The Eurovision Song Contest, the largest musical competition in the world, will have a new entry and it isn't exactly European: Australia will compete when the event kicks off during May. Although the island continent has participated in the contest before, it has never competed, according to Billboard. The change will be part of Eurovision's 60th Anniversary celebration.
This year's event will take place in Vienna, the capital city of last year's winner, Conchita Wurst's, home country of Austria. The theme will be "building bridges," and apparently one of those bridges will be from Europe to the still very Eurocentric Australia.
"It's a daring and at the same time incredibly exciting move. It is our way of saying 'let's celebrate this party together!'" said European Broadcasting Union Eurovision executive supervisor Jon Ola Sand.
As mentioned before, Australia has taken part before. ARIA winning pop star Jessica Mauboy performed during the interval for one of the semifinal rounds during last year's competition in Denmark. Organizers for Eurovision said at the time that it wished to reward the SBS network from Australia for airing the competition in its homeland for more than 30 years. Apparently the passion has paid off.
Previously, Australian performers such as Olivia Newton-John performed on behalf of the U.K. when appearing at Eurovision due to the countries' colonial connection.
As part of being included in the competition, Australia will also be able to vote in the competition for the first time. Each nation casts votes for its Top 3 performances (excluding itself) and advancement is based on these votes. Very often this process makes Eurovision a political competition: Wurst, a drag queen, got less points from Baltic states affiliated with Russia, which disapproved of his lifestyle.
It's being hypothesized that 50 percent of Australia's sway will come from the votes of the general public.
