Pointless stats: Love titles

Have you ever asked yourself fundamental questions about Eurovision like how to create a new country or how to start a crowdsourcing campaign to bring Andorra back? I do ask myself a lot of the same questions (mainly because I can see myself representing Andorra), but I also dig deeper in my heart. So yesterday, in preparation of Valentine’s day, I asked myself: how many Eurovision song titles have the word “love” (and derived) in them?
Before showing you any graphs – let’s talk Methodology.
What counted in the research? Any word that means love or the verb to love, in whatever language.
Does this prove how many love songs have been created for Eurovision? Not at all: unfortunately it would be a massive piece of research going through each and every song, trying to determine the meaning. I tried, but in two hours I ended up classifying only 200 songs and it wasn’t enough.
Are the numbers correct? Possibly. So please don’t point out that your calculations are different, because this is not an EBU funded research. Also: the songs already chosen for 2017 have not been counted!
Then why are you doing this? Because it’s fun! And because I’ve found out you can create heat maps on Google Docs and I needed a reason to use them again…
So let’s start with the first chart. Which country has used the word “love” (and derived) the most? In the nice little map here under: the redder the country, the more titles contain our special word.

As you can see, in absolute numbers, the UK wins as the reddest country, with a staggering 12 titles. Long live love, Love will set you free, Love shine a light… there are so many to choose from! Second place for Luxembourg with 11 song titles (Amour Amour has been counted as one. And who remembers the lovely L’amour est bleu?). Last country on the podium: Ireland, with ten song titles.
The poor Belgium ranked a nice fourth with 9 song titles, followed by Italy with only 7 titles: you would imagine those Mediterraneans to be all about love, wouldn’t you?
The rest of the ranking goes as follow: 6 love titles for France, 5 for Lithuania and Sweden, 4 for Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, 3 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Malta, Monaco Slovenia and Turkey, 2 for Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Israel, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Serbia, 1 for Andorra Finland, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Montenegro, Romania and Ukraine.
Yes, as you might imagine there are a few loveless countries. These are Albania, Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Russia, San Marino and Slovakia – but fear not: they all have at least ONE love song (and after a first round of surveying the lyrics, Albania seemed to have 11 love songs, of which 4 with a positive and upbeat outlook and 7 songs about desperation, loss and grief – u ok hun?).
But I know what you are going to say: 10 out of the 48 countries didn’t even attend 12 contests! Of course they can’t beat the UK! 
And that is why, I introduce to you heat map number two: what percentage of entries per country have the word “love” (and derived) in their title?

As you can see from the map: the story is about to change. Luxembourg is now first, with 30% of the titles containing the world “love” (and derived), but there are two new entries on the podium: Lithuania (29% – remember Love or Love is blind or Love or leave?) and Serbia (22%).
Right below: Armenia, Bulgaria, Ireland and United Kingdom with 20%, Italy, Moldova, Andorra with 17%, Belgium and Bosnia with 16%, Belarus with 15%, Croatia and Slovenia with 14%, Macedonia, Montenegro and Monaco with 13%, Cyprus with 12%, Poland with 11%, France and Malta with 10%.
Can all of this give us an indication of how passionate certain countries are? I don’t think so. But going on in our chart: Denmark, Sweden and Turkey achieve only a 9% of love, Portugal 8%, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine 7%, Latia and Romania 6%, Israel 5%, Austria, Netherlands and Norway 4%, Greece and Iceland 3% and Finland 2%. All the others: 0. Math doesn’t lie.
You will ask me: what was the point of this post? Like Dustin the Turkey, this was just a gimmick from your one and only Iveto (for those who have not seen the Live Stream in Stockholm – I’m talking about myself. I’m Iveto. I’m the one suffering of LoveWaves, they are taking over me) and a way of wish you a great, as they would call it in Sweden, Alla hjärtans dag: day of all the hearts.
(PS: out of all the winners, only 6 has the word love in their title: three in the first 10 editions of the contest, one in the eighties, one in the nineties and the last one being the Olsen Brothers. Can you name the other five?)