"frances-2015-eurovision-submission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/frances-2015-eurovision-submission\/","title":{"rendered":"France’s 2015 Eurovision Submission!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday night, most of Europe will be tuning in to\u00a0the finale of the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. If you\u2019re not familiar with this contest, it\u2019s an annual song competition with countries in the European Broadcasting Union participating. This year, for its 60th<\/sup> anniversary, the contest is taking place in Vienna, Austria, because last year\u2019s winner<\/a> was representing Austria. Eurovision is a very popular: this year, an estimated 600 million viewers globally will be celebrating 60 years of singing.<\/p>\n

How it works is each country selects a singer to represent them. What surprised me is that the representative doesn\u2019t have to be a citizen of the country he\u2019s singing for! Canadian singer C\u00e9line Dion (ever heard of her?) sang for Switzerland in 1988 with the song \u201cNe Partez Pas Sans Moi<\/strong>\u201d (Don\u2019t Leave without Me), for example. Her participation helped launch her international career, so I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s safe to say that we can think Eurovision for our chance to perform our own drunken renditions of \u201cMy Heart Will Go On<\/strong>\u201d at karaoke. Merci, Eurovision!<\/p>\n

C\u00e9line isn\u2019t the only big timer to come from a Eurovision background. ABBA won for Switzerland in 1974 with \u201cWaterloo<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The competition has two semi-finals and a final. For each semi-final, the 10 countries with the highest scores will make the journey to the Eurovision host country. Regardless of where they place, there is a group of 5 countries known as the Big Five that automatically place into the finals because they\u2019re the biggest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union. They are: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Australia. (Hey..that\u2019s not 5. That\u2019s 6! And Australia<\/a>??<\/em>). The previous year\u2019s winner is also automatically in the final.<\/p>\n

The winner is decided by 2 factors: a jury and public vote. Both are given 50%. This method can lead to a lot of geopolitical voting (which is interesting in and of itself).<\/p>\n

France has appeared in the competition in 58 of the 60 competitions, missing the 1974 and 1982 contests. They\u2019ve won 5 times:<\/p>\n