The Eurovision Song Contest was watched by around 163 million people last year – meaning there are potentially 163 million different opinions on what makes a perfect entrant.
Do you go for a soulful ballad, guaranteed to leave Europe misty-eyed and full of love and peace?
Or do you opt for a cheesy extravaganza, complete with saucy takes on regional costumes and eye-popping staging that will have the entire continent (and Australia) raving in their living rooms?
The perfect song
Forensic musicologist at Boston's Berklee College of Music Joe Bennett has analysed hundreds of Eurovision finalists, identifying two dominant musical styles.
One is the "Euro-banger" – high-energy, 120+ BPM songs with kick drums and synth-heavy production, like Sweden's winning entries Euphoria (Loreen, 2012) and Heroes (Måns Zelmerlöw, 2015).
The other is the slow-burning ballad – typically around 70 BPM, such as Portugal's Amar Pelos Dois (Salvador Sobral, 2017) and the Netherlands' Arcade (Duncan Laurence, 2019).
There is a cliché that Eurovision songs are only about love and peace – reinforced by a song performed during the 2016 contest's interval about writing a perfect Eurovision song, called Love Love Peace Peace.
According to Bennett, there is some validity to this, with every Eurovision song falling under six broad lyrical themes: "love, unity, self-assertion, partying, history and songs about making music".
He adds that "songs of self-assertion or lyrical self-empowerment do very well" – as seen with Austria's 2014 winner Rise Like a Phoenix (Conchita Wurst).
Keep staging simple and effective
Acts might be tempted to go over the top on staging, but this may not be the way to secure victory, according to our experts.
Songwriter Thomas Stengaard co-wrote Denmark's 2013 winner Only Teardrops (as well as this year's UK entry What the Hell Just Happened by Remember Monday). He puts his success down, in part, to its simple staging, which he says made it easy to remember.
"If you asked a kid to draw that staging, they could. It was a girl with no shoes on, two guys playing the drums and a flute guy. Very simple, but it worked."