Over at the thread for Montenegro´s rehearsal snippet, I commented with an off-topic thought that I felt like wanting to get the input of the community on.
I believe I've noticed a stylistic pattern. Over the last few years we've seen quite a few entries opted for or suffered from what I term "over-eurovisioning" their stagings.
Let´s start with Montenegro 2026 as a recent example. In the music video, we saw that beautiful idea of taking a highly textured (I hope this term is universally understood? I´m speaking as a designer...) environment - the traditional old-lace collars, the aprons, the domestic vibe of old appliances and timbered walls etc. - and use it as a contrasting element to the "liberation" emerging from those textures. A corset over the lace-blouse, a bit of chrome against a rough linen skirt etc.
What we get in staging, from the looks of it, is an highly polished, smoothed out and generally "glitzed-up" version. Gone the texture, the feel, and, unfortunately, larger swaths of the storytelling. It´s eurovisioned up into glammed artifice.
Next example, tho this might not be as bad, is Czechia 2026. We were treated with a highly textured music video, looking like it either jumped right off the screen of Czech TV in 1974 or off one of those pensive Czech animation, arthouse or fairytale movies of roughly the same era. Quintessentially Czech. What we seem to be getting is (a hopefully fantastic! But still...) mirror kaleidoscope with the crumpled shirt being the only remaining "texture".
Think of how they did Adonxs (Czechia 2025) ugly: beautifully textured music video, great storytelling and then the performance opted for this weird standard of glitz. Black and white glitz but just as...empty.
Or take Teya & Salena with "Who the Hell is Edgar" (Austria 2023). Quirky, adorable and crammed full of storytelling and texture music video. And the performance: weirdly futuristic (why?) dancers, lacquered clothes, eurovisioned-up, all glitz and no storytelling, no texture, no character left. They basically strangled the song´s whole personality by eurovisioning it to death.
And I'm surely aware that some easily done elements of a music video don't translate directly to staging. But in many cases I believe, it could´very well be been done easily. Instead one seems to often just take a bucket full of cliché Eurovision sauce and dunk the artists in it. You get the gist of what I´m getting at here.
To close, here´s a short list of examples that imho DIDN´T arrive at middle-of-the-Eurovision-road-glitzing-up and maintained texture, personality and storytelling with their stagings:
Konstrakta - In Corpore Sano (Serbia 2022)
Dadi Freyr - 10 Years (Iceland 2021)
Baby Lasagna - Rim Dim Tagi Dim (Croatia 2024)
I know this is Eurovision. I´m all here for staging glow-ups and I love glam, camp and sequins, sure thing, but I believe it´s come to a point where glow-up is misunderstood to mean maxxing out on shine, glitz and tech, instead of...well, the imho holy trifecta of texture, personality and storytelling.