The songs that will be competing in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 have been released and among them is Malta’s entry: Kant by Miriana Conte. Trouble is, the song title – which is Maltese for singing – sounds very much like an English curse word. Though that was the point of the song – it’s a play on the phrase “serving c**t”, which refers to someone’s powerful display of femininity – it was just too dodgy for the bosses at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to let slide. Even Scott Mills of BBC Radio 2 said that he couldn’t play a snippet of the track on his radio show, lest he get into trouble with the higher-ups.
This is far from the first time where a song has had to change its lyrics or been withdrawn from the contest. Some of the censorship has tried to avoid English swear words or words that sound like swearing, product placement, or allusions to war and other political matters. According to the Eurovision Song Contest website, songs must be original compositions and must contain lyrics, although they can be in any language. The lyrics can’t be political in nature and no swearing is allowed either. Same for gestures deemed obscene.
Here are seven Eurovision songs where the songwriters had to change the lyrics to meet the rules.
We Don’t Wanna Put In by Stephane and 3G (2009, Georgia)
Moscow held the 2009 edition of Eurovision and the EBU requested that Georgia change the lyrics of this song, which they considered to be referring to Vladimir Putin, who was Russia’s prime minister at the time. Georgia refused and withdrew from the contest.
Hurricane by Eden Golan (2024, Israel)
Israel, which was the subject of much controversy in 2024 due to its conflict with Hamas and Gaza, originally submitted this song under the title October Rain. However, the EBU said the submitters had to change the title and some of the lyrics due to references to the October 7 attacks on Israel by terrorist group Hamas. Previous lyrics, which included “they were all good children, each one of them” and “I promise you that never again / I’m still wet from this October rain”, were excised. Not that this stopped people from protesting against Israel’s inclusion in the contest and calling for its exclusion, though.
Si by Gigliola Cinquetti (1974, Italy)
The only case to date where a country has banned its own song, Italy’s national broadcaster RAI believed that the song – whose title means “yes” in English – would encourage people to vote in support of banning divorce in a referendum that would take place that year. Instead of withdrawing the song, they decided not to air it. The result? The song finished in second place, and the Italians voted to keep divorce legal.
Facebook Uh Oh Uh Oh (A Satirical Song) by Valentina Monetta (2012, San Marino)
For the 2012 contest in Baku, Azerbaijan, the tiny city-state of San Marino submitted a song about Facebook. However, since it broke the rules surrounding product placement and brands, the writers changed the title to The Social Network Song (Uh Oh Uh Oh) while keeping most of the lyrics, which didn’t directly reference Facebook.
Razom Nas Bagato by GreenJolly (2005, Ukraine)
The rap duo GreenJolly wrote this song specifically for the Ukrainian 2004 presidential election and the Orange Revolution, name-dropping candidate Viktor Yushchenko. In accordance with the politics-free policy of the contest, they rewrote the song to remove references to Yushchenko, and also to include lyrics in English as well as Ukrainian.
Eat Your Salad by Citi Zeni (2022, Latvia)
The band behind this track, which gained much popularity among YouTube commenters, had to censor the lyrics – which are about healthy eating and having an environmentally friendly lifestyle – when performing in the live semi-final. They got around the rule on curse words by getting the audience to shout the last word in the line “instead of meat, I eat veggies and p****”.
Always on the Run by Isaak (2024, Germany)
German singer Isaak also had to censor himself when performing this song for the 2024 contest in Malmo, Sweden, omitting the profanity in “No one gives a s**t about what’s soon to come”.
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