A couple a of days ago Swedish television announced they would change some of their rules for the Swedish takeout for Eurovision. Nothing really that big, but one journalist that covers the whole circus of Eurovision pointed out that the viewers become fewer and fewer and that has to do with that we don’t produce quality songs.

Sure, Sweden has had its successes over the years but like the journalist pointed out, nothing that special in the last 20 years except maybe for Euphoria. What you need is a song that can go on and that you can cheer around for the next fifty years. Well, you have the social attachment (look in the blog and you will find me writing just about that). In one way Eurovision is a perfect event to get that social attachment. The excitement of the competition and that you listen to the song several times, so it becomes familiar.

So, what is the problem? It is the songwriting itself. Over the past twenty years, we have developed songwriting into a factory. In Sweden, you can go to a school to just become a worker in a factory. And in the old days, there were factories like the Brill Building in NYC. Today though it has taken over. All songs are written in songwriting camps with the same loops and the same background.

Sure it’s’ good to do a simple bubblegum pop song in a writing camp. But it won’t last. The big problem is that today the song is just generic or funny. I guess it’s hard to write something like My name is Luca in a songwriting session for four hours.

Same with Born in the USA, would never happen in a songwriting session. A song like this is usually a work of one mind, having one goal. I have no doubt these people are out there. Is just that if they are good, you force them into these camps where a song should just pop up in one to two hours.

The problem with Eurovision I that it is a tv format. Here the songs are written to be generic and fit the role that the artist should have, like the diva, the funny guy, the funky girl with a lot of colors. Of course, if you work that way you won’t get a solid song that can go around for years to come. At the same time would My name is Luca fit into the glam world of Eurovision. Hard to say.

What we see though is that these factories now produce generic bubblegum pop and that already AI can do faster and easier. We will be flooded with shit like this so why bother to keep doing it. My guess is the only one that can beat AI is someone who is good at writing songs, forcing them to have a deep meaning and also can promote them so it touches a big audience. Hard though since the only platform left is Eurovision it seems when enough people are watching. And that platform is shrinking since the music is not good enough.