In my understanding, traditionally, Eurovision has been representative of no real locally popular musical trend anywhere: music for Eurovision was special "festival music", produced just for the occasion. (In West Germany, there are some famous producers/composers who specialised in producing Eurovision pieces and discovering the appropiate one-hit-wonder for it.) Even establisheed stars would adapt to it with competition pieces, and the others would disappeare quickly even if they won the competition. ABBA being the one and only exception. This changed somewhat in recent years:

1. with the appearance of competitors trying to win attention with a different genre (and pulling youth of their genres to discover Eurovision as a party),

2. with the Eastward expansion of Eurovision, where locally established pop stars with more ambitious performances were put in the race (albeit still often with for-Eurovision 'festival music' songs),

3. with the spread of talent shows, whose style began to approach Eurovision at national levels.

I also see Britain and the Eurovision as an interesting special cultural phenomenon. IMO in no participating country is there more obsession with it. But that in a very schizophrenic way. It's the tension between looking down on the Continent and wanting to win. As (still) the dominant country in youth music, Britain would 'deserve' to win, even a craptacular second-class singer should be a hands-down best, ergo if s/he doesn't, the Continentals have no taste. So let's pretend to not take it seriously.

Still, lots of Britons will obsess about what would please the Eurovision viewer voting public. But when it's candidate selection time, the two attitudes collide, and out comes a third-rate singer who doesn't play any current British but an imagined Eurovision style. Then comes the competition, and everyone jokes around venomously with the lead of Terry Wogan, but secretly (or not so secretly) still cheers for the British candidate, will construct elaborate conspiracy theories about political voting (though by last year, I had to notice this spreading out East of Britain) and is immensely hurt by zero points.

I observed this process every year when I had BBC on cable television, and then saw the public/media reaction on news sites and discussion fora. Say, life will stop on the Guardian forums and dozens of users will state how much they don't care about the show, but Sweden ten points. It's funny (unlike Wogan when watched for a longer time, so I preferred the inanity of the German and Hungarian TV commenators), and a paradox reason I think Britain is very much part of Europe.

(On all the same topics, also see my 2006 and 2007 Eurovision diaries.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}