I was shocked, last year , when France won the 2020 JESC. Their song was not bad but what was so new and different about it? If I had been a European child, I wouldn't have been so shocked because I would have known who Valentina Tronel was before she first uttered "J'imagine".
Valentina was a child superstar from Kids United who had 300,000 followers on Instagram. If these followers, probably not just from France, had voted twice for France (and she had campaigned on Instagram "Votez pour la France!"), as they were allowed to do, they would have accounted for almost all of Valentina's 700,000 votes. Of course, she would have got hundreds of thousands of votes from other countries. Not every Instagram follower needed to vote for France for Valentina to win. She is half-Italian (note the name: "Valentina" not Valentine, the French form - and she sang an Italian song on Voice Kids) and Italy did not have a candidate in JESC 2020. Many Maltese kids would have voted for a half-Italian singer because Italy is their fashion leader and "Chasing Sunsets" was a little monotonous. Francophones in Belgium and Switzerland, who also did not have national candidates, would have found it easy to vote for a song that was 100% French. Even if Poland's masses of teens, who supposedly gave Poland victory in 2018-2019, voted for Poland (there is some evidence that they didn't), they wouldn't have mattered. Poor Ala! In fact, when you put up a superstar candidate, no other country's votes matter. This is due to JESC 's "first past the post" voting system, which made only 16% of the total vote a "Valentinaslide". Spain's 10% of the vote, in 2nd place, completely did not matter. Kazakhstan got 2nd place in the contest by jury votes but their televotes were too far behind to have a chance of 1st place.
I started looking for what I could learn from that experience in 2021.
Of course, the first place to check was France. Enzo Hilaire, representing France, has a catchy little song, arguably better than "J'Imagine", he sings like Valentina (SOUNDS like her) and the contest being hosted in France could bring out more French voters than usual. Mais pauvre Enzo has only 11,000 followers on Instagram and is virtually unknown outside France. Valentina could try to bring out her 300,000 votes for France this year but: (1) she tried for Barbara Pravi in Eurovision 2021 and fell on her cute little smile (2) she tried (admittedly did not campaign on instagram like she did in 2020) in the "Other Songs" JESC 2021 song contest, where most of the votes come from instagram, for herself and she could not break into the top 10. It seems her Instagram voters are not motivated like in 2020. France is a dark horse: possible but not probable.
Well, where do we find the winners?
On instagram, of course! Instagram is the kids' favourite social media site. Little ones don't tweet often or read volumes on facebook. They like to look at tik-tok too but people don't make a presence there: it is good for one-off videos.
Top JESC 2021 candidate on instagram is Sara Egwu-James, representing Poland. She has 124,000 followers on @sara_james_music and more on some other instagram accounts too (which may be double-count followers from the first account). She is a winner of the Voice Kids in Poland, which probably accounts for the followers. She is not a superstar like Valentina but she is running at or near the top of most Youtube polls for JESC 2021 so far, probably on her instagram followers. Sara is more like Viki Gabor, the winner in 2019, than like Ala Tracz, who proved how little talent counts for in today's broadcaster-packaged JESC in 2020. Sara is 12: Viki was 12 and Ala was 9. It makes a difference. Most of the Polish masses who smothered the other candidates' votes in 2018-2019 are tweens and teens, not little children. They vote for a candidate they identify with. They like to pretend that THEY are up on stage. They came out in droves for Viki and 14 year old Roxana but little Ala didn't move them. Sara could. Also, like Viki, who had lived in England, Sara is fluent in English (hers is one of the few songs that STARTS in English, not just throws a few lines of English into the chorus). Her father is Nigerian (her mother is Polish and she was raised there), which accounts for her English fluency and one more advantage: like the biggest televotegetter in JESC history, Destiny Chukunyere, whose father was Nigerian, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of non-white or immigrant children in Europe will identify with her, although some may go with Ayana Voss, of the Netherlands, whose parents are both immigrants to Europe (from Britain and Japan). At least Sara and Destiny were European enough not to sing in Igbo.
In short, Poland is ahead and likely to come back as leader of musical young Europe. Break the kielbasa and pirogies out of the freezer.
Poland, in 2018-2019, tended to pull votes from most of the other ex-Communist countries and may do so again. If so, as in the earlier years, some great songs from the Balkans and the Caucasus are going nowhere (Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia (my choice!), Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan). Even voters in those countries to some extent find a certain status from voting with a Polish child with whom they could identify, because "Poland is famous" (2018-2020 is a long time at their age) because they believe that their countries do not have enough votes to have a chance at winning.
But Poland is not a sure thing. At 113,000 instagram followers (now up to 121,000: 8,000 more just this month!), Tatyana Mezhentseva (Russia) is running 2nd in most youtube and JESC polls, behind Sara. She has some strengths too. First, JESC watchers know her: she was Russia's candidate for JESC in 2019, in a duet with a Tuvan boy named Denberel Oorzhak. On the other hand, the memories are not pleasant: votes for the duet were among those smothered by Viki's Polish cohorts and Russia did not even get into the top 10. Yet Tanya proved this year, by winning the JESC's "Other Songs" contest, that her Instagram followers are mobilised NOW and ready to vote for her. Sara's followers have not been put to the test and Valentina's followers simply disappeared this autumn. Also, as Tanya is younger (11), she might appeal to more 10- voters than Sara, although it is not clear that enough of them vote to make a difference. They surely did not save Ala last year.
While I did not see Tanya campaigning on Instagram for "Other Contests", she is with the nda marketing group, which are quite capable of mobilising the Russian youth. On the other hand, nda are unknown outside Russia, although they probably have connections in those ex-Communist eastern European countries whose young people might instinctively vote for Poland and have a negative opinion of Russia for historical reasons. It was nda, or Other Contests, or both, who almost eliminated Sara Egwu-James' instagram follower-lead this month. If they can turn those followers into votes and grow them as we have seen this month, Sara may be left crying into her barszcz with little Ala, wondering what happened. If the race gets close it will be a race to see how many Polish teens and tweens and how many Russian teens and tweens vote for their respective countries.
So my prediction is, Poland will win, no one else matters except maybe Russia and Russia could pull off a sleeper surprise.
You might be saying "But what about the songs?". Sad to say, they no longer matter. Unlike 2003-2015 JESC, they are not even the children's songs (although some singers, like Sara, Ayana and Arpina ("Malena Fox") of Armenia, obviously had some part in writing their songs). Today's JESC songs, like the children themselves, are packaged products of their national broadcasters. Nowadays, the kids vote for candidates they identify with, linguistically, by age, by reputation and social media presence, by country and that je ne sais quoi of "star presence" or charisma, even facial expression (see Sara's Instagram photos). They'll jump and dance to the songs but they often forget which song is for which country and do not assess the merits and demerits of the song the way adults might when voting. The days like 2005, when little Ksenia Sitnik (Belarus), age 9, skipped and danced on to the stage, singing her original song, with almost no pre-performance marketing, and left all the pollsters open-mouthed and mute when she won, are gone.
Those were the days, my friend!
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(but props since the singer wrote it), 
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could be put into this category. 'Smexy-sounding' is just a joke term to address how Qami Qami could literally be played as a chill track in resort clubs.
is miles ahead of the rest.
