What is the permanent slogan for the Eurovision Song Contest?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2025 Q20 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q20 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer