Dangerous Women 3: The Greatest Show on Earth
Reporting from this year's Eurovision Song Contest
Update: I learned that the official Eurovision performance clips are blocked in the US. The best alternative I found were some vocal coach reaction videos which include full performances.
For each performance I added both the original clip and the vocal coach reaction. If the original doesn’t work, you should at least be able to see the reaction video.
Plenty of people hate or don’t care about the Eurovision Song Contest: they say the songs and performances suck (it’s all more or less mainstream pop music), it’s too woke (vivid appreciation and promotion of LGBT artists) and more about politics than artistic merit.
But I do actually like watching it for several reasons:
It’s a good snapshot of the current state of mainstream pop culture across Europe.
It’s a big show - the music, the stage, the lights, the fire, the dancers. This is peak performance art, on par with the Olympic Games opening ceremonies or the Superbowl halftime show.
Also, I’m a man and there are a lot of sexy dancing ladies.It’s a performance art contest TV show, and it’s exciting - you get to watch multiple live performances, get to choose your favorite one, then see who wins at the end.
Yes, the voting and the results are political, but that’s what makes it more interesting - you get to see who likes who in Europe.
Also, currently the results are based on both expert jury scoring and popular vote. The disconnects between jury score and popular vote can be pretty insightful.
The musical quality of the Eurovision songs varies greatly. Since most are some form of mainstream pop music, they are usually not great, but once in a while you can hear and see something amazing.
One could imagine that the winning strategy for each country would be to send their most popular and best selling artist to represent them. But that is not how Eurovision usually works. Each country’s national TV organization (Eurovision is short for “European television”) has an annual selection process based on either popular vote or expert jury decision. More often than not, new and somewhat random artists are selected.
One could also expect the Eurovision songs to become popular hits on the radio, TV and online, but this also hardly ever happens - typically, what happens at Eurovision stays at Eurovision.
In my Dangerous Women essay series I’ve written about woke propaganda in mainstream media and different types of dangerous women out there. This year’s Eurovision contest included plenty of both - woke propaganda and dangerous women - so I decided to include my review of some performances as part of this series.
For reference, see the summary of this year’s results below - note the disconnect between jury and public scores for some performances:
I blocked my reviews in sections corresponding to notable trends I noticed in this year’s performances.
Not sexy
The first notable trend was women who tried being sexy, but failed.
The worst example of this is the performance from Malta: Serving by Miriana Conte:
This was an attempt to directly import the American “overtly sexual fat black woman” trend (as seen in the infamous WAP song and many other American black female rap songs) into Europe.
It failed miserably: the woke jury appreciated the “diversity” aspect of this performance with a decent score of 88, but the public gave it a very low score of 8 points.
Another example of failing as a “sexy fat woman” was the performance from Denmark - Hallucination by Sissal, a somewhat decent 2000’s style eurodance song - which scored even worse, with just 2 points from the public:
Another failure at being sexy was the UK song: What The Hell Just Happened? by Remember Monday:
The song’s title is very appropriate: despite a decent jury score (88 points) they were one of the two performances with 0 points from the public.
The song simply sucked - it sounded like a random medley of different styles of pop songs. Also, the girls were actually kind of mid, so their looks and dance were not enough to save their performance.
Notably, the Switzerland performance - Voyage by Zoë Më - suffered from the opposite problem, yet ended up with the same exact outcome:
Voyage received the second highest score from the jury (214 points), yet also got 0 points from the public.
The high jury score is well deserved - Voyage is actually a really good soft pop song, and I could really see it being played on the radio and Spotify.
Unfortunately, Zoë is a “normal girl” - normal in the everyday sense - as in, a girl you would often meet at work, school or while shopping. But within the context of Eurovision / social media / mainstream entertainment, she’s way below average.
Whoever designed her performance chose to gamble on this and created no visual part of the performance: it’s just Zoë, in a modest dress, without makeup, sitting and singing to her microphone.
This minimalist performance was probably an opportunity for Zoë to create “magic” and woo the audience by the sheer power of her song and vocal performance. But it failed - the song was really good, but just not good enough to pull this trick off.
Another interesting case of failing to be sexy was Laura Thorn from Luxembourg with her song La Poupée Monte Le Son:
The song is a feminist manifesto along the lines of “I’m not a doll”.
For most of her performance, Laura performs in a lolita style dress and pretends to be a doll in a dollhouse. At the end of her show, she sheds the lolita dress and emerges in a sexy minidress (removing pieces of clothing mid-performace was another popular trend this year).
The problem here was that most people in Europe don’t speak French. They missed the message from the lyrics - “I’m not a doll” - and inferred an opposite one, based on what they saw - “I am a doll”.
One of notable results of
’s female outfit survey was that both men and women hated the lolita style dress. I believe this corresponds to how both men and women alike hate the doll stereotype.The doll, as a female stereotype, is a passive, submissive woman with no agency. Notably, the Princess character from many fairy tales (as described in my original Dangerous Women essay) is also a doll.
It’s very clear why adult women hate dolls and don’t want to be dolls - the doll stereotype is anti-feminist and reeks of patriarchy.
But adult men hate dolls too.
Consider both sex dolls and doll stereotype porn - they do exist, but are very niche sexual preference, and most men consider them weird and not sexy. Even dominant men who want a submissive partner don’t want a doll with no agency. They want a woman with agency, who will exercise her agency to submit to them. Because that is real submission.
Eventually, we reach the obvious conclusion that the only people who actually like dolls are little girls. And this is probably why Laura’s performance got pretty low scores from both the jury and the public (besides the obvious political reason - no one cares about Luxembourg).
Mockingbirds
Another popular Eurovision trend this year were funny meme songs mocking other nations.
Finland loves heavy metal, and their Eurovision entries used to be either metal-infused pop acts or actual heavy metal bands. This year, Finland presented Erika Vikman’s song Ich Komme - an obvious parody of German BDSM & fetish culture and the music of Rammstein:
Notably, this was another “sexy fat woman” performance of the night. Yet, somehow I didn’t find it as disgusting as the other ones. Either the “sexy fat woman” just worked well as a parody of fetish culture, or the fetish aesthetic just fits within my personal preferences - more on that later.
Italy was mocked twice. Gabry Ponte from San Marino performed Tutta L’Italia, an eurodance song based on many Italian stereotypes:
However, the hardest blow came with Espresso Macchiato by Estonian rapper Tommy Cash:
Italians have considered the song “offensive”, and reportedly some even tried to have it banned from the competition.
Espresso Macchiato was the 2nd most popular song (258 points from the public) and finished 3rd overall. With funny Italian-English lyrics and a goofy dance that’s probably already viral on TikTok, this is one of most memorable performances from this year’s Eurovision.
Finally, the Swedish band KAJ mocked the Finnish sauna culture with their song Bada Bada Bastu:
This song finished 4rd overall, with 195 points from the public.
Some fans who noted the disconnect between jury scores and popular vote called for getting rid of the juries and only keeping the popular vote.
But others pointed out that a popular vote-only system would promote meme songs like above over genuinely good songs. The jury scores are also affected by politics though, but I agree that getting rid of them would make the system even worse.
No country for straight white men
The 2021 winning performance by the Italian rock band Måneskin was probably the last prominent masculine Eurovision performance.
The only masculine performance this year was Survivor by PARG from Armenia:
Unfortunately, it sucked: a cheap Eastern-European knock-off of 2010’s style Imagine Dragons pop rock that ended up sounding like a generic male product commercial rock soundtrack, with PARG running on a giant treadmill with his bare chest and arms covered in actual dirt.
Unsurprisingly, the best male performers this year followed the more Eurovision-appropriate “gay guy” aesthetic. Here’s Lucio Corsi from Italy with Volevo Essere Un Duro - an actually good 1970’s style soft rock ballad:
Ukraine’s Ziferblat also followed the 1970’s style looks with their very decent, more contemporary pop rock song Bird of Pray:
The winning performance from Austria was another twist on the “gay guy” aesthetic - more on that later.
Dangerous Women
Most of the best performances from this year’s Eurovision were from the various types of dangerous women. Here’s my very biased, subjective ranking of top performances:
7th place - Yuval Raphael (Israel) - New Day Will Rise
A very common type of Eurovision song is a Bond movie song - a bold, dark, serious and powerful song from beyond the spectrum of mainstream pop music. The song from Yuval from Israel is a prime example of that.
This song got modest 60 points from the jury, but won the popular vote with 297 points and placed second overall.
Why did the public seemingly love this song? Is this political? From what I read online, it’s actually the other way around: Israel, like everyone else, was aware of how political power translates to Eurovision results. So, they tried to reverse this relationship by heavily promoting their song online, hoping that winning, or even claiming one of the top spots at the Eurovision will create an impression of political power, which basically means actual political power - after all, politics is all about impressions.
As a central figure in an international political scheme, Yuval Raphael surely is a dangerous woman.
6th place - Louane (France) - Maman
A beautiful, sad, sentimental ballad - a letter from an adult woman to her mother who passed away.
This song hit me hard, because my wife’s mother has also passed away recently, and we’ve been dealing with the same kind of feelings together for some time now.
Instead of trying to be a “fat sexy woman” (like singers from Malta, Denmark and Finland) or having no performance at all (like Zoe from Switzerland), Louane delivered a beautiful, minimalist performance based on lights and sand falling from above, which fit perfectly with this song.
5th place - Justyna Steczkowska (Poland) - Gaja
A striking performance from my home country, hence my review will be pretty biased.
Justyna delivered an amazing, theatrical, or - I dare to say it - operatic performance, which involved wild dancing, fire, dragons, flying high on ropes, sprinting across the stage on high heels and an unexpected violin solo.
This was appreciated by the public (139 points) but not by the jury (only 17 points). The most likely reason for this is that, while the visual performance was amazing, the song was not.
The lyrics tell a story of a woman suffering from a heartbreak, but the true meaning is an environmental, Eurovision appropriate message about Mother Nature suffering from mankind ruining the environment. The music and performance was heavily based on slavic folklore (also very Eurovision appropriate).
I think the main problem with the song was that it had basically no chord progression, just one chord all the way through. I realize that this was a deliberate artistic choice that made it feel more tribal and pagan, but it also made it poor in the musical sense. In a way, the song itself doesn’t make sense outside of the context of this specific performance, so maybe a low score from a jury of the Eurovision SONG Contest is justified here.
Notably, the song and performance were overhyped here in Poland - many believed that Justyna had a real shot at winning this year, and were deeply disappointed by the 14th place finish. Some even boldly declared that “Eurovision is bullshit” and we should quit.
I do agree that the low jury score might have been affected by politics (no one cares about Poland), but instead of yelling or whining, the only thing we can do is have our political leaders fix it somehow.
A notable fact about Justyna is that she’s 52 years old, and she somehow managed to look exactly the same for last 30 years. Justyna herself joked about this in a promo reel, saying that she’s actually a 152 year old witch who maintains her looks with rejuvenating magic slavic matras which can be heard in her song.
I also can’t help but appreciate the outfit - a black leather catsuit with cutouts all over. A plain black catsuit gives instant BDSM/fetish vibes and, as such, is considered overtly sexual. But the cutouts made it both more sexy (showing more skin) and also less overtly sexual, since it no longer looked like a BDSM uniform. It looked magical, fantastic - exactly something a powerful 152 year old witch powered by rejuvenating magic would wear as a villian in a high fantasy movie. A mystical Femme Fatale - a true dangerous woman.
4th place - JJ (Austria) - Wasted Love
The winning performance from this year, with high scores from both the jury and the audience, and another Bond movie song:
Both the song and performance were awesome, and I think this is a well deserved win. I just didn’t put it on the top of my list because of my personal aesthetic preferences - obviously, I prefer “dangerous women” over the “gay guy”.
JJ is a guy with a naturally very high pitched voice (which is heard in the second verse), but most of the song is delivered in operatic falsetto and sounds like a female soprano singer. As someone who has a high pitched voice myself and has practiced various types of high pitched vocal techniques (in choirs, and briefly, in a rock band) I know that operatic falsetto is really hard and probably requires years of training. So I do appreciate the effort and the result.
I also enjoyed the climax of the song, which surprised me with a drum & bass breakdown instead of full orchestra hits or heavy guitars.
3rd place - Shkodra Elektronike (Albania) - Zjerm
Another Bond movie song - this time with a folk, Balkan twist:
This is one of the true gems of this year’s Eurovision. A songs that’s powerful, serious, monumental, yet also danceable. Modern, yet also very traditional.
But the most striking part of this performance is the stage persona created by Beatrice. Like Justyna from Poland, she’s a dangerous woman, a witch, a Femme Fatale - but a totally different kind.
Justyna is 52, but she used some weird magic to look 35. Beatrice is actually 35, but her stage persona looked more like 52 - a beautiful and powerful middle-aged woman. Not sexy, yet very erotic.
Justyna turned into a fantasy, imaginary dangerous woman. But Beatrice turned into the most real, powerful, fearsome and dangerous woman there ever was: The gypsy queen. The matriarch. The woman who pulled all the strings. The neck for powerful men who were the head.
An intense display of soft female power. I loved it.
2nd place - Abor & Tynna (Germany) - Baller
A very catchy eurodance tune - I can imagine it becoming a dance club hit all over Europe:
Somehow, the whole performance made me feel like I magically appeared inside Berlin’s famous Berghain dance club.
But the main reason I’m personally very biased in favor of this particular performance is that Tynna’s stage persona looked like someone I really wanted to meet when I was a young guy:
A goth1 party girl.
All black. Metal details. Crop top. Tight shorts. Heavy leather boots. A hoodie casually wrapped around her waist. She really had it all.
In adolescence, everyone chooses their identity, like a character class in role-playing games. The most basic choice is whether to become a normie, or a misfit.
I was, and I still am, a lifelong misfit.
I’ve never really gotten along well with normies. Goth was the most common type of misfit identity available when I was a teen. But most goth girls I’ve known were anxious and insecure. Worse, they were never single - always stuck in long term relationships with other guys. Rarely, they would branch swing into a new relationship with some guy with their close-knit mixed goth friend group I somehow was never a part of2.
Enter the goth party girl.
Somehow, she brings together happiness and darkness. She’s extroverted and outgoing, but also nuanced and sophisticated. She likes to have fun, but also appreciates good art.
For a misfit, the goth party girl is like:
It’s totally OK that you’re a misfit - after all, I’m a misfit too!
With me, you don’t have to cosplay as a normie, or do any of the boring and stupid normie crap - I like you just the way you are.
Also, I’m up for something fun and casual, and I’d really like to do it with you.
For much of my life, the goth party girl remained a fantasy - a unicorn, never to be seen. Once, I joked about setting up a fake online goth party girl fashion store, where I would sell stuff like fishnet tops and black leather micro-miniskirts, and the XS size ones would have GPS tracking devices sewed in. Then, I would use my GPS receiver to see these Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.
But later, during my pickup artist adventures, I eventually got to meet a few goth party girls, and gain some very memorable experiences.
And the best one was when one day, I met the super-unicorn: a cross between a goth party girl and an good, religious and emotionally stable wife-material girl from a conservative family.
I started dating her, fell in love with her, and a few years later, I married her.
I know that times have changed: Zoomers have torn down much of the wall between misfit and normie, and today, the goth party girl is probably already within the normiesm spectrum. This is maybe why we got to see Tynna’s performance at Eurovision this year.
But still, my heart will always belong to the goth party girls - especially to the one I wake up next to every day. And this is probably why I loved Tynna’s performance so much.
On the other hand, for a misfit incel, or for a misfit who chose the path of lifelong cosplaying as a normie, the goth party girl is a dangerous woman: meeting her can trigger various adverse responses, from radical slut shaming to intense FOMO and thoughts of cheating or divorce.
1st place - Tautumeitas (Latvia) – Bur Man Laimi
This was honestly one of the best musical performances I have ever seen in my entire life. An amazing journey into the strange world of baltic folklore.
Everything was just perfect. The song - rich in both harmony and rhytm. Traditional, folk and incredibly modern at the same time. The visual effects - colorful and magical. The girls and their outfits - beautiful, sexy, erotic, yet not overtly sexual.
Sirens. Mermaids. Nymphs. Dryads. Vilas. Rusalkas. Every European folk culture had some stories about mysterious inhuman creatures that looked like beautiful young girls, singing and dancing in the moonlight by the waters or deep in the woods.
They said that men who went lost in the seas or in the woods must have been seduced by these beautiful creatures. Women feared that they will lose their men to them. Some men also feared them, but others secretly fantasized about leaving everything behind and getting seduced and lost forever in their arms.
This was the beginning of the Femme Fatale myth - the original dangerous women.
The jury and popular vote scores put Latvia in the middle, along with Poland and Germany. There are probably two reasons for this: the political reason (no one cares about Latvia) and the cultural reason (the forest nymph is a very traditional female stereotype, very different from the modern, strong independent women of today).
Conclusion
By looking at the Eurovision performances and the feedback from national juries and the public, we can draw some conclusions about the current state of the European culture.
Many Eurovision performances still promote the woke culture. Thankfully, there is still hope: Europeans have shown that, while they can accept the general premises of diversity and equality, they can only embrace it on their own terms, aligned with their tradition.
Europeans reject overt homosexuality, but they can accept homosexuality and androgyny if presented under a veil of something classic or traditional - operatic falsetto vocals similar to voices of the 1700’s castrati singers, or the looks of the 1970’s glam rock musicians.
Europeans accept feminism, but they reject the American feminist figures of the loud and bitchy girlboss and the overtly sexual fat black woman. Instead, they embrace their own traditional stereotypes of strong and independent women: the Belle Juive (the beautiful Jewess), the witch, the gypsy queen and the Femme Fatale.
But deep down inside, the European man also yearns for a softer kind of female. The one who’s power lies purely in their beauty and sensuality. A woman who will seduce him and drag him into her magical world of music and dance. And most importantly - a woman who will accept him as he is - without the 6” height, 6-pack abs, 6-figure salary or 6” dick.
A magical, mystical creature - some believe that she exist, for others she’s just a legend, a myth, a fairy tale.
The forest nymph. Or, the goth party girl.
By “goth”, I don’t mean the goth subculture in the literal sense.
What I mean are people who wear black, listen to various types of rock and heavy metal music, read fantasy books and are mostly introverted. In Poland, they were mostly called the “metal” subculture. But from what I see, there is no widespread notion of the “metal” subculture in the US, so I used “goth” as the closest match.
Once, I managed to notice a failing relationship of a girl I liked and I tried to set myself up as a branch swing target. It failed, and backfired with a massive heartbreak on my end.
Just fyi none of these videos show for US readers, they all come with an error message saying the video uploader is not available to the US. A shame.