eurosong:

Good morning folks, and welcome to today’s Eurovision map! Today we’re looking at continuity between 2020 and 2021, but in an area that has gotten a lot less attention than returning artists. Whilst there was plenty of fan pressure for the visible performers chosen in 2020 to return, and two thirds of them indeed did, the ratio is much worse for lyricists and composers, who, let’s not forget, also missed out on the chance to win Eurovision and boost their careers.

In only under a quarter of countries did all the credited lyricists and composers of 2020 return. Daði once again wrote his song singlehandedly, as did the Roop and Go_A (but with one extra songwriter each this time), the same configuration of Dream Team songwriters returned for Greece and Moldova, and the same two-person team including the artist and one other songwriter returned in Estonia and Netherlands. In Slovenia and Latvia’s case, they gained one more songwriter, but the rest of the team remained too. In two other countries, the configuration mostly didn’t change - in Belgium, Hooverphonic’s Alex changed his secondary writer and in Serbia, one of three songwriters switched out.

There are then an additional eight countries with some continuity on the songwriting team, but not much. In Switzerland and Spain, the performers and one other credited songwriter from 2020 remained, but the rest of the songwriting team changed. In Azerbaijan, only one of the three Cleopatra writers returned for Mata Hari. Then there are six countries where the only continuity is that the artist had a songwriting credit in 2020 and 2021 - Ireland, UK, Czechia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Australia - but all the rest of the team changed.

That leaves behind almost 50% of countries - 19 of 39 - with absolutely no continuity in their songwriting teams. 10 of these are countries that either ploughed ahead with their NFs and ended up with different singers who in turn had different songwriting teams. 3 are from countries who either replaced an internal selection with a new one (Germany, Cyprus) or scrapped an NF winner for an internal selection (Poland).. but the remaining six? Israel, San Marino, Macedonia, Malta, Romania, Austria - they are all returning artists, but they’re not returning with their previous year’s songwriters.

On the one hand, I can understand this - they want to make a song that strikes a different chord from 2020. On the other hand, their previous songwriters could probably have done so with a second opportunity. I especially feel sorry for Borislav Milanov - he had what probably would have been a smash 2020, given that he’d helped pen two of the bookies’ favs in Bulgaria and Malta. Both countries’ artists have returned and with strong odds again, but he has not. I admire the Baltics for their clean sweep of returning artists and songwriters. In retrospect, I think we should have made more noise for songwriters to return, as they’re an extremely important part of ESC too.