YMMV / Eurovision Song Contest 2021

• Critical Dissonance: Bread and butter for the contest, especially since the split of jury and televote points made the dissonance easier to notice. For example, Italy only came fourth with the juries but managed to gain first place thanks to a massive televote lead.
  • Still less pronounced than other years, as all but three songs each finished in both the jury's and televote's respective top tens^note Bulgaria, Malta, and Portugal with the juries; Finland, Lithuania, and Serbia with the televote and three out of their respective top five songs were the same ^note Italy (1st with televote, 4th with juries), France (3rd with televote, 2nd with juries), and Iceland (5th with both) - jury winner Switzerland finished 6th with the televote, which still isn't that far off comparatively. Compared to 2019, where neither the jury winner (North Macedonia) nor the televote winner (Norway) even made the other party's top ten, they actually weren't as far off from each other has they have been in recent years.
• Hype Backlash: One theory for why Malta got hit with such Critical Dissonance. After "Je me casse" was pegged as an early favorite to win the Maltese delegation went overboard advertising the song online. By the time the final arrived the public were tired of the song which led to it receiving a televote score of only 47 compared to the 208 she received from the Juries. The backlash got even stronger when allegations arose about Malta spending up to €650,000 of public funds for Destiny's entry and participation, with the Maltese government demanding an audit of the expense (for comparison, Spain in 2019 spent a total of €508,862, of which €238,125 were the Big Five-level participation fee, and that was a record-breaking sum for a country which is much, much bigger and populous than Malta). Another attribute could be that Malta was so early in the final running order, which had many other girl bops, making the song seem less indistinguishable.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Flo Rida or No Rida? ^Explanation San Marino's participation was a ride. To recap, when Senhit's song "Adrenalina" was first released in March 2021 the fans were positively shocked at it being a well-crafted banger, with a polished music video and featuring a verse from American rapper Flo Rida of all people. The unexpected awesomeness of it all, from a country which is usually the Butt-Monkey of the contest, led to San Marino shoot upwards in the odds, including being the favourite to win it all for a short while. Later on, the question became whether Flo would be joining Senhit on stage in May, given the COVID-19-related travel restrictions. Senhit and the Sammarinese delegation refused to either confirm or deny his participation until the last minute, teasing the fans with vague answers and including stickers of Flo Rida with question marks on her costume during the rehearsals (with a stand-in singer delivering the rap verse). At last, the answer was confirmed to be yes when Flo Rida arrived in Rotterdam two days before San Marino's semi-final. To top it off, the reason for which Flo couldn't have been in Rotterdam for the initial rehearsals was that he was judging a bikini contest in Miami.
  • Cyprus is Head and Shoulders above the competition ^Explanation The music video for "El Diablo" featured a couple of shots with blatant Product Placement, including Elena Tsagrinou using a Head & Shoulders shampoo bottle. The product placement was removed from the version of the video uploaded on the official Eurovision channels.
  • Broccoli ^Explanation It's practically impossible to talk about the Dutch entry without someone claiming that it's about broccoli.
  • In Russia, dress wears you. ^Explanation The Russian performance had Manizha in an oversized traditional dress that moved against her wishes, as a metaphor for the treatment of women. Russian Reversal jokes were quick to spring out.
    • Manizha is Mom ^Explanation Manizha eventually freeing herself from the dress by opening a panel in the front and stepping out was widely compared to Futurama character "Mom" removing her grandmotherly fat suit in a similar way.
  • Greece's song is Just Dance ^Explanation Greece's stage show for "Last Dance" included dancers in green suits, so that Stefania appeared to be dancing along invisible men and/or autonomous articles of clothing in front of a neon cityscape. The song title and the final presentation immediately drew comparisons to the famous dancing video game.
  • Gjon bopping ^Explanation In the preview clip of Gjon's Tears second rehearsal for "Tout l'univers", he appears to be dancing in a way that doesn't really fit the style of the song. Thus the many edits where the clip was paired with audio from a hip-hop song or a similar genre.
  • Natalia's note ^Explanation At the end of "Sugar", Natalia Gordienko (Moldova) holds an incredibly long but also incredibly flat note, which was compared to everything from a mosquito buzzing around a room to a refrigerator running. Her stiff pose only invited even more humour.
  • Damiano's press conference antics ^Explanation Referring to Måneskin's lead singer Damiano David during the winner's press conference, obviously high on the excitement from the win and somewhat sloshed on the complimentary refreshments, like him screaming into a microphone◊ or raising his bare leg◊. One of the most common uses of the second image was to superimpose the leg over a map of Italy, which happens to be in the vague shape of a high-heeled boot.
• Reality Subtext: Considering that the previous year's contest was cancelled due to the global pandemic and many limitations were imposed on this year's to keep it going forward, several competing songs reference the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown one way or the other. Lithuania's "Discoteque" is about dancing alone at home, the Czech Republic's "Omaga" talks about "[having] been home too long" and "the apocalypse", and Ukraine's "Shum" is inspired by a traditional chant about the rebirth of spring, which the band reinterpreted as a reference to human activity starting again after the health crisis.
• So OK, It's Average: The reason offered for most of the quadruple nil-points in the televote, most especially in relation to the United Kingdom and Spain. They didn't tank so much out of general dislike as they did out of general apathy when their songs didn't stand out in a stronger-than-average grand final.
• Special Effects Failure: The staging for "Last Dance" by Stefania featured extensive greenscreening to make the dancers appear partially invisible. There were a few shots, especially during the semi-final performance, where the lighting didn't work correctly and left shadows on the parts of the dancers that weren't supposed to be visible, or even reflecting the green colour on Stefania's sequined outfit thus making parts of her disappear.
  • This was further exacerbated in the semi-final rehearsals by Estonia's fog machine effects clinging to the stage and messing with the green screen effects, to the tune of Stefania's face occasionally disappearing. Thankfully, the organizers figured out how to clear the smoke more thoroughly before the live show.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The Cypriot entry, "El Diablo", is a dance-pop track sung by a Greek Ms. Fanservice with a Gratuitous Spanish title and references to fire and burning as metaphors for love. Now, where have we heard this before?
    • Musically, many people noted similarities between "El Diablo" and early 2010s pop hits, most notably "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. The comparisons went up when Elena Tsagrinou's stage shows included dancers in leotards and a prominent white-and-red motif, just like the music video of Gaga's hit.
  • Some of the songs by artists reselected from 2020 sound very similar musically to the previous year's unused entry. Some, like Daði Freyr, have spun it into an outright Sequel Song. Azerbaijan's "Mata Hari" takes it a step further, as not only it's named after a historical woman just like "Cleopatra", it even references Cleopatra in its lyrics.