Revisiting American Song Contest as an Eurovision fan

Eurovision season is in the middle of its most intense month, where more than half of the entries are already out and the fan rankings start to get clearer.

Like many people on the Internet, so far this Eurovision year has been pretty weak so far, and many of us are hesitant to make any bold prediction, unlike the last three years or so.

While I was thinking about it, American Song Contest popped back to my mind. Had it had only one season? Was it still ongoing? My brain was craving answers.

According to its Wikipedia page, the American Song Contest had not been renewed for another season, and the contest had not been considered successful because it did not live up to the expectations set up by its European counterpart.

However, the article did not go too much into details as of why the contest flopped, therefore I will try to find some causes as someone who has been watching Eurovision for almost seven years. I can't believe it's been this long, but I digress.

First of all, in my opinion the target public was too niche in comparison to Eurovision. Yes, an American might know the names of all the participating states, but it's more likely for a non-European to know most European countries than for a non-American to know all the States, even if not all the 50 states were participating. This shrunk the potential to extend its popularity to a more international audience like Eurovision did. Indeed, Eurovision's popularity has skyrocketed so much that now even non-European countries can join the televote as representatives of "the rest of the world".

The second factor which made the competition less interesting is the lack of language diversity. As a language nerd and a Eurovision fan, the festival is a great occasion to find out about new languages and different music scenes all across Europe. Without Eurovision I would have never had come up with the goal of learning Slovene, for example, because it's not the most widely used language, and there would be very few other occasions where I would have had the chance to come into contact with it (other than travelling to Slovenia, which I also did).

The third reason why I think American Song Contest kind of flop was the lack of real competition between the winner AleXa and the other acts.

Thanks to her background in the K-pop industry, AleXa managed to deliver a good performance with a complex choreography and vocals on point, all while already having an interesting song, Wonderland. She did all the right things and deservingly won the competition, but there has never really been a time where someone had doubted her victory.

Indeed, in Eurovision it's extremely rare to have such a predictable winner, and it's especially rare that everyone agrees on only one single winner. Even in the weaker years, there has always been at least one or two songs that had been considered potential winners.

Even this year, which has been considered "weak" so far, not every Eurovision youtuber has the same winner. Let's take two fan rankings as examples, updated as of 23rd February, 2025.

Youtuber ESC Silver put Albania as their personal winner Albania, represented by the duo Shkodra Elektronike with the song Zjerm, which is one of the most popular songs so far:

Conversely, youtuber ESC Rolly put Greece, represented by the singer Klavdia with the song Asteromata, as their personal winner, which is quite a divergent opinion in comparison to most channels, who tend to favor Shkodra Elektronike:

In order to compete with the decades-long, cemented popularity of Eurovision, it's important to be able to deliver the right amount of uncertainty around the winner as well, which ultimately creates enough hype to lead the public to watch the show and get intrigued by it.

In this sense, the existence of national selections is a huge advantage in fueling this hype for Eurovision because one iconic winner could really change the forecasts up overnight. This was the case of Loreen, who represented Sweden in 2023. Before her win in Melodifestivalen, most people were firmly persuaded that the winner would have been Käärijä, who represented Finland with his viral song Cha Cha Cha.

However, the absence of state selections is definitely not an excuse not to make an interesting song selection, and since the 2022 edition was the very first one, the producers should have worked much harder into making the selection much more impressive.

This issue also reminds me of the situation of the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite being a powerhouse of music outside of Eurovision, being the home country of massively successful and iconic artists over the decades, when it comes to sending an interesting entry for Eurovision, the UK often ends up slacking painfully, sending poorly-staged songs, singers who are not exactly brilliant in their live performances, or simply uninteresting songs that get eventually pushed at the bottom of the ranking by either the juries, the televote, or both.

The U.S. is in a similar situation when it comes to mainstream artists, as they have been the home country to many successful acts, thus I think this background has set up expectations that were eventually not met, making the contest flop just like the United Kingdom in many Eurovision seasons.

The final factor that put a nail in the coffin for American Song Contest was the context where it was created. The competition was indeed created following the hype for the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, which is relevant for two reasons.

The first is that, in the eyes of many Eurovision fans, the idea seemed born in a disingenuous way, almost out of spite that the U.S. were not included in the competition and could not profit off the hype around the competition. It seemed like it was not a coincidence that the American Song Contest had exactly been created after its European counterpart had seen a massive increase in its audience and popularity (source).

The second reason is that part of the popularity of the 2021 season of the Eurovision Song Contest had built up because in many European countries there were still COVID restriction put in place, so a huge portion of the population was either at home due to a local restriction plan, because they were sick with COVID, or because they were Eurovision fans excited for the contest to return after being halted in 2020.

2022 was, instead, the year were most of these restrictions were removed and, therefore, people only ended up watching Eurovision Song Contest only if they wanted to, which is not a big deal for a decades-old competition with a stable fanbase, but it definitely is a big deal for a brand new competition that aims to be its American version and has to build a fanbase from scratch.

These were the reasons that, in my opinion, made the American Song Contest flop in comparison to its European counterpart. I actually enjoyed Wonderland by AleXa, and I think her win was well deserved, but I can also easily understand why this first season did not leave much of an impression.

If you have watched American Song Contest, feel free to tell me your opinion in the comments, I'd love to see your point of view as well!