Voilà: The Chanson That Almost Ended the Drought

MAY 15 2021 · 12:00

Barbara Pravi · "Voilà" · France · 2021 Placement: 2nd · Language: French · Composers: Barbara Pravi, Igit, Lili Poe · Venue: Rotterdam Ahoy · Host: Rotterdam, Netherlands · Type: upset · Broadcast: streaming Barbara Pravi came to Eurovision 2021 as a 28-year-old Franco-Serbian-Iranian singer-songwriter working in the direct lineage of the mid-century Parisian chanson tradition — a performer who cited Édith Piaf and Barbara openly, who had spent the late 2010s writing and producing for French children's Eurovision entries before breaking out as an artist in her own right. 'Voilà,' co-written by Pravi with Igit and Lili Poe, was a chanson in the strict formal sense: three minutes of first-person address, no English phrases, a slow build on a minor-key piano and strings arrangement, ending on an extended vocal arc on the word 'voilà' itself — 'here I am.' The Rotterdam Ahoy staging was among the most deliberately minimal of the contest: Pravi alone at center-stage in a long black dress, single follow-spot, no dancers, one slowly roving camera. She delivered the vocal close to the microphone, in the intimate half-voice characteristic of modern French chanson, and moved almost not at all until the song's final minute. She finished second with 499 points, behind Italy's Måneskin and their rock-glam victory with 'Zitti e buoni.' The margin was 25 points, France's closest Eurovision result since Marie Myriam's 1977 win — a gap of 44 years during which France had sent dozens of entries and finished in the top three only rarely. Context Eurovision 2021 was held in Rotterdam after the 2020 contest had been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. France selected Pravi internally through France Télévisions after she had won the country's national final. Her background as a writer of French Junior Eurovision entries gave her unusual professional familiarity with the contest's staging conventions. Legacy 'Voilà' launched Pravi into a sustained international touring career and became the most commercially successful French Eurovision entry since the 1990s. The result is routinely cited as the moment French Eurovision campaigns returned to competitive status after decades of mid-table finishes. Mythology Some second places are correction. France had spent four decades sending Eurovision entries that translated themselves into the contest's prevailing aesthetic. Pravi stood still and sang in French, and the scoreboard proved the other approach had been the miscalculation.