We are currently in the peak season of the preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, held in May in Tel Aviv, Israel. New entries are being published or chosen almost daily. Australia has already chosen this year’s entry in February. Earlier this year, several Eurovision-Song-Contest-related coverages reported unanimously that the European Broadcasting Union and the Australian TV-Channel SBS agreed on securing Australia’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest until 2023.
Even as someone who has not already plunged particularly deeply into the world of the Eurovision Song Contest, you might however know that it is an annual music competition in which countries all over Europe are represented by an artist and a song. You might as well have noticed that, for recent years, a not-so-European country called Australia keeps appearing on the Eurovision stage. Puzzled, you wonder how did it come that Australia has been given the opportunity to enter this competition. So, let us enlighten on you what might not be obvious at first sight. We begin with a brief historical introduction to the beginnings of the contest.
In Europe in the fifties, torn and shaken by the consequences of World War II, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was searching for ways of bringing together the divided nations of the continent. For this purpose, a committee conceived the idea of an international song contest (based on the already existing Sanremo Music Festival, held in Italy) which the member states of the EBU could participate in and which would be broadcast simultaneously across all countries involved. So it came that the first Eurovision Song Contest was held in Lugano, Switzerland, on 24th May 1956, with seven participating countries.
The condition for a country to be able to apply to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has thus always been to have a broadcasting organization with an Active Membership in the EBU. Therefore, while it is called Eurovision Song Contest, it is not necessarily limited to the geographical borders of Europe. For instance, a number of North African countries would be eligible to enter the contest, with Morocco having made one appearance in the ESC 1980, and with Tunisia and Lebanon withdrawing before their actual debut, probably due to their refusal to broadcast the Israeli entry.
This explains why the ESC is not restrained to the European continent, yet it does not explain why Australia has been participating since 2015. Over time, non-participating broadcasters began to broadcast the contest in their respective areas and so did the Australian broadcaster SBS in 1983. In consequence, the contest gained huge interest among the Australian audience and has been broadcast ever since. Proving their great wish to be a part of the contest 30 years later, SBS submitted a short, pre-recorded video in which Australia makes fun of itself and demonstrates its love for Eurovision in a funny way. It was shown during the interval acts in the first semi-final of the ESC 2013 in Malmö:
Australia’s long odyseey to Eurovision brought them one step closer in the following year. Eurovision stopped by in Copenhagen that year and the Danish host broadcaster DR invited Australia to perform as an interval act on stage during the second semi-final. Australian broadcaster SBS announced Jessica Mauboy to perform her song „Sea of flags“.
However, Australia’s dream to become a full competitor had to slumber yet one more year. In 2015, the EBU celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria. To this occasion, acknowledging Australia’s deep passion for Eurovision, the EBU allowed Australia to be a special guest participant. As a guest, Australia was directly qualified for the Grand Final; a privilege that usually is only granted to the host nation as well as the „Big-5“, those nations who make the biggest financial contributions to the contest: the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Germany. SBS selected Guy Sebastian with his song „Tonight Again“ as their representative for the contest. He reached an excellent 5th position for the country’s debut.
Australia’s participation in the ESC was initially supposed to be a one-time-occasion, only extended by one year in case they had won the contest. After all, due to their excellent result in 2015, they have been allowed to stay in the competition on the condition Australia gets an invitation by the host nation, which has been the case to this day. Unlike the year before, they still had to qualify through the semi-finals for the final, just like any regular participant. SBS entrusted Dami Im and her song „Sound of Silence“ with this mission, not knowing that they would come as close to winning the contest as one possibly could come, finishing in second place. Had it happened that Australia had won the whole thing, the EBU would have deviated from its tradition of letting the winner host the following contest. In such situations, the contest is supposed to be held on European ground with an European broadcaster and SBS as co-hosting broadcasters.
And the story repeated itself again for the contests in 2017 and 2018. Both Ukrainian UA:PBC and Portuguese RTP offered an invitation to Australia to take part in the contests they hosted. In 2017, Isaiah competed for Australia with his song „Don’t come easy“ and reached the ninth position in the Grand Final, the third Top-10-placement in a row. Last year, SBS opted to send a face that would be familiar to the Eurovision-family. Jessica Mauboy would come back to the Eurovision stage, but this time as a fully competing artist. With her song, she managed to reach the Grand Final one more time for Australia, finishing in 20th position.
If it was due to the unusually low placing in last year’s competition or not, after being invited yet again by Israeli host broadcaster IPBC, SBS decided to change things a bit when it came to select the Australian representative for the current Eurovision season. Having selected the Australian entry internally for the previous years, SBS decided this year for the first time in their yet short history to host a national Final Eurovision – Australia Decides; as is already traditional in a great number of European countries. Ten acts were given the chance to obtain the ticket to Tel Aviv and it was Kate Miller-Heidke and her performance of „Zero Gravity“ that managed to take home both the jury – and the public televote. Reflected in her perfomance that gives us some operatic vibes of Estonia’s entry from last year’s competition as well as some Disney’s Frozen vibes, Kate is tackling a personal issue of hers, as she revealed in one of her interviews – overcoming depression. Feel free to discover yourself what she has to say about her song by using the following link.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=557198641422021
And if that put you in the mood and made you curious, here, you can watch her entire performance at Australia Decides. Later on, it was announced that there will be changes to it for the competition in Tel Aviv. So, we can look foward to what this might look like when Australia appears in the first semifinal (14th May) and aims to reach the final for fifth time in a row.
