You thought you were rid of us? Too bad, Scratchovision time! The worst song contest returns – you do have time on your hands, right? Maybe you should wash them.

Update 2020-05-22: The contest has now closed and voting has now opened! Thank you to everyone who entered. Now get ready to fear for your ear as you listen to all the entries and vote for your favourites below. Voting will close in a month, so make sure you get your pick in!

If you’re baffled, the Scratchovision Song Contest is an annual contest for music makers (or, well, anyone) in which you’re tasked with making the worst song you possibly can. Or you might know that already and still be baffled. That’s fine too.

As the name might suggest, Scratchovision is loosely inspired by the long-running Eurovision Song Contest (albeit with a large infusion of irony) – but of course, Eurovision is cancelled this year, and now this bizarro version is more important than ever since it’s something everyone can do at home. In other words, there’s no escape. Sorry.

There is a theme each time in order to keep things fresh. Hilariously, last year’s theme was “dystopia”, based around an authoritarian government locking everyone in and forcing them to make crappy music, which, uh, doesn’t seem so funny now…

So the theme this time around is self-isolation – in the spirit of doing something yourself to protect others, you now have the perfect opportunity to assault people’s desperately bored ears. Feel free to interpret the theme as broadly as you wish, or not at all if you have other plans.

Entries this year will close on Friday 8th May Friday 22nd May, with the intention to have a week of public voting (oh yes, you’re being put to the test) following that, culminating in the results being released on the former date of the Eurovision 2020 finale whenever they’re ready.

We do have a Discord server if you wanna talk about the contest and find fellow friendly musicians to collaborate with – and if you don’t want to join that (we don’t bite most of the time, honest), make sure you subscribe using the box on the top-right to get updates on the contest.

You can also check out previous contests if you want some ideas. Remember, you can submit literally anything, with no expectation of skill – only an expectation of the lowest quality possible.

When you’re ready to enter, click here to go to the submission form. It’s fairly straightforward, but send a message to whizzer0 on the Discord server if you get stuck (I can set up another way of submitting if you don’t have a Google account).

Worst of luck to you all!