In 2013, the best that Europe had to give itself was a song about suicide

"Birds falling down the rooftops,

Out of the sky like raindrops.

Birds falling down the rooftops."

"Birds" - Anouk

The Eurovision Song Contest has had a long and variable evolution over its six decades of existence, and one of its traits that has changed the most over time is its meaning: Eurovision has been a sign of unity in Europe, a folklore showcase, a display of social movements, a space for new musical tendencies and a historical remembrance spot; all in an hours-long yearly music contest.

However, every year –or every now and then– the contest harbours a performance that breaks all those semantic schemes to mean something completely new, strange to the dynamics of the event, and make a short space for something out of the norm. It's usual that those performances fall into oblivion in minutes and remain unnoticed until a couple of years later; this, though, even as an exception itself, has some strange cases.

Anouk used an alternative setting for her performance.

One of them, and my favourite, is the case for The Netherlands' song in 2013, "Birds," by Anouk. In an edition, like most, full of love songs, empowering anthems, generic songs and folkloric elements, a song about the consequences of a breakup and subsequent suicidal thoughts, with a beautiful and artistic performance that broke all schemes, even when it came to positioning and use of the staging, rose. It did not win, but it did not remain unnoticed or forgotten either: at that moment, it was impressively striking.

The artist, Anouk, not precisely known for making generic pop songs that could fit an event like Eurovision, chose not to stand on the stage but on the end of the elevated way coming from it that went right into the crowd: that way, with a series of camera cuts, Anouk seemed suspended from the ground and at the same time closely surrounded by the public. The lights, staging and choir, all coming from the stage and filling the performance with an ethereal yet meaningful completion, gave the already magical succession a colorful and heartfelt turn.

For all those reasons, despite the official winner being Denmark, with a generic pop song and a performance filled with folklore, more of a follow-up of what the winner of the previous year had done with "Euphoria," "Birds" is undeniably my favourite song and performance in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.