Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s Eurovision statistical map. Today, we’re looking at something this blog has never analysed before - but something I felt was interesting to examine at this point in time: the presence, or lack thereof, of bands at ESC. Almost 11 years ago, Lordi won Eurovision for Finland, their first win. Since then, we’ve seen nine soloists win the contest and one duo - but no bands; whilst on the runner’s up podium, it’s been slightly more diverse: seven soloists, two “bands” (stretching the term for the Udmurt grannies) and one duo. 

Despite this, we’ve had a notable downtick in the numbers of bands getting selected to represent their country at Eurovision. In ESC ‘07, a year after Lordi’s triumph, we had 14 groups (not counting duos), falling to a steady 9 between ‘08 and ‘10, 7-8* between ‘11 and ‘14 (*I’m confused as to how to classify Homens da luta - a duo but who came to the ESC more or less as a band) and to only 6 in the past three years. 

With ESC being increasingly perceived by some delegations as a way to expose their talent show stars on a bigger stage, the collateral damage, I feel, are groups - with no band having won in a decade, I can sort of see why soloists or the occasional duets are outnumbering groups, but I do find it a huge shame - part of me feels that bands can add to the contest’s musical diversity in a way that soloists do not.

The map showing the participation of bands since the symbolic ESC after Lordi’s win may make it seem like groups at the contest are in rude health, as most countries sent 2-3 in that timespan. Thus, I decided to include a second map to show trends over the past five years, during which large swathes of Europe have never sent a group, and the majority of countries have only done so a maximum of once. The exceptions to this rule are located in small clusters: a few nations of the Balkan peninsula (Greece and Montenegro), a few from the Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia) and but most of all from central-northern Europe, where the contrast in attitudes is most vivid, with many nations sending 2-3 bands (like Germany and Latvia) and others having never sent a band at all in this period (like Norway and Sweden.)