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Eurovision 2016: Political Controversy And Sergey Lazarev Adult Entertainment Scandal

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 04:42 PST, May 18, 2016

Eurovision 2016 ended with Ukraine’s win, according to The Guardian. Ukraine’s contestant, Jamala, won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with a controversial song about Moscow’s atrocities during World War II.

Jamala, whose full name is Susana Jamaladynova, won the longest-running international TV song contest with the song titled “1944.” In her victorious Eurovision song, Jamala slams the Soviet Union’s deportation of a Crimean ethnic group she is part of during World War II.

Ukraine finished Eurovision 2016 with 534 points, while Australia, which competed at the European song contest for the second time, finished second with 511, with Russia finishing third with 491 points.

Before the event even started, critics predicted that Russia’s Eurovision contestant, Sergey Lazarev, would win this year. U.K.’s Joe and Jake finished in 24 place with 62 points. Australia’s Dami Im managed to win the most points from the jury of professionals in 42 countries that announced their points in the voting.

Ukraine’s song is also believed to be slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine in March, 2014. And Russian state media has already called Ukraine’s Eurovision song “anti-Russian.”

And while some Russian experts claim Jamala’s song violates the contest’s rules, Eurovision’s management dismisses their accusations, saying that Jamala’s “1944” didn’t breach rules that don’t allow “lyrics, speeches or gestures of a political or similar nature.”

Ukraine didn’t participate in last year’s Eurovision song contest due to its financial crisis. Speaking to reporters, Jamala revealed she was inspired by the soundtrack to the Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List when she had prepared her song for the song contest. Jamala also said she hoped her song would carry the same power as the 1993 movie’s soundtrack does.

Speaking on stage after her Eurovision win, Jamala said she wished “peace and love to everyone.” And hours later she revealed at a news conference the true power of her song.

“I was sure that if you sing, if you talk about truth, it can really touch people. And I was right.”

Justin Timberlake took the stage of Eurovision 2016 to perform his newly-released song “Can’t Stop The Feeling.” And then the “What Goes Around, Comes Around” singer took to Twitter to congratulate Jamala on her win.

Eurovision 2016 was held in Stockholm, Sweden, a year after Swedish singer Mans Zelmerlow won the song contest with his song “Heroes.” Next year’s Eurovision will take place in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.

Just hours before Eurovision 2016, British tabloids published leaked photos of Russian contestant Sergey Lazarev, which showed him naked, while a woman in torn up clothes was tied to a radiator, according to SBS.

And while the original source of the controversial photos is unclear, rumor has it that the Russian Eurovision contestant has a secret past in adult entertainment. It was reported by some British tabloids that Russian officials even hired IT experts in the hopes to remove the photos from the internet. In one of the photos, Lazarev is seen holding a saw to the woman’s mouth.

However, the Russian Eurovision team has dismissed allegations that Sergey Lazarev has a secret fetish past, saying that those photos were actually part of a Russian anti-domestic violence campaign.

SBS reported that, in an interview, a Russian Eurovision spokesperson insisted the photos were part of an anti-domestic violence campaign.

“Several Russian stars had similar artistic photo shooting for the exhibition ‘Stars against violence and rudeness’ that took place in 31/10/2008 and all money collected from the sales of these portraits went to the victims of the above-mentioned cases.”

[Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images]

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