The Televote That Wasn't Enough

MAY 15 2023 · 12:15

Käärijä · "Cha Cha Cha" · Finland · 2023 Placement: 2nd · Language: Finnish · Composers: Jere Pöyhönen, Johannes Naukkarinen, Aleksi Nurmi · Venue: M&S Bank Arena · Host: Liverpool, United Kingdom · Type: upset · Broadcast: streaming On May 13, 2023, at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool — the UK hosting on behalf of Ukraine, unable to host itself because of the ongoing Russian invasion — Jere Pöyhönen, performing as Käärijä, took the stage in a boldly cropped neon-green bolero jacket, an exposed torso and a haircut reminiscent of a nineties boyband channelled through a Finnish metal festival. 'Cha Cha Cha' alternated between aggressive, shouted Finnish-language verses over industrial-metal guitars and an abruptly euphoric, four-to-the-floor dance-pop chorus in the same language, with choreography involving Käärijä and his dancers moving in a tight conga-line formation and, at one point, executing a human-train visual gag that became the defining image of the performance. The song was in Finnish throughout — a linguistic choice that deliberately cut against the prevailing English-language default. In the televote, Käärijä won by a large margin across almost every voting country, reportedly one of the most dominant public votes of the modern era. In the jury vote, however, Sweden's Loreen and her song 'Tattoo' scored much higher, and under the combined system Loreen edged Käärijä for the win — her second Eurovision victory after 'Euphoria' in 2012. Context Eurovision 2023 was staged in Liverpool as a host-by-proxy arrangement after Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra had won the 2022 contest amid the Russian invasion. The broader cultural and political atmosphere was shaped by ongoing war in Ukraine, continued Russian exclusion from the contest, and heightened scrutiny of EBU decision-making. The contest's voting system had, by 2023, reached a mature version of its jury-plus-televote form, with a long-standing tension between the two camps: juries tended to reward polish, vocal quality and industry-recognisable craft, while televoters frequently favoured more viscerally distinctive or comedic entries. Käärijä's entry was the culmination of Finland's Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu process, and fit into a Finnish tradition of Eurovision entries that cheerfully prioritised distinctiveness over conventional polish, going back to Lordi's 2006 victory. Legacy The 2023 result became the single clearest flashpoint in the long-running debate over the balance between jury and televote at Eurovision. Käärijä's loss in the face of an overwhelming public vote prompted detailed post-contest analyses, proposals to rebalance the voting weights, and a sustained fan backlash that shaped Eurovision discourse through the following years. For Finland, 'Cha Cha Cha' became one of the most culturally influential Eurovision entries of the modern era regardless of its second-place finish: a Finnish-language song that charted widely across Europe and briefly made Käärijä a global curiosity. For Loreen, the win confirmed her status as the first female artist to win Eurovision twice. The rule debates it triggered continued into the 2024 contest and beyond. Mythology It is often claimed that Käärijä 'should have won' under any reasonable voting system; under the rules as written at the time, Loreen won fairly, and the jury/televote weighting was known in advance. The song is also sometimes described as more aggressively metal than it is; it is structurally closer to a pop-metal hybrid than to pure metal.