Hello London, we are ready for your vote. Hello, I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Douce Poir, the Eurovision podcast from the team behind Binge Watch. It is Monday 20th of January and we are back with the second part of our look at the history of this year's host nation Switzerland in the contest. A journey that is going to take us through a fairly prolonged patch of little success before a triumphant return to the top in 2024. But before we get into that, let's take a look at the latest headlines. The big news over the last week has come from Eurovision HQ itself. As this year's contest starts to take shape, broadcaster SRGSSR has released a rendering of the stage to give us an idea of the space this year's representatives will be performing in. It's created by designer Florian Wieder and is inspired by Switzerland's mountains and diversity. It features a long catwalk with a slightly arrowhead shaped performance area at one end and what looks like a wall to wall secondary performance area at the other, creating what would seem to be an immers performance space that will have the arena audience right at the heart of the performances. The visual and audio brand identity for this year's show is the work of art director Arthur Deneuve, who wanted listening to be the main theme of the concept which he has called Unity Shapes Love. We've also had an update on this year's ticketing situation for those who are hoping to be in Basel for the event. Swiss platform Ticket Corner is the official ticketing partner this year and the first batch of tickets will go on sale on 29 January, the day after the semi final draw takes place. And that's not all. The broadcaster has also revealed that there will be an arena plus public viewing area in Basel this year where on Saturday 17th of May football stadium St. Jakob park will play host to a screening of the Grand Final with an additional programme of entertainment, the details of which will be released at a later date. And while we wait for details of who will be hosting this year's live shows, Swiss newspaper Blick has reported that the hosting team this year will consist of three women, TV presenter, model and actress. Michelle Hunziker is believed to be one of them, but the identities of the other two seem to be a mystery for now. More on this as we get it. Finally, it has been confirmed that imani, who finished second for the UK in Birmingham in 1998 with where are youe? Is one of the artists who will be performing at this year's Eurovision in concert. The event will be held in Amsterdam on the 5th of April and will be hosted by Cornard Maas and 2021 Greek entrant Stefania. And lots more artists will be confirmed to participate in the coming weeks. Tickets are on sale now from eurovisioninconcert nl. Okay, so when we left off last week, Switzerland were riding high after securing their second Eurovision victory in Dublin in 1988, courtesy of Celine Dion's Ne Part et Pas San Moi. Unfortunately, things are about to take a bit of a downward turn for the Swiss at the contest. And just a few years after Celine's triumph, Switzerland would find itself stuck in a Eurovision rut that it would take over 20 years to emerge from in the previous episode. Because there were a lot of repeat performers in Switzerland's first 30 odd years at the contest, we went in a fairly non chronological order, but I think it makes sense for the second part to go back a more linear format just so we can more clearly chart Switzerland's fluttering fortunes from 1989 onwards. So obviously 1989 found Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR hosting the contest and they chose to host in the French speaking city of Lausanne in the Palais de Beaulieu with Jacques Descheneau and Lolita Morena as the presenters. And in terms of that year's Swiss entry, well, I think we all know that in the year following a win, nations often feel a sense of freedom to truly go for broke, since it's the rare occasion when the pressure isn't really on them. As a result, this was the one and only year to date in which Switzerland chose to send an entry in Romansh, their fourth official language. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. 1989 was the only year to date in which anybody sent an entry in Romansh. It seems unlikely that we will ever see another. But hey, there was an entry in Esperanto that was shortlisted for San Marino last year, so you never really know what the future holds. And we still don't know anything about this year's Swiss entry either. Just saying. Anyway, we're getting off track already. As for the song itself, it involves a Princess Diana lookalike at the piano with three gentlemen standing over her in the sort of blocking that looks a little bit like an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? I quite like it. It's certainly not a. Wait for it. Bad Romansch, I'm sorry. It's a perfectly passable entry that ends up with a perfectly acceptable 13th place out of 22. At the risk of raising questions about my taste levels. I will go on record as saying their effort in 1990 is one of my favourite Swiss Eurovision entries of all. Egon Eggermann with Musik Klint in Die Welt hien aus, which roughly translates as Music sounds out into the world. Catchy, huh? I can't even fully explain what it is about this song that I love, because if I try to look at it objectively I'm struck by the fact that it is quite low energy. The chorus feels weirdly underpowered and it does have distinct lift music vibes, but at the same time I adore it. It's clearly designed to showcase Egon's violin playing rather than his vocals, and there's something just so earnest and delightful about the chorus that it fully ear wormed into my brain when I was researching this episode and I spent the next three hours humming it. And that's before we even get into the outfit, which is an absolute serve a white tuxedo where the jacket appears to be tucked into the highest waisted trousers I have ever seen. If the televote had been a thing in 1990 I would have rung up such a huge phone bill for my poor parents. But sadly the international juries were not quite as charmed as I was and Egon only finished in 11th place. This would not be his last hurrah at Eurovision, however. Egon also co wrote and performed on Switzerland's ill fated 1998 entry Las Een, but we'll get to that in a little bit. Things went a little bit better for the Swiss in 1991 thanks to Sandra Simo and Canzone Perte or Song for you, a passionate Italian ballad that starts off softly and gently but really powers up in the chorus and Sandra brings it home with a heck of a big note at the end, an approach that paid off when Switzerland finished fifth that year. I can only assume this was the pattern they were trying to subtly adapt the following year in Malmo with daisy auvray and Mr. Music Man, a big brassy French chanson that I imagine was targeted to get them big points from the francophone nations in the contest. I gambit that, as it happened, failed pretty miserably as France gave them absolutely nothing at all, Belgium gave them a mere five points and their only 12 that year came from Iceland. Daisy finished 15th that year, Switzerland's worst result since 1987. However, if you remember the podcast I did at the end of last year that focused on the 1993 contest in Mill Street, Ireland, you'll know that better Things were just around the corner, thanks to Annie Cotton and Moi tout simplement or just me. Just like 1992, this feels like a fairly unsubtle attempt to recreate an approach that had worked very well for Switzerland. Already get a French Canadian in to take a huge sweeping ballad. This is another one that definitely ranks among the all time Swiss greats. For me, it really gets everything right and I think has definite winning vibes. But in the end she had to settle for third place behind Neve Kavanagh and Sonja and to be fair, that's quite good company to be in. Unfortunately, this is going to be the last piece of good news for Switzerland at Eurovision for quite some time. 1994 saw them sending Giulio with Stolpre Gando, Italian for I'm praying, which had a more relaxed vibe than a lot of their previous entries, to the point where I'm not even 100% certain that Giulio had ironed his shirt before going on stage. Stage, it's actually a pretty lovely song, but it doesn't quite take off in the last third in the way that I think it really needs to. And it ended up in 19th place out of 25. Sadly for all involved, this was when Eurovision was operating a pretty ruthless one and done relegation system, where a certain number of the countries in the lowest scoreboard positions in a given year were forced to sit out the following year. And Switzerland didn't get enough points to avoid relegation, meaning that they would not be competing in Dublin in 1995. Thus, 1995 was the first year not to feature a Swiss entry, leaving Germany as the only country to have competed at every single Eurovision Song Contest, an honour that they would hold for precisely one more year before falling foul of the controversial pre qualifying round that was held in 1996. Switzerland, thankfully did not have that problem and comfortably qualified in 1996 with Cathy Leander's Mon Coeur Lem or My Heart Loves him, which finished eighth out of the 29 countries that took part in the qualifying round and advanced to the Grand Final. However, it is important to note here that the qualifying round was a audio only and B featured a completely distinct set of jurors to the ones that would be voting in the Grand Final. So success in the pre qualifying round was absolutely no guarantee of how it would perform on Saturday night. And so it was for Cathy who ended up finishing in joint 16th place out of the 23 countries in the final. I guess if nothing else, this just goes to show the capriciousness of the whole Eurovision experience and how so much of it is luck and whether your entry appeals to the taste of people who happen to be voting on a particular night. By 1997 we'd moved to a more lenient relegation system where qualification was determined by an average of your scores over the previous five contests and Switzerland still had a high enough average to qualify with Den Tro du Me or Inside of Me by Barbara Berta. I think this is the point where I start to see clear signs of Switzerland starting to lose their way at the contest because it's hard to see who this entry was designed to appeal to. It's pleasant enough in a Lilith Fair sort of way, but it all just feels a bit lacklustre despite Barbara's best efforts, and Switzerland finished joint 22nd out of 25, picking up just five points. Fortunately, Annie Cotton's third place finish in 1993 helped keep them high enough on average to still qualify for 1998's competition. And the not at all triumphant return of Egon Egerman on the aforementioned Las Een or Let him by Gunver, whose name my English addled brain constantly reads as governor. So I'm concentrating very hard at this point. As you can imagine, my abiding memory of this entry at the 1998 contest was Terry Wogan making some fairly gross comments about the visibility of her breasts, which only added to the indignity of this song, finishing in last place with zero points, a fate that it really didn't deserve. There's nothing wrong with this song or the performance at all, so I can only assume it was just that age old Eurovision trap of it simply not registering enough to make anybody's top 10. Anyway, with a string of poor results and those 148 points from 1993 now a too distant memory, Switzerland found themselves relegated for the second time in 1999. You might think the year off would galvanise them to come back with a bang, but no. Returning in 2000 with Jane Boguerre and La Vita Cause or what Is Life? They managed a fairly dismal 20th place with 14 points, which left them with an average score of just 10.25 points over the last five contests in dead last out of all the countries currently wishing to compete and therefore ineligible to take part in Copenhagen in 2001 again, you might think this would inspire Switzerland to really buck their ideas up a bit. And yet, when they returned in 2002 with Don Le Jardin de Ma Am or In the Garden of My Soul by Francine Jordy it was, to a general shrug from the voting public at large. Once again, by this point, of course, we were well into the Televote era, and everything about this entry feels like it's a hangover from the Eurovision of 10 years previously. It wasn't enough to inspire the voters to give them any more than 15 points, finishing in 22nd place and teeing up yet another relegation for 2003. Still, by the time Switzerland returned in 2004, things were different. Now we had an official actual semi final in the week before the grand finale. Your previous performance at the contest didn't count unless you'd finished in the top 10 the year before, in which case you automatically qualified, or of course you were a member of the Big Four, in which case you could just sit the semis out every year. Regardless, the rest of the countries had to fight to earn their right to perform on Saturday night. So with a clean slate and everything to prove, Switzerland came out with all guns blazing, right? Right? Absolutely not. In fact, they sent what I would argue is the worst entry in Switzerland's entire Eurovision history, Celebrate by Piero and the Music Star. It's almost hard to put into words how monumentally misjudged everything about this entry is, but let me say this. If your song is designed entirely around the concept of bringing everyone together to have a good time, you really need to make sure that it is sufficiently rousing. Otherwise you end up with what happened here. Piero constantly exhorting the audience to clap their hands and celebrate, and the audience largely not feeling it at all. Honestly, if people aren't clapping their hands by the eighth time you've asked, it's not going to happen. To make matters worse, for all that Piero is a fairly unappealing frontman, he at least has the stamina to survive three minutes on stage, which is more than I can say for the music stars. By the time they join in two thirds of the way through the song, most of them are out of breath and making Gemini sound positively tuneful. This got zero points in the semi final, and it's one of the rare occasions when I can say that a song absolutely deserved it. The one saving grace of 2004's humiliation is that it forced Switzerland to do something drastic the next year, recruiting Estonian rock band Vanilla Ninja as their representatives in 2005 with cool vibes. Admittedly, bringing in an act with a huge existing fan base in other countries is one of the most cynical things you can do at Eurovision, but it was a mutually beneficial deal. Vanilla Ninja had already tried and failed to represent Estonia and Switzerland was in desperate need of a good result and it paid off for both of them. Naturally. They got 12 points from Estonia in both the semi final and the final, and they finished eighth overall in the final, their best result since 1993. Best of all, finishing in the top 10 meant they didn't even have to take part in the semi final in 2006, which was just as well, because I'm not sure they would have survived, having learned apparently nothing from 2005. This time they sent a six piece boygal group called 600 for one, a concept that would have already felt fairly dated about four years previously. Not that it was going to stop the UK from sending Scooch one year later with a song called if We All Give A Little, which you can probably guess is about bringing everyone together in harmony, another concept that was pretty old hat at Eurovision. By this point they made it to joint 16th place in the final and frankly should count themselves lucky. Unfortunately, at this point we enter the dark age of Switzerland at Eurovision, the period from 2007 to 2018 in which they qualify for the final precisely twice. I'm going to skim over these as quickly as possible because I don't think there's much point in analysing what was going wrong here. It's truly a case of throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. 2007 saw them trying a novelty song with DJ Bobo's vampires are alive, but frankly it lacked commitment to the bit, and thanks to some poor live vocals and truly cringe choreography, Switzerland couldn't even troll their way to the final. Live vocals were also a stumbling point for Paolo Meneguzzi's unfortunately titled Era Stupendo. It was amazing in 2008, and while Lovebugs in 2009 had potential with the highest heights, something in the live execution was just lacking again. And things got worse in 2010 with Michael von der Heyde's Il plus de l'Or it's Raining Gold, which it very much wasn't. When this ended up being the worst performing song in either of the semi finals that year, there was some brief respite in 2011 with Anna Rossinelli's in love for a While, a fun kind of honky tonky effort that squeaked through its semi in 10th place, beating out the song below it by just one point, and then proceeded to finish last place at the final. Although I'm sure getting to the final at all at this point felt like a victory. After that it was two more non qualifiers unbreakable by SEN plus in 2012, which felt like it had the makings of a qualifying song despite the singer's rather effective vocal delivery, but just didn't have the luck on the night. And then we reached another nadir with Takasa's yous and Me in 2013. The group were apparently members of the Salvation army who had to be stopped from wearing their uniforms on stage by the ebu, and it was every bit as much fun as being proselytized to sounds. It was noteworthy however for the inclusion of 95 year old double bass player Emil Ramshour, who remains the oldest person ever to compete at Eurovision, and they certainly didn't let you forget that with the camera cutting to him approximately every 20 seconds. In 2014 things finally came together with Sebalta and Hunter of Stars, a banger of a song with a whistling hook, a violin solo and some lyrics that definitely felt like they'd been fed through Google Translate a few too many times. It was definitely a love it or hate it entry, but I was in the former camp because he had charm and presence and the song was a real earworm and the 13th place finish in what was a fairly competitive field that year felt like enough of a victory for a nation that had really been through it at Eurovision lately, especially considering they were seventh in the televote and would have done a lot better overall if it weren't for those darn juries. Unfortunately, things were about to get worse with a second streak of four consecutive non qualifiers. Melanie Renee's Time to Shine in 2015 seemed to have everything going for it, but for some reason it didn't resonate with voters and finished in last place in its semi final. Then Rika's the last of our kind in 2016, which I liked in the studio version but which was thoroughly off key live and featured a weird half bowing dance, also finished last. 2017 was a particularly unfortunate year because that year's representatives Time Bell were offered a song called Yodelit, which they rejected in favour of a different song called Apollo. Now I really liked Apollo and I was fairly gutted when it didn't qualify because it felt like a really strong entry at the time, but looking back on it now I think I can see the disconnect. The chorus doesn't really go as hard as it should and the performance is a little bit too static because singer Miruna Manescu is stuck up on a podium for far too long Song, although it was an improvement on Switzerland's previous two placings, they still only made 12th in the semi final, which must have been particularly gutting because they were only four points behind the song in 10th place. But probably the most galling element of all was that Jodalit was offered to Romania after time, Bell turned it down and ended up finishing in seventh place in the final. Then in 2018, one more non qualifier lay ahead in the form of Zibs with Stones, a big bombastic number delivered by the achingly cool frontwoman Corinne Feller, whose brother Stephan was the drummer, hence the band's name, which again felt like a potential qualifier, but for some reason just didn't make the grade. And bear in mind this was the year where they lost in a semi final to Ireland. You can see how disappointing it must have been. Fortunately, in 2019, things finally started to look up again for Switzerland. Broadcaster SRGSSR reverted to an internal selection process in a bid to shake things up and selected Luca Heney with she Got Me, a former bricklayer with the arms to show for it and a cheeky smile to boot. Luca had plenty of teen idol appeal and crucially had a banger of a song to back it up. She Got Me is an interesting case melodically, because it's kind of chorusless, the bridge ends up taking the role that the chorus normally would, and the chorus is swapped out for a dance break, but it absolutely works. His live vocals weren't flawless, but they didn't need to be because this felt like a modern pop package. And Switzerland got their best results since 1993, when Luca finished in fourth place in the grand final. 2020, of course, is a moot point, but Repons de Moi or Answer Me By Jean's Tears, the first Swiss song not to be performed in English in nearly a decade felt like it was generating a lot of positive buz before the contest was cancelled, so it's no surprise that Jean was invited back in 2021, where he performed Tout le Univers or the Whole Universe. This was total Drury bait in French, with a bombastic melody and some exquisite high notes. Jean proved that he was more than up to the task of the live performance and Switzerland emerged top with the Juries, though only finished sixth in the televote, meaning that the overall victory went to Italy, as Switzerland ended up with third place overall. Clearly, though, Switzerland felt that Jean's general vibes were working for them, and tried a similar theme in 2022 with Marius Baer and Boys Do Cry. This one, however, I think missed the mark a little bit. Rather than being Gentle and heartfelt, it was just kind of dull as a performance. Indeed, Switzerland got lucky that this one missed the switch to televote only semi finals by one year because they owed their qualification entirely to the juries. They finished 16th out of 17 countries in the televote in their semi. Unfortunately, they were left exposed again in the final and got the dreaded zero points in the televote. But having finished 12th with the juries, it was enough to leave them in 17th place place overall. A sense of strategy seemed to come through though, in 2023, because that year's entry, Remo Foray, felt like the result of an attempt to spice the genes of Luca, Henny and Jean's thiers in the laboratory to appeal to voters who liked both sad boys and big arms. Sadly, it didn't quite pay off. Although he qualified for the final and finished 14th with the juries and 18th in the televote, due to some generally wide disagreements between both sets of voters across the board, he only made it to 20th place on the combined scoreboard. But we all know what happened next. I can distinctly remember where I was when I heard the Code by Nemo, and I remember thinking that I'd almost certainly just heard the next winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. The track was a genre bending mix of rap, pop, drum and bass and opera that was sure to hit home with the juries. And all accounts suggested that Nemo was an incredibly talented live performer, which we saw with our own eyes in Malmo when they sounded, if anything, better than they do on the studio version. Despite a physically demanding performance and some staging that proved that sometimes less is more. Predictably, the song romped home with the juries finishing in first place with a lead of almost 150 points over its nearest rival, France's Slimane, with Mon Amour. And even though Nemo only managed fifth place in the televote, they still secured enough points to remain on top when the two sets of scores were combined, maintaining a lead of more than 40 points over televote winner Croatia's Baby Lasagne with Rim Tim tagged him. And that brings us right up to the present day. Who knows what Switzerland has in store for us this year, whether they'll use the free pass from last year's win to do something truly daring, or whether they'll play it safe. But I feel like we can say they finally dragged themselves kicking and screaming into the modern Eurovision era after a lengthy, lengthy series of missteps. And long may it last. Phew. That's it for this week. Thank you for tuning in once again, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice if you haven't done so already. And if you'd like to leave us a nice review, that would even better. I will be back in a week's time with a roundup of the latest headlines. So I'll see you then. Until next time, good night, Europe, and good morning, Australia.