Once a year blog post!...Laziness is a curse

I seem to apologise at the beginning of every blog post I do on here but it's been over a year since I posted anything so I think an apology is in order. I am a great advocate for the saying “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” but I just can’t stop myself! 

For the past few years I have given a running commentary on the Eurovision Song Contest as it happens, except for the one year we actually did well. That year I went to support a friend singing in a concert at Croydon's glamorous Fairfield Halls and missed the whole thing! Anyhoo, this year, for a variety of reasons I decided to just watch the contest and text my mother during instead of putting my every thought on Facebook. However, I feel like I want to address the UK's offering and it's too long for a Facebook post so thought it might make a half decent blog post. 

Before we go any further, this is only my opinion, I have MANY issues with this year's UK entry in the Eurovision Song Contest but you might have loved it and that is, of course, fine and dandy. So please don't get all angry and annoyed with me. Your own feelings and thoughts are valid!

 

For starters, and importantly, the song the UK sent this year, “Dizzy”, was lazy. It had a decent hook but it didn’t develop so went nowhere meaning it needed stellar staging and some brilliant mixing from the sound team to stand any chance of bothering the left hand side of the scoreboard. I’m not blaming the sound team, btw, as you surely need a semi decent vocal in the first place to make a live performance sound fabulous. Unfortunately neither was forthcoming. The staging, albeit clever, was inappropriate and confusing. Olly Alexander proved himself not to be a good enough singer live. He was consistently out of tune and out of breath and the sound was no better than it was when he performed it at the semi final.

 

This was the first year they allowed the “big 5” and last year’s winning country to perform in the semi finals and I think it’s a great idea. So this year the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Spain and last year's winners, Sweden go to try out their songs and staging in front of a global audience before Saturday's final. I’ve always felt that those that don’t get a practice run at the semis are at a disadvantage so this should have given the UK the upper hand. Any problems encountered during the semi final could have been tweaked for the final but it seemed like they learned nothing.

 

If you compare him to the, spoiler alert, winning Swiss entrant, they were running around the whole stage or walking up and down a ginormous rotating disc the entire song without missing a note, a beat or a move, the UK’s singer, Olly Alexander, was in a tiny box for the the first 3 quarters not moving around very much and still couldn’t find the correct pitch. 

I am not a prude and I love weird or crazy Eurovision staging most of the time but the costuming and the set, dressed to look like some kind of dirty (literally unclean) men's locker room, made the whole performance look seedy and grimy. The dancers were phenomenal dancers and they committed, whole-heartedly, to the choreographer's vision but somebody should have told the choreographer and set designer to rein it in. I like Olly Alexander and desperately wanted him to step it up in the final but it just didn’t happen. The dancer's out-danced him and he never matched their energy in any way shape or form. Did the performance deserve nul points from the public vote? Absolutely! It was a cheap and poorly presented offering that had nothing that would make anyone want to pick up the phone to vote for them. And they didn’t. I honestly don’t know how we managed to get 46 points from the juries.

 

But, to all those shouting at this post that Europe hates us and we’ll never do well in Eurovision again it’s just not true. Well, it is true Europe hates us but Sam Ryder came 2nd two years ago because, despite Europe’s hatred of the UK, they appreciate a great song and a great singer and Sam had the magic combination that year. I've posted a link to his performance below (I'm not going to post this year's) so you can see what a good Eurovision performance looks like. He didn’t have to rely on crazy staging, he just sang a great song and was rewarded for it.

If we are to continue in this circus of a competition, and I hope we do because I LOVE Eurovision with a passion, we have to send better songs written by songwriters who know what they are doing and how to construct a winning song. 

 

Unless the powers that be want us to lose (which is possible/probable), we have to stop with the lazy writing and send singers who can step up to the mark and perform like their life depends on it in front of millions of people. Until we do that we will never win and people will keep deluding themselves that it’s because Europe hates us!