BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 20 of 150

Correct — C, United By Music. Eurovision's permanent slogan is 'United by Music', and the word 'permanent' in the stem is doing real work, because for most of the contest's life there was no permanent slogan at all. From 2002 onwards each edition carried its own slogan, devised by that year's host broadcaster as part of the contest's annual visual identity alongside a unique theme artwork. 'United by Music' entered that sequence as the slogan of the 2023 contest, held at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool — and that edition was unusual in a way that gave the phrase its force. Ukraine's public broadcaster UA:PBC had won in 2022 with Kalush Orchestra's 'Stefania' and held the right to host, but could not stage the contest safely because of the Russian invasion, so the BBC hosted it in the United Kingdom on Ukraine's behalf. In that setting 'united by music' was not decoration; it was a statement about a war. The European Broadcasting Union then decided the line was worth keeping, and from the 2024 contest onwards it was retained for all future editions as the contest's permanent slogan and part of its brand strategy, ending the twenty-two-year practice of coining a fresh slogan every year. It was accordingly in force at the 2025 contest — the 69th edition, whose final was held on 17 May 2025 at St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, four months before this paper was set — and it remains the contest's standing slogan today. One small point of accuracy: BPSC prints the option with a capital B, 'United By Music', while the EBU's own styling is 'United by Music'. The capitalisation is the paper's, not the organisers', and it does not affect which option is correct.

• (a)Music Unites Us — This is not the contest's slogan and never has been. It is a deliberate near-paraphrase — the same idea, the same two content words, simply rearranged into a different grammatical shape — and that rearrangement is the whole mechanism of the trap. A candidate who has stored the meaning ('something about music uniting people') rather than the string will find that this option satisfies the memory exactly as well as the correct one does. Slogan questions do not test comprehension; they test verbatim recall, and here the entire difference between right and wrong is word order.
• (b)Together in Song — Also not the contest's slogan. It sits in precisely the same register — unity, togetherness, music — and is the sort of phrase a plausible international music event might well adopt, which is exactly why it is offered. Nothing about it is factually absurd or historically impossible; it is simply not the phrase the European Broadcasting Union adopted. The only defence against a distractor built this way is to have learned the three words 'United by Music' as a fixed string rather than as a sentiment you could reconstruct.
• (d)More than one of the above — The stem asks for the one permanent slogan, and a permanent slogan is singular by definition — the EBU replaced the annual-slogan system in 2024 precisely so that there would be exactly one. Only option (c) states it, so no second option can be true alongside it and the combined option is impossible. This is the third consecutive item in this block of the paper on which 'More than one of the above' can be eliminated by logic before any factual recall is attempted, which is worth noticing as a technique: on a 'name the one X' stem the fourth option is structurally dead, and choosing it costs 1/3 mark for nothing.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual international song competition organised by the European Broadcasting Union and held every year since 1956 except 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation — which makes it the longest-running international music competition on television. Two structural facts explain nearly everything else about it. First, the EBU is an alliance of public-service broadcasters, not an organisation of states, and it is emphatically not a European Union body: the entrants are broadcasters rather than governments, which is why EBU members and invited associates from outside Europe — Israel, Morocco and Australia — have competed, and why broadcasters from 52 countries have taken part at least once. Second, the contest is hosted by the country whose broadcaster won the previous year, which turns each edition into a rotating tourism and soft-power showcase for a different nation, and which is exactly why every host used to brand its own year with its own slogan and theme art. The format is tightly rule-bound: an original song of three minutes or less, performed live by a singer or a group of up to six people aged 16 or over, with each participating country awarding 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points to its ten favourite songs on a combination of a professional jury vote and a public televote. The contest was modelled on Italy's Sanremo Music Festival, running since 1951. Ireland and Sweden share the record with seven wins each, Germany has entered every edition but one, and the contest has launched careers from ABBA to Céline Dion. Its branding history is what this question actually tests: unique slogans from 2002, one permanent slogan from 2024.

There is no way to reason to this answer from first principles, and the honest technique is to recognise that immediately: it is a verbatim-recall item, so certainty about the string is everything and understanding the sentiment is worth nothing. What is transferable is seeing how the option set was built. All three named options say the same thing. 'Music Unites Us' rearranges the correct answer's own words; 'Together in Song' swaps in synonyms; 'United by Music' is the actual phrase. A candidate who revised the meaning has no basis at all for separating them and will pick at one-in-three odds — which, under this paper's +1 and −1/3 marking, is an expected return of exactly zero, so guessing here is literally pointless. The discriminating move is therefore made weeks before the exam and not in the hall: revise mottos, slogans, themes and taglines as exact strings, inside quotation marks, in your notes. Two hooks make this particular string stick. It began as a one-year theme for the 2023 Liverpool contest staged on behalf of war-time Ukraine, where the word 'united' carried a concrete meaning. And it is structurally parallel to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic motto, 'United by Emotion' — the same 'United by ___' frame, which UPSC has already tested once, so learning either one reinforces the other. Anchor the timing: the slogan had been permanent since the 2024 contest, was in force at the 2025 contest in Basel on 17 May 2025, and was still the contest's slogan on the 13 September 2025 exam date and remains so.

• 'United by Music' first served as the slogan of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest and was retained from the 2024 contest onwards as the contest's permanent slogan, replacing the practice — begun in 2002 — of a unique slogan for every edition.
• The 2023 contest was staged at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool by the BBC on behalf of Ukraine's UA:PBC, which had won in 2022 with Kalush Orchestra's 'Stefania' but could not host because of the Russian invasion.
• The contest is organised by the European Broadcasting Union — an association of public-service broadcasters, not a European Union body — and has been held every year since 1956 except 2020, making it the longest-running international music competition on television; broadcasters from 52 countries have taken part at least once, including non-European Israel, Morocco and Australia.
• The 2025 contest, the 69th edition, held its final on 17 May 2025 at St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, with 37 participating broadcasters; Austria won with 'Wasted Love' by JJ, Israel finished second, and the EBU reported a television audience of 166 million across 37 European markets.
• Format rules: an original song of not more than three minutes, performed live by a singer or a group of up to six people aged 16 or over, with each country awarding 1–8, 10 and 12 points to its ten favourite entries from a jury and a televote; Ireland and Sweden share the record of seven wins each.

• Choosing the option that means the same thing instead of the option that says the exact words — all three named options here express the identical idea.
• Assuming the European Broadcasting Union is a European Union body; it is an association of public-service broadcasters and its membership extends well beyond the EU and beyond Europe.
• Thinking the slogan still changes every year — it did from 2002 to 2023, but has been fixed since the 2024 contest, which is precisely what the word 'permanent' in the stem signals.
• Guessing when three options are paraphrases of one another: at one-in-three odds under −1/3 negative marking the expected gain is exactly zero.

BPSC asks mottos and slogans as pure verbatim recall and builds the option set out of paraphrases of the correct answer, so that understanding the meaning gains you nothing; several items in this paper's opening twenty work the same way, pairing a one-line current-affairs fact with 'More than one of the above'. UPSC almost never puts a bare slogan in a stem. When it uses one it embeds it in a statement-based item where the slogan is only one of two or three things to be judged — in 2021 it asked whether the official motto of the 32nd Summer Olympics was 'A New World' (it was 'United by Emotion'; 'A New World' belonged to Rio 2016) alongside a second statement on newly added sports — or it asks where a motto comes from, as with 'Satyameva Jayate' and the Mundaka Upanishad in 2014. The UPSC candidate therefore has to know the motto and something else about the event; the BPSC candidate has to know the motto exactly.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Eurovision Song Contest is organised by which body?

  • (a)The European Union
  • (b)The European Broadcasting Union
  • (c)The Council of Europe
  • (d)UNESCO

  Answer(b) The European Broadcasting Union — an association of public-service broadcasters whose member and associate broadcasters, not governments, enter the contest, which is why non-European participants such as Israel and Australia can take part. The EBU is entirely separate from the European Union.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest was held in which city?

  • (a)Malmö
  • (b)Liverpool
  • (c)Basel
  • (d)Vienna

  Answer(c) Basel — the final was held at St. Jakobshalle, Basel, Switzerland on 17 May 2025, hosted by SRG SSR after Switzerland's Nemo won the 2024 contest with 'The Code'. Malmö hosted in 2024 and Liverpool in 2023. Austria won the 2025 contest with 'Wasted Love' by JJ.