Running Scared: Azerbaijan's Win and the Baku Human Rights Problem

MAY 15 2011 · 12:05

Ell & Nikki · "Running Scared" · Azerbaijan · 2011 Placement: 1st · Score: 221 · Language: English · Composers: Stefan Örn, Sandra Bjurman, Iain Farquharson · Venue: Esprit Arena · Host: Düsseldorf, Germany · Type: winner · Broadcast: HD On May 14, 2011, at the Esprit Arena in Düsseldorf, two Azerbaijani singers performing as Ell & Nikki — Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal — took the stage nineteenth on the running order and delivered a restrained mid-tempo duet called 'Running Scared,' written by a team of Swedish and British pop professionals: Stefan Örn, Sandra Bjurman, and Iain Farquharson. The staging was almost deliberately understated for a Eurovision winner — a clean set, tight camera work, the two vocalists moving toward each other during the song's emotional climb. The melody was crafted to the standard Scandinavian pop-songwriter template, the English lyrics were simple, and the overall effect was a song engineered with professional precision for maximum televote translatability. At the end of voting, Ell & Nikki had received 221 points and Azerbaijan had won its first Eurovision Song Contest — only three years after the country's debut. But the win triggered an immediate and largely uncomfortable secondary story: Azerbaijan's human rights record was widely documented as among the worst in Europe, with press-freedom ratings near the bottom of international rankings, political prisoners routinely reported, and a government structure that functioned as a hereditary autocracy under Ilham Aliyev. Eurovision 2012 in Baku would be the most politically contested host edition in the contest's modern history, with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and multiple European governments publicly criticizing the Azerbaijani state's use of the contest as a reputation-laundering vehicle. Ell & Nikki's song-level moment was quiet and professional. The geopolitical fallout was not. Context Eurovision 2011 was held in Germany following Lena's 2010 win with 'Satellite.' The contest by 2011 had fully absorbed the post-Soviet participation wave and was running at a stable forty-plus participant level, with televoting the dominant scoring mechanism. Azerbaijan had debuted in 2008 and had immediately become one of the contest's most publicly-invested participant states — with the İTV broadcaster deploying significant resources, hiring Western pop songwriters, and pursuing high-placement entries with evident state support. 'Running Scared' was composed entirely by non-Azerbaijani songwriters (two Swedes and a Briton), a pattern already common across smaller Eurovision nations but notable given Azerbaijan's investment scale. Ell & Nikki were selected internally after a competitive national process. The win was not a major surprise given the songwriting quality and the Azerbaijani delegation's consistent results since 2008. Legacy Eurovision 2012 in Baku became a sustained international incident. Construction of the Crystal Hall venue was reportedly accompanied by forced evictions of Baku residents, a story extensively documented by Human Rights Watch. Multiple journalists were arrested during the host-year period. Some performing countries' delegations, including Armenia, withdrew from the contest over political-safety concerns. The Baku edition substantially changed the Eurovision-and-autocracy conversation, and subsequent contests have involved more public scrutiny of whether state investments in Eurovision hosting serve reputation-laundering purposes. Ell & Nikki's own careers continued modestly; neither has matched the 2011 profile since. Azerbaijan has remained a consistent Eurovision participant but has not won again. The 'Running Scared' moment is increasingly remembered not as a pop story but as the start of Eurovision's most sustained human-rights-hosting debate. Mythology Ell & Nikki are sometimes described as a pre-existing duo; they were paired specifically for the 2011 contest. 'Running Scared' is occasionally described as Azerbaijani-written; all three credited composers were foreign (Swedish and British). The Baku human-rights criticism is sometimes described as having been a surprise to Eurovision organizers; the EBU had received documented warnings from human-rights organizations months before the 2012 contest.