Eurovision, identity and the conversation I wasn't expecting.

My daughter is eight and she had opinions about Eurovision this year. Strong ones. She had been following the semi-finals in a way I hadn't fully noticed, watching clips, asking about the countries, developing allegiances that seemed to shift daily. By the Saturday of the final she had a favourite and a theory about why they should win.

The theory had something to do with sincerity. She said: they mean it. About the song. That's why they should win.

I thought about this for a moment. Sincerity as an aesthetic criterion. Eight years old and already using sincerity as an aesthetic criterion.

Eurovision is easy to dismiss as kitsch, and kitsch it sometimes is. But I've noticed it does something in particular for children: it presents people from different countries, all trying to do the same thing — make an audience feel something through a piece of music — in a context where the effort is visible and the stakes are clear. You can see who wants it. You can see who is nervous. You can see the work.

I sat with sincerity as an aesthetic criterion for most of the rest of the evening. She's right that it's a valid one. Most criticism of Eurovision is that it's insincere — too much artifice, too much staging, the songs designed to be spectacles rather than felt experiences. My daughter cut through to the one counter-argument: some of them mean it. And meaning it counts for something.

Sincerity as an aesthetic criterion. From an eight-year-old, unprompted, at eleven on a Saturday.