Scott makes sure we don’t miss our other late tradition, covering the Eurovision winner…
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Scott Mildenhall: Elemental as ever, Loreen emerges from hibernation with a backlog of feelings. Her most idiosyncratic way of expressing them — emotionally resonant mumbles punctuated with bursts of pitch-perfect pandemonium — remains arresting and enveloping. If those feelings are inside you too, she is intent on extracting them. It’s all the very best theatre. It’s understandable that Käärijä was more popular both in the arena — those lights filled the room — and at home, but “Tattoo” is for the long run. In keeping things smaller, Loreen could reach into the future (and more importantly, impress the juries).
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Less a good song than a strong reminder that your body will respond physiologically to any Eurovision Epic, no matter how boilerplate.
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Aaron Bergstrom: If Eurovision is a sport (and it is), Loreen is a champion in the vein of the Duncan/Popovich Spurs: clinical, methodical, laser-focused on doing exactly what it takes to win with little interest in anything else. Here to demand your respect, not win your love. Finland’s out here bombing away from the logo, but that’s not how you hang those banners.
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Katherine St Asaph: A Swedish Eurovision artist reproducing near-exactly the verse melody from “The Winner Takes It All” is a mildly clever injoke. A Swedish Eurovision artist reproducing the verse melody from “The Winner Takes It All” one octave up, belted, as a chorus, is the sort of operatic-scale injoke Eurovision exists for.
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Jessica Doyle: I have a great deal of respect for Loreen. That said, all of the following are better, or at least more memorable, than “Tattoo”: Croatia’s entry, Finland’s, Austria’s, France’s, and Moldova’s (don’t get me wrong, it’s structured poorly, and yet “SOARele, soarele, soarele și luna” is still on my workout playlist). And you could make the case for adding Czechia, Spain, Latvia, or even Slovenia to that list. And none of the previous made my Spotify Wrapped list, but even TSJ on perma-amnesty has limited space for the Theodor Andrei Deserved Far Better argument. (He’s got talent, y’all!)
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Ian Mathers: It’s like they say: at Eurovision, no matter how good the song actually is, you’ve always got a belter’s chance. Luckily, the song is decent, and the lung capacity is impressive. It does have the annoying tic a lot of Eurovision songs seem to have, of starting with noises that are a lot more interesting than most of the song will be. But given the low potential floor for Eurovision entries, we’re doing pretty good!
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Nortey Dowuona: Loreen’s voice is strong. It has a thin, chalky tone when she plays it below the tone of the song, but as the drums begin getting heavier, she scales them comfortably. As the violins, violas, and double bass surround her and then are drowned by Mattias Bylund’s synth pads, her voice becomes stronger and more resolute, backed by Moa Carlebecker, a fellow songwriter. But Loreen is the star, growing bigger and bigger as the song reaches its apex — then she stops it with a flick of her index.
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Dorian Sinclair: This song could be quite good, if only Loreen would not hammer on the rhyme every single time. She does it every verse, and it makes the song way worse, so while some parts might be worth more, I can’t give her more than four.
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Claire Biddles: This song is just fine, but as a bisexual lady who has had that long dark hair/fringe cut since at least 2012, it felt like I had won Eurovision again.
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Taylor Alatorre: I know this song isn’t really “about” anything other than Loreen’s desire for repeat Eurovision glory, but what exactly is the interaction being depicted here? “This is not our time… this is not the end” — so a temporary breakup, okay. Then something about angels and violins and stars aligning — so, a breakup that’s temporary until death? Probably not, but the music keeps pushing you toward the most dramatic possible reading, despite lacking a coherent narrative structure to house all these disjointed feelings in. Loreen’s powerhouse of a voice is the only real winner, matching as well as it can with the Blue Man Group drums and THX synth crescendos. She conveys a general sense of until-the-end endurance that nevertheless leaves the listener wondering just what end is being endured.
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Tim de Reuse: The trance stabs are refreshing — the vanguard of the first wave of aughts-nostalgia, perhaps — but it’s so dedicated to build-worship that it ends up oversaturated, washed-out, too movie trailer-serious even by Eurovision standards. Too much 2020 in my 2002. You can’t convincingly rhyme “you-hoo-hoo” against “tattoo-hoo-hoo” unless you sound like you’re having fun.
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Rachel Saywitz: “Tattoo” is the worst rehash of early 2010s pop, the bad kind. It sounds like a horrible copycat Sia song that Maddie Ziegler would have to dance a billion pirouettes to on Dance Moms. It’s the song that soundtracks “broken up :(” TikToks made by the girl who used to bully you in high school. The song that the leader of your college a cappella group made an incredibly dramatic arrangement of before sending an incredibly dramatic text message to the group chat when they found out they weren’t getting the solo, “even though, might I remind you all, I am the only reason we won fourth place at inner-city regionals!” All boring things! “Cha Cha Cha” was right! there!
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Will Adams: 2023 was the first Eurovision I completely missed since I began actively following it in 2012. That workweek was hectic, I had a prior engagement the day of the Grand Final, the Jukebox was dead. But I wasn’t too bummed; “Tattoo”‘s victory was such a foregone conclusion that Eurovision didn’t feel worth the watch. Song’s fine, sure — gloriously melodramatic trance-pop that’s so heightened it doesn’t just play to the cheap seats of the ESC but the cheap seats of another galaxy, with another committed vocal from Loreen. But “Euphoria” was all that done better. (It’s probably also good I missed this year’s contest because that enormous LED platform that hovered over her the whole performance makes me extremely anxious.)
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Occasionally reaches the heights of sultriness and longing that it’s clearly shooting for. Otherwise, just sounds like 2011.
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Brad Shoup: Thank you, Eurovision, for three-minute dance-pop power ballads.
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