The world's largest and longest-running song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest is a significant and extremely popular media event throughout the continent and abroad. Here, an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, explore how the contest sheds light on issues of European politics, national and European identity, race, gender and sexuality, and the aesthetics of camp. Eurovision is sometimes regarded as a low-brow camp spectacle of little aesthetic or intellectual value. The essays in this collection often contradict this assumption, demonstrating that the contest has actually been a significant force and forecaster for social, cultural and political transformations in postwar Europe.

Do you think the world of the Eurovision Song Contest, with its crazy props, even crazier dancers and crazier still songs has nothing to do with serious European politics? Think again. It has been a voice of rebellion across the Iron Curtain, an inspiration for new European nations in the 1990s and 2000s, the voice of liberation for both sexual and regional minorities. Eurovision charts both the history of Europe and the history of the Eurovision Song Contest over the last six decades, and shows how seamlessly they interlink - and what an amazing journey it has been.

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is more than a musical event that ostensibly “unites European people” through music. It is a spectacle: a performative event that allegorically represents the idea of “Europe.” Since its beginning in the Cold War era, the contest has functioned as a symbolic realm for the performance of European selves and the negotiation of European identities. Through the ESC, Europe is experienced, felt, and imagined in singing and dancing as the interplay of tropes of being local and/or European is enacted. In Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, contributors interpret the ESC as a musical “mediascape” and mega-event that has variously performed and performs the changing visions of the European project. Through the study of the cultural politics of the ESC, contributors discuss the ways in which music operates as a dynamic nexus for making national identities and European sensibilities, generating processes of “assimilation” or “integration,” and defining the celebrated notion of the “European citizen” in a global context. Scholars in the volume also explore the ways otherness and difference are produced, spectacularized, challenged, or even neglected in the televised musical realities of the ESC. For the contributing authors, song serves as a site for constituting Europe and the nation, on- and offstage. History and politics, as well as the constant production of European subjectivities, are sounded in song. The Eurovision song is a shifting realm where old and new states imagine their pasts, question their presents, and envision ideal futures in the New Europe. Essays in Empire of Song adopt theoretical and epistemological orientations in their exploration of “popular music” within ethnomusicology and critical musicology, questioning the idea of “Europe” and the “nation” through and in music, at a time when the European self appears more fragmented, if not entirely shattered. Bringing together ethnomusicology, music studies, history, social anthropology, feminist theory, linguistics, media ethnography, postcolonial theory, comparative literature, and philosophy, Empire of Song will interest students and scholars in a vast array of disciplines.

Use over 100 reusable stickers to dress up four different Eurovision contestants (26 different full outfits). Recreate classic costumes, or mix and match the outrageous hairstyles, glitter jumpsuits, gothic capes, platform shoes and sequinned miniskirts of the hallowed Eurovision stage to construct your own spectacular outfits. Also contains a range of backgrounds for your figures.

This book uses the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), as an analytical entry point to understand and illuminate post-War Europe and the drive to create an identity that can legitimise the European project in its broadest sense. The ESC presents an idealised vision of Europe, and this has long existed in a strained relationship with reality. While the trajectory of post-war European integration is a high-profile topic, we believe that the ESC offers a unique and innovative way to think about the role of culture in the history of post-War European integration and tensions between the ideal and reality of European unity. Through the series of case studies that make up the chapters in this book, analysis brings these interlinked tensions to light, exploring the roles of culture and identity, alongside and a productive conversation with the political and economic projects of post-war European integration.

Get a look at the behind-the-scenes secrets of Eurovision stars! This is a pop-reality book that unveils the seedy high jinks and backstage shenanigans at the Eurovision Song Contest through the eyes of an active participant. It also glimpses into the political intrigue in Israel surrounding the competition, corruption, romance, and off-camera. Imagine being sent to a scary country next door to terrorists! Yanai Tannenbaum, Head of Press for the Israeli delegation to the Eurovision song contest, is asked to work at a competition in Baku, Azerbaijan, a Muslim country having an open border with Iran. He and singer, Yarden Oz, undergo a long and winding journey to represent their country in the competition. Glamour, alcohol, sequins, and 15 security guards to protect you against kidnapping or death! Once in Baku, they are, of course, drawn into romance and alcohol binging. They succeed, in their unique and vulgar way, to enchant those around them. What they did not count on - among the glamour, sequins, and gimmicks - is having to be guarded against kidnapping by 15 special agents and knowing that they could die at any moment! Scroll up now to get your copy of Three Minutes of Eternity!

The 2008 Edition of the Complete & Independent Guide was the first edition of the book and now ten years on, a fully revised and updated second edition is now available, containing 246 pages packed with statistical details and analysis. It now includes many of the statistics used in the later editions as well as all new facts and figures. The book has an expanded section on the national qualification competitions for 2008 as well as the usual in-depth section on the entire voting history of each country.