“ROCK AND ROLL NEVER DIES”: Italy wins Eurovision 2021

Rock band Måneskin win the 65th Eurovision Song Contest with the song ‘Zitti e Buoni’ with a staggering 524 points.

Photo by EBU/Andres Putting

France and Switzerland were very close runners up with less than 100 points between all 3 of the top acts making it the most nail-biting year yet.

After two years since the last contest as the previous year’s contest was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, The Netherlands were finally able to host the competition at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam with 3,500 people in the audience.

Unfortunately, Duncan Laurence, the previous winner was not able to attend the final due to testing positive for COVID-19. Iceland was also not able to perform due to a band member testing positive for the virus. Footage from their rehearsals was used for their performance, at the end of the night they finished in 4th Place.

The 26 acts that performed in the final this year had a variety of different show-stopping performances: from a woman dancing in a peace sign costume to Flo Rida suddenly popping up out of nowhere. The sparkles, glitter and cheesiness is what a classic Eurovision contest is all about.

However, it hasn’t really been a good night for us. The UK ended up last in the final with a grand total of zero points: the first country to ever receive null points from the Jury and Televote combined with the new voting system. (Hey, at least we were first in that sense.)

UK act James Newman’s reaction to zero points Credit:AP

Måneskin are the first group to win the competition since 2006 and it is Italy’s third win, the last time they won was 31 years ago in 1990.

This means that Italy will host the next contest in May 2022 as in Eurovision tradition.

My flat hosted a Eurovision watch party and I asked each of my flatmates who they thought would win the contest. Surprisingly Malta came up the most with Italy also being mentioned.

Here is the video of the winning performance