Given that Britain’s politics are quite a sizeable reason that we do so badly in Eurovision: here’s something that will definitely, absolutely, categorically help us do better in the competition … interference from MPs.
Digital, culture, media and sport committee chair Caroline Dinenage has announced that MPs will scrutinise the UK’s reliable failure in the competition to see where we’re going wrong, with a hearing to be held over the coming months. The answers surely don’t take that long to work out.
“We want to get to the bottom of who chooses our entrant,” Dinenage said. Currently that’s the BBC, with the assistance of a label or management company. Is our embarrassing misfortune down to “bad song choice, weak performance or something else”, she asked. Can you hear three red cherries dinging? Our songs are embarrassing, the humdrum performances indicative of a nation who think we’re too good for Eurovision high camp, and the “something else” is the lingering whiff of Brexit.
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Dinenage’s statement concluded by fretting about why we continually come last, or as good as, when as a nation we have “world-class songwriters and musicians”? Let me help there: that’s because no world-class British songwriter or musician would enter Eurovision at this point. No matter how good the song, our reputation as the dunce of the competition is fixed in perpetuity. We’ve tried wacky. We’ve tried the electro-swing beloved of the continent. We’ve tried oldies, besmirching Bonnie and Engelbert’s good names. Nada. At this point, I doubt that even Paul McCartney could pluck victory from the pyro-belching jaws of defeat. No self-respecting artist is going to sacrifice their beautiful creation to those cruel, gnashing European heathens.
But! they wail. What about pluckySam Ryder, whofinished second in2022? Space Man is quite a good song, I’ll grant you that. In summer 2022, at a very trying time in my life, it caught me unawares and made me cry. Improbably, later that day, I actually saw Ryder himself at a service station en route to the south-west and thanked him, very earnestly, for writing it, and got a warm fist bump in return. But Space Man also came second that year because of the UK’s staunch support for Ukraine after Russia invaded months earlier. Fair play, said Europe. You can have that one.
(Just a thought: if it turns out that supporting nations experiencing destruction of human life and habitat by aggressive neighbours is one route to Eurovision success, maybe that is something that our politicians could consider doing a great deal more of.)
Ryder was appointed our saviour by Tap management, who look after artists including Lana Del Rey. Apparently capable of delivering victory for our beleaguered nation, they held on to the mantle for 2023 and sent Mae Muller to the competition. She finished second from bottom. In 2024, we pivoted and tried An Actual Popstar People Like, Olly Alexander formerly of Years & Years, with a song co-written and produced by cutting-edge Charli xcx collaborators. What could possibly go wrong? He finished 18th out of 25.
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There is no reliable pipeline to Eurovision success available to the UK. The public can’t be trusted: in 2019, the last time the UK voted on our entrant, we sent a winsome young lad called Michael Rice, who had a mere 11 pointsto declare at customs on the way back from the contest in Tel Aviv. Perversely, I would quite like to see what musician British MPs – a group exactly not renowned for their music taste – would send to the competition on our behalf, but I’m not sure it would set back the rot.
If anything, they should have some dignity and extract us from the competition: as one of its major funders, the UK gets a pass to the final every year without having to compete for a spot. If a football club finished bottom of the Premier League every year but was artificially kept in because of money, we would burn their ground down. Only relegated to the qualifiers may we rebuild.
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MPs’ concern, while endearing, is also misplaced. Being crap at Eurovision is part of our national identity. (If indeed you’re still watching it: thousands have boycotted the broadcast owing to Israel’s continued inclusion, including our principled Irish neighbours, another reason Britain may struggle to find credible competitors.) Sure, yes, we are very good at pop music – only fellow competitors Sweden have us licked in that regard – but complaining that those talents don’t work properly in this context comes across as sour grapes, like a medal-winning sprinter moaning that they lost the dads’ race at their kid’s sports day.
As a competition, Eurovision is less Champions League – statistically proving who’s the best – than it is a kind of musical Crufts, upping the gaiety of nations with competitive displays of ridiculousness. It’s not about naming who’s Best At Pop. Britain’s failure doesn’t matter. If we must try to remedy this, I have two solutions. Pop music is soft power, and this battered country has no softer power than Mr Blobby. Let’s return an old cricketer to the crease for his first musical release in 23 years. If our rotund hero loses – UNLIKELY – he can just destroy the studio.
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Or, if the government insist on getting involved, here’s a thought. You may have heard that our new PM doesn’t just like the Smiths, he freaking loves the Smiths. He’s got a gold disc of The Queen Is Dead on the wall at the new No 10 North office. He recently jammed to Rusholme Ruffians on the frontline in Kyiv. He saw them live back in the day. Only he can call for the one referendum that will get hearts and minds back on Britain’s side: to forcibly reunite the band and send them to the competition. Morrissey performing live to 130 million viewers worldwide – what could possibly go wrong?
