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Australian Eurovision entry allowed to proceed, despite questions over lyrics
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 7 April 2016
Australia’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest has been allowed to go through to the competition, even though Australia remains not part of Europe. Still, this time next year we might not be either, so let’s not make too much of a fuss.
The issue with the song was not Australia’s geographical location, rather its lyrics. There were concerns that it broke rules on promoting brands and products. But it’s been decided that when Dami Im sings about “face time”, she’s referring to two people looking at each other, rather than Apple’s video chat software.
“The lyrics of the Australian song are presented as two separate words, ‘face time’ and not FaceTime which is an Apple trademark”, said the Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group, which rules on such disputes. “The Merriam-Webster dictionary refers to ‘face time’ as ‘time spent meeting with someone’ … so in this case the song lyrics have been cleared”.
Good old Merriam-Webster.
Similarly, and perhaps more surprisingly, the Ukrainian entry has also been allowed to go through to the competition. As previously reported, questions had been raised over Jamala’s song ‘1944’, which some saw as a veiled dig at Russia. Political lyrics are also banned from the competition, and have been turned away in the past.
However, last month the European Broadcasting Union said on Twitter that the Reference Group “concluded that the title and lyrics of the song don’t contain political speech and don’t breach Eurovision rules”.
