Eurovision 2015: Heroic Victory For Sweden

Eurovision 2015: The Top 3 at the close of play

Sweden added another Eurovision title to its collection last Saturday night when Måns Zelmerlöw secured the country's sixth win with his folk-pop anthem, Heroes. 

Russia is declared the runner-up, while Italy takes the bronze.

Heroes performed at the Eurovision 2015 Final:

The event started rather strangely with the ever-intrusive figure of Conchita Wurst gliding across the arena on a zip-wire, before handing over the hosting duties to an unnecessary female trio who gleefully exhibited as much charisma as a collection of showroom dummies.

Not an auspicious start, but the Austrian organisers were determined to ensure this 60th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest would be as big and as flashy as ever. They produced a show with plenty of colour and plenty of glitz filled the stadium, but Conchita aside, thankfully a lot less camp. It was just that the majority of the songs failed to reflect the enormity of this Eurovision occasion. It was mostly a succession of overwrought ballads - some of which should have remained in the semi-finals - with just the sporadic ray of sunshine provided by such countries as Israel, Australia, Sweden and yes, the United Kingdom.

Electro Velvet performed very well, but there was never any question that their song would set the voting alight. The desire to see the UK finish on the left-hand side of the scoreboard soon evaporated when no points were forthcoming from the first few juries. In the end, a total of five points seemed very generous.

As the voting progressed, however, the competition soon developed into a three nation race between Italy (Il Volo), Russia (Polina Gagarina) and Sweden. Thankfully, each country's points reveal was formulated to achieve the greatest tension by keeping the top of the leader board ever changing.

That didn't stop Sweden, the bookies' favourite, from running away with the title yet again - although Italy may feel more aggrieved than most with the result. A closer examination of the votes reveals a telling discrepancy: the public preferred Italy's Il Volo - with fourteen nations giving the pop-opera trio its split of the top points as opposed to just four national juries. In terms of points, Grande Amore received 366 from the televote, but just a paltry 171 from the juries. Sweden was overwhelmingly the favourite with the juries, receiving more than 100 points from them over their runner-up, Latvia.

This begs the question: do the juries have too much voting power? That is a debate in itself, but the discrepancy between the what the public like and what the juries think should win is definitely a cause for consternation.

Nevertheless, the 61st edition of the Contest will return to familiar ground in 2016, albeit not at Sweden's Malmö Arena which has already pulled out of the hosting process. Stockholm appears to be the favourite to stage the event, while seasoned television host and 2015 winner Måns Zelmerlöw has shown interest in becoming one of next year's presenters.

Eurovision 2015: Top 5:

1. Sweden | Heroes | Måns Zelmerlöw | 365 points
2. Russia | A Million Voices | Polina Gagarina | 303 points
3. Italy | Grande Amore | Il Volo | 292 points
4. Belgium | Rhythm Inside | Loïc Nottet | 217 points
5. Australia | Tonight Again | Guy Sebastian | 196 points

See the rest of the final table here (along with the results of the semi-finals)

Måns Zelmerlöw and Swedish fans celebrate the country's sixth victory:

Following Måns Zelmerlöw's triumph, the Swedish team held a winner's press conference which can be viewed here:

Just in case you missed the whole event, Albert Ravey, a contributor at The Guardian's comments section, has provided this concise (and somewhat scathing) recap:

• A lot of people waved flags. 
• There were lots of rubbish songs, including the UK one. 
• The presenters were rubbish. 
• The Estonian song was quite good, but the Swedish one had already been crowned winner before the show started so it won. 
• Lots of the songs were miserable shrieky power ballads like the ones off Frozen with backdrops of clouds and dead trees. 
• The Russian woman cried a lot, especially when people started booing. Russia came second. 
• Nobody voted for Germany, although their song wasn't too bad. 
• The Georgian entry featured a terrifying woman dressed as a crow. She sang a shrieky power ballad backed with clouds and dead trees. She did quite well. 
• Poland had a woman in a wheelchair. She got no votes at all. 
• Everybody said how much they liked the Belgian entry, but it didn't win. 
• Serbia had a huge woman jumping up and down, singing a shrieky power ballad. Everybody said it would do well. It didn't. 
• Greece's shrieky power ballad was so awful, even Cyprus didn't give it many votes. 
• That's about it.

Until next year!