It’s the Eurovision down season, and don’t you for a second think we’re going to stop speculating, arguing, and pushing our heated opinions. Our latest series will look at the national finals of Eurovision, and discussing how we would reform the national finals of Eurovision. Today we’re having a look at Das Deutsche Finale.
In part seventeen of this series Angus, Euan, and Daniel discuss what changes they’d make to Germany’s national final.
What is Das Deutsche Finale?
Over the years, Germany has used a combination of national finals and internal selections to choose their Eurovision representatives. In recent years, they have used “Unser lied fur (host city)” (translation – A song for (host city)). However, in 2024, they rebranded the national final to “Eurovision Song Contest – Das Deutsche Finale” (translation – ESC – The German final). Nine artists participated, one of which was chosen through the feeder show “Ich will zum ESC!” (translation – I want to go to ESC). The show used a 50%-50% split of jury and televote to decide the final results. Each international jury gave 1-6, 8, 10 and 12 points, then the German public vote made up the other 50% of the results.
Do we like what the NF does so far, and do we think there’s a chance of it producing a winner?
Daniel
I said in the OGAE second chance contest overview video that I did with Kittens that this year’s edition especially was better than a lot of people at the time gave it credit for, this year had quite a few very decent songs. But decent is not “winner” and they’re still a mile off winning
Angus
DDF, which is the umpteenth name the German national final has had in the last 3 years alone, has always been a boring car crash, which truly is a terrible set of words to be. With such a relatively small national final, every song and artist needs to be at least passable and yet every year things get through the selection process that just raise worrying questions about the NDR. Stagings tend to be poor too, in part due to where and how they film it, and in general you just feel a lack of passion from certain elements of the production. All that adds up to a painful experience, as there also clearly are many people involved who deeply care about music in general and Eurovision in particular. So no, I do not like what the German NF is doing one bit. Will it produce a winner? Sheer luck might come in and intervene, but I do fear that any potentially winning song would manage to lose against the most mediocre entry you’ve ever heard.
Euan
German national finals are truly the worst of the Eurovision season, but by god will I defend them to my dying breath. German NFs are so capable (albeit not remotely consistently) of finding songs that will come easily top five, or even winning, and them promptly paying them absolute dust. Lord Of The Lost were banging to clarify.
What changes would we make to the National Final?
Daniel
This year Ryk got 51 jury votes, and Max Mutzke got 55 jury votes. This gave Ryk 5 points, meaning he had all but lost, and Max received 10, double Ryk’s amount. That is a farce. Why dish out eight juries worth of points in the first place if you’re going to condense them into a weird 12-1 system anyway? Change it to a proportional system please and thank you. The other glaring issue is the songs themselves, the Eurovision fandom got themselves giddy at rumours Großstadtgeflüster were amongst the line up, and the reason for that was mostly because it was a break from the norm. DDF currently is a brilliant show for finding inoffensive radio hits, but a Eurovision national final deserves much more variety. Galant with ‘Katze’ was a really good starting point at adding songs in with sounds and genres you don’t usually see in DDF or any other NF show. Katze was decent, but even if these out of the box submissions are not very good, in a few years when the pop centric image has started to die off you’ll reap the rewards.
Angus
Let’s just rattle of a few changes that are desperately needed: No more wildcards. A different stage or studio. A complete replacement of the people selecting the songs. And, as Daniel noted, a complete overhaul of the points system and more musical variety. Germany has such a great and varied music scene, and some genres like Neue Deutsche Welle (which “Katze” arguably falls into) are not only beautifully and uniquely German, but also a strong fit for Eurovision. Imagine that, Germany actually showcasing something interesting and cultural at Eurovision. (I want it to be noted that none of this is a dig at Lord of the Lost, who did do something interesting and felt like a decent fit for Eurovision on top of being strong representatives of a big part of the German music scene. A combination of circumstances led to their under-performance at ESC.)
Euan
Ban NDR.
But seriously. Ban NDR, and bring back Stefan Raab. It’s the only way to save Germany. Despite Germany’s ability to find the most bland, benign, unfathomable terrible, radio friendly dirge to fill its selections; it manages to do so with fantastic singers. I propose that they blend the Unser Star für Baku and the Unser Song für Dänemark formats. They’d need to start so so early on in the year for this to be truly effective, but going for the Baku format of a talent contest ending well before the new year picking five great singers. Then pairing them with songs submitted directly to ARD from quality songwriters and giving them several months to work out three songs that fit them well. Have a show at some point in late February with each act performing their three songs and let a 100% televote decide the best song of each act. Take those five acts, and add another five established groups or individuals that are directly sourced by an ARD broadcaster. But most importantly, five established acts, from five separate non-pop genres. Have each act perform one song to a ten song final. Once all ten acts perform the jury picks two its top two songs, then of the remaining eight the televote picks its favourite two. Then, a Gold Final, with a PROPORTIONAL televote and jury are equally weighted and pick a great German act.
Do we think any reforms are likely to happen to this NF?
Daniel
I doubt it. I fear ISAAK getting a good finish at Eurovision in tandem with the song pulling in good radio and streaming numbers will be seen as a false dawn by the broadcaster that they don’t actually need to make any changes.
Angus
NDR has been making changes to their NF without any particular rhyme or reason. While I think the regional involvement they did recently could have been fun and functional, they ended up implementing it in the exact same way they did about a decade ago, to a similarly disastrously meaningless result. With ISAAK doing well in Eurovision and seeing some chart success (although a lot less in the German-speaking charts than Malik Harris’ entry had), I think we will be in for a whole slew of former talent show contestants all presenting the latest achievements in bland songwriting.
Euan
There’s going to be a string of nonsensical changes to next year’s show and I’m going to hate every single part of it and still watch it.
Germany’s Eurovision Journey
Germany has been part of Eurovision since the beginning, debuting in 1956. Their debut entries were Walter Andreas Schwarz’s “Im Wartesaal zum großen Glück” and Freddy Quinn’s “So geht das jede Nacht”. Germany has appeared at every Eurovision except for 1996, which means they have been at more Contests than any other country. They have a long history of success in Eurovision, finishing in the top 3 an impressive 13 times. Germany has won the contest twice: Nicole won in 1982 with her song “Ein bißchen Frieden”, taking home 161 points. Their second win came in 2010, when Lena scored 246 points with her song “Satellite”.
Germany’s most recent Eurovision entry was Isaak with “Always on the Run”. As Germany is part of the Big 5, they automatically qualified for the Grand Final. In the Final, the song received 117 points and finished in 12th place – the first time the country has finished on the left hand side of the scoreboard since 2018.
What do you think about our reforms? As always, let us know what you think by commenting down below. Also, be sure to follow ‘That Eurovision Site’ on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky for all the latest Eurovision news!
News Source: That Eurosite
Photo Credit: Claudia Timmann / NDR
Tim J