Weirdest Eurovision Performance

Every year roughly forty countries send their strangest available idea to a stage watched by a hundred million people, and a handful of them commit to it completely. What separates these from novelty acts elsewhere is the stakes involved. This is a national broadcaster making a decision on behalf of an entire country, which is why a Finnish monster metal band winning in 2006 was a genuine national event rather than a joke that got out of hand. Verka Serduchka finished second wearing silver foil with a star on her head, singing a phrase that officially means nothing at all. A Latvian entry once built a whole song around being a pirate. None of it was done ironically, and that is precisely why it works.

The field here is forty performances, drawn from across the contest's long and largely unregulated history.

The bracket is not asking which song is best, and voting on that basis produces a confusing experience fairly quickly. It asks which performance went furthest — a different axis entirely, and one where several genuinely good songs go out early.