‘Ich komme!’ The smutty Eurovision songs that dodge the censors

From ensuring your swearwords are in languages other than English to outrageous euphemisms, contestants in the famously camp extravaganza have ways to avoid being toned down …

When the winner of this year’s Eurovision song contest is announced shortly before midnight next Saturday, it won’t be the first climax of the evening. “I’m coming / I’m coming,” a scantily clad Lithuanian will announce in the chorus of her song. Australia’s male entrant will invite listeners to “sh-sh-shake me good” so they can get “a taste of the milkshake man”. And Malta’s submission is going to prompt the audience to shout the word “Kant” – due to it sounding like a rude English term for female genitalia.

After the 2024 edition of the world’s largest live music contest was largely overshadowed by political positioning over the war in Gaza, many artists at this year’s event in the Swiss city of Basel are returning to what they like to do best: celebrating the act of lovemaking in pop songs. Because even though the European Broadcasting Union’s official rules ban lyrics “obscene … or otherwise offensive to public morals or decency” from Eurovision’s three live shows, the matrix of what is considered beyond the pale is more complicated. It mostly means you can sing about sex, but you can’t name it. At least not in English.

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