The Eurovision Song Contest may be over for 2021 but the number-crunching is only beginning.
With the names of the 195 jurors now published (five each from the 39 participating countries) and loaded into Six on Stage, I’ve cross-referenced the data to see what previous involvement in Eurovision they’ve had.
There’s always a caveat and in this case it’s that the published data is a bit messy. For example, Finland’s jurors are largely missing surnames, so I’ve had to track down a separate source to fill them. I’ve also made the reasonable assumption that people with very close names are in fact the same person (e.g. Jonas Schroeder from Denmark is clearly Jonas Schrøder).
- Of the 195 jurors, 31 have been on their national jury at least once before, and 2 have sat on the jury twice before.
- 35 have performed on stage at Eurovision, 32 of whom have been lead artists. 3 have been backing performers only.
- 17 jurors have writing credits on Eurovision songs from previous years. 1 of those wrote a winning song (Lise Cabble and Only Teardrops).
- 8 have been their country’s voting spokesperson, only 1 of whom has not also been a performer (Monika Lelas Halambek from Croatia).
- 41 have taken part in national selections – 16 of those without performing at Eurovision, although 1 of them should’ve done in 2020: Tan from off of Denmark’s Ben & Tan.
- 2 have written Junior Eurovision songs, 1 has performed at Junior Eurovision (Nika Turković in 2004) and 1 has hosted Junior Eurovision (Helen Kalandadze in 2017).
- 1 has been a conductor at Eurovision (Slobodan Marković, Yugoslavia’s final native conductor in 1991).
- And, er, 1 member of the San Marino jury (Marilia Reffi) was listed as a member of the Sammarinese jury in 2019 – which isn’t supposed to be allowed…