Have we seen the last of comedy entries?

One of the most noticeable trends from the televoting era - which would be roughly the noughties - was for comedy entries. Fun, silly, ironic, piss-taking performers who were picked as a result of public support for the persona, rather than the song, such as Dustin the Turkey and Silvia Night. They usually played up to the perceived campness of the contest. Recently though, they've lessened. Last year's only real comedy entry was Homens de Luta, but the joke probably went over most people's heads, being a very Portuguese thing. Moldova's cone hats and unicycle were more fun than comedy, the song itself was pretty straightforward party rock. This year, the nationals so far haven't thrown up many joke entries, and most of them have fallen away at the various rounds.

It makes sense that they would disappear, being essentially a populist trend. 2009 saw the return of 50/50 jury/public vote, and juries don't go in for silliness. Comedy entries have never won, the closest was Verka Serduchka in 2007. Countries spend a lot of money to enter, and currently most of Europe is in a recession. Why spend money sending something that will be laughed at, then come last.



The current trend in Eurovision is for rock. Which is understandable, since Lordi's win and Turkey's 2010 runner-up. Crucially though, rock entries can be edgier than the schlager or currently trendier dance pap, but are proper music entries.

An inevitable trend will probably be the rise of Twitter acts, i.e. Jedward. They're so poor but get to sing catchy, fairly disposable songs selected from a demos folder. Their talent is in their ability to force themselves upon people on the likes of twitter, getting them lots of attention and success. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Eurovision becomes filled with more like them, driven less by talent than by the ability to network, which is the lowest tactic when it comes to making success, but seems to drive everything these days.

Of course,  the contest is never the most fashionable thing, that's part of it's charm. It's already been documented that the traditional/ethnic ballads trend in the 90s was a surprise, and are subsequently hard to trace beyond the current chart fashion. But I wouldn't be surprised if the comedy entries have peaked, and the musical variety of the competition grows.