5 Point Plan For The UK To Win* Eurovision
*where win = “maybe come a respectable fifth”
The BIG T has had enough of Eurovision because the UK keeps doing atrociously in it, and he is leading a chorus of RAGE in the press saying we should pull out. I suspect the majority of the 7 million people who watch it don’t give much of a monkeys about whether Britain does well or not, they are just entertained by the spectacle and (who knows) maybe even the music, which this year was generally pretty good. But in case people do care here are my suggestions for how we might do a bit better.
First off there are two basic reasons that we don’t perform well. One is what gets described as “bloc voting”: the main reason for this is that because Europe is a big continent with lots of fairly recently defined borders there are a great many people who don’t live in the countries they think of as “home” (or at least feel a strong cultural allegiance to). A Bosnian Serb voting for Serbia is not voting for them as part of a big conspiracy because Bosnia loves Serbia (they clearly don’t!), he’s voting for them because he thinks of himself (partly or wholly) as Serbian – just like if I was staying in France at Eurovision time, I could vote for the UK. There’s really absolutely nothing that can be done about this, and it’s not as if we’re nobly above the fray: there’s a reason that the crap Polish entry picked up votes from us. The best strategy the UK can adopt is to put an entry in that will pick up 5, 6 and 7 points across the board, rather than hoping for many 10s and 12s.
The second reason is that our entries are out of step with the kind of pop that appeals to voters in the new Europe. Terry can roll his eyes all he likes at people voting for the Bosnian or Spanish comedy entries but the fact is we handed ten points to the Latvians on the basis that pirates r funneh, and at least Spain had a reasonably hot beat. Also our two previous entries were comedy novelty pop – DJ Daz I loved, Scooch I despised, but in neither case was I particularly surprised at their poor showing. So this is something we CAN do something about, since British and Anglophone pop sells well in all these places that are voting for one another.
So anyway, here’s the five point plan: nothing that people haven’t said before, I’m not pretending this is startlingly original analysis, it’s just a pre-emptive strike against the moaning I’m going to encounter at work tomorrow really!
1. DITCH “MAKING YOUR MIND UP”: The British public can’t pick a winner and we can make up the phoneline cash another way (see below).
2. BRING IN SOMEONE ACTUALLY FAMOUS: We have a huge advantage that we never use – we have famous pop stars who actually sell. NOT Sonia. NOT Andy, sweetheart though he is. Not using famous people is a big disadvantage because Johnny Balkan knows perfectly well who the top Brit performers are and is well aware we are selling him a particularly mangy pup every year.
3. WRITE A SONG THAT DOESN’T PATRONISE THE EUROPEAN AUDIENCE: Our tracks are always either smirky campathons or hoof-and-grin numbers that are ten years out of date. There’s nothing “unfair” about countries not voting for songs they have zero affinity for. Which “old school” European countries did best this year? Greece, with a Britney-style dance-pop number, and Norway, with a very canny Mark Ronson-lite style. These were based on ‘Western’ pop that actually sells in Eastern Europe, and so should our track be.
4. PAY MORE ATTENTION TO STAGECRAFT: Our staging always seems to be second-rate: I can’t remember a thing about the Andy A performance, except that the man himself tried his best in a pretty boring setting. The big change in Eurovision in the last 5 years hasn’t been musical, it’s been the largely unironic adoption of very striking, modern choreography. Circus is massive in continental Europe, including Blocvotistan, and I can think of 6 or 7 entries this year whose staging was terrific – not even including the corny Russian rollerskater, though unquestionably that helped win it for them.
5. ENTER THE SEMI-FINALS: The UK getting a bye to the final is a staggering disadvantage – the semis, assuming you’ve ticked the other boxes needed to get through them, are i. a usefully high-pressure dress rehearsal to iron out what’s not working, ii. a primer for the main audience especially in yr YouTube era, iii. are watched by precisely the same audience who are most committed to Eurovision and thus most likely to vote in the main show. We have to be in them, “big four” or no big four, and it gives us a way to make the phoneline money we lose by ditching Making Your Mind Up. (NB if there’s a politically survivable way to stop funding it without destroying the contest I’d be all for that).
As well as all that I’d also try to publicise the entry better before the show – especially among our expat communities in France, Spain, and various tax havens. If we did all that and still came 20th, then fine, it’s because everyone hates us and we can pull up the drawbridge and sulk along with Uncle Terry.
Tom in FT • eurovision/Pop • 442 views
Agreed with all the above.
It continually amazes me that the UK press dismiss Eurovision as a “camp tack-fest of comedy ridiculousness for t3h gh3ys” (or whatever) before the contest and then get all hissy when we come last.
yes but that’s because “BEING t3h BRITISHES” = “camp tack-fest of comedy ridiculousness for t3h gh3ys” (as any fule kno)
my plan = I&I Klaxon* doin an old-style 70s dub blood-and-thunder why-oh-why toast abt how everything has gone to the dogs since we “went into Europe” would hit all bases
ie mr j.clarkson
On the Today programme 2 good points were made. 1 echoes your pt. 2 i.e. bring in a ‘star’: this year’s was won by the Russian Timberlake, they argued. The other is that ‘political’ bloc voting might just as well be ‘aesthetic’ bloc voting i.e. we may hate the Russians, but we like the same pop that they do. So unless you outlaw people voting for things they like (which is clearly madness) this is unavoidable. They also pointed out that Eurovision is v. cheap (c. 200K) anyway for 8 hours of programming, so we’re not actually losing much.
It was very striking a) that Spain, France, UK all went for songs which sounded very unlike the eurovision template, suggesting either a campy-ironic distancing, or a genuine desire to break new ground. But the UK entry was not clearly EITHER of those, just meh.; and b) that Terry W has no idea what a ‘good’ song in Eurovision terms is, so his outrage that a ‘good’ song has been trounced by dirty foreigners is nonsense.
Of course Russia also got in Mr Timbaland to co-write the song as well. “Making Your Mind Up” is the real problem here, as well as the phone voting. Tweaks could be made with the voting system too (clearly every country doing a phone vote has the stats for all the songs so in theory points could go from 1 to 25). If you did a tally of the total number of votes I wonder who would have won, though I think we clearly would have come last (Ireland and SAN MARINO not exactly huge countries).
Still Terry retiring could cause a massive shift in the way we view Eurovis. Or Graham Norton can keep on the Irish sarcasm…
i can’t watch EVSC on my own bcz of wogan — if there’s someone to chat with in the room, no prob, but if he is all i have to commune with i just end up SHOUTING MYSELF HOARSE
See, last year “Making your mind up” gave us Scootch.. A song that “we” liked. (“We” being the UK population)
“we” thought it was funny. It flied a UK flag. It had funny lines and was camp as.
It was amazingly easy, come the final, to imagine the song with all foreign words and a different flag, and seeing how bad it was, really.
So, the UK population are not voting for a song that might please the europes.
given the beebs absolute horror at the thought of anything going wrong with a vote (hence our lack of texting option which i think the rest of europe had), i don’t think the phone in cash is an issue, and i totally don’t think we should be in the semis because then you’d get what happened in ireland where no one but the migrants seemed to bother watching/voting at all.
balkanisation of the uk is a trite but obvious answer, there’s totally no reason for at least the isle of man and the channel islands to put a song in if san marino and andorra can…
also pimlico!
Surely “what happened in Ireland” was kind of contingent on Ireland submitting the most purposely crap Eurovision song that’s ever been recorded!
I couldn’t agree more on the importance of the semifinals. To do well you need the exposure – plus there’s the fact that at the moment there’s no real incentive to vote for any of the Big Four: they’ll be in the final anyway. Plus, the free ride can cause resentment: if you consider yourself automatically better than anyone else, and by implication not one of “us”, then there’s hardly any point playing with you.
I can’t wait for Sir Terry to ditch the Eurovision gig. The complaints about bloc voting are stupid (no-one can win the ESC on neighbourly votes alone), and I find it hilarious that he thinks “it’s not about the songs anymore” – whereas presumably back when the Western bloc was the most successful bloc and the UK and Ireland seemed to alternate hosting the event between them, all of Europe was united in a completely non-biased celebration of song awesomeness?
Maybe what I find most offensive about him is that he actually wants to maintain Cold War divisions of East vs West, where the West is clearly the more civilised and the East is the poor cousin who the West allows to hang out with it just so the West can feel better about itself. A world where everyone wants to be Cliff Richard. He just can’t grasp that “Europe” doesn’t end partway through Germany anymore.
I so desperately want Bill Bailey to take on the job. And the Mighty Boosh to enter, with a magnificent anthem of Europeanness.
The bloc voting argument falls down when you see that Israel, unquestionably the most unpopular entrant (and just about the only one with no “neighbours” to guarantee it “douze points”) managed to finish a respectable ninth. In fact, Israel didn’t get a single 12 points, and its only 10 poiny haul came from San Marino. But it just goes to show that it’s not ALL about bloc voting. If you have the right song and the right performer, you can still make a Eurovision impact.
NB – Supporting your “someone actually famous” suggestion, Israel’s entry this year was written by former winner Dana International. Just that publicity alone probably garnered more attention for the song than it might otherwise have achieved.
Well my spin on the bloc voting argument is that it represents minority populations rather than neighbourly goodwill – i.e. there’s enough Poles in the UK now for a really crap Polish entry to pick up a handful of points from us.
Some thoughts on these five points, and others:
1. Ditching the public vote.
Bloody inconvenient British public, eh? They always make the wrong decision. They’re given Rhydian and they go for Leon. They see London improving all around them and then vote for Boris to mess it all up. They want to bring back hanging. Send them all back. Bring back the birch. Etc.
Yes, it’s a generalisation, and not one without merit as the Boris situation in particular demonstrates; see also the British Comedy Awards farrago as an indication of how far programmers will distort or even ignore the public vote if it doesn’t correspond with their private agenda.
I would, however, be loath to dispense with the public vote for the simple reason that it gives the viewers the opportunity, or at least the facade, of being directly involved; we know that the choices they are being given are but a microfraction of the total choices that could be made available, but the whole notion of “the people vote” is so central to popular perceptions of Eurovision that it would be fatally holed if that were withdrawn and the decision given to some shadowy, self-appointed cabal (drawn from whom? Or where? What would be the criteria?) would alienate the viewers so thoroughly that there would be little point in broadcasting it or even going through the motions of qualifying. What were those ratings for the last Brit Awards ceremony again?
What does need to be addressed is the actual shadowy cabal of the British Society of Songwriters which maintains a stranglehold over the songs selected for Eurovision; favours owed, Buggins’ turn etc. – this history goes back decades and something needs to be done about it so that viewers and listeners can have a real and varied choice of songs to vote for.
2. Bring in someone famous.
I think the situation with M Tellier has probably demonstrated why this isn’t the greatest of ideas, since he is unquestionably a big(gish) star in France and his song was by far the best and most adventurous in the competition – sort of Gnarls Barkley warped girl group doo-wop with intermittent angst input – but it sailed entirely over the heads of the baffled audience (subtlety is generally a no-no for Eurovision, where the breadth of the demographic requires a Big and Unambiguous Gesture of a song, whether loud or quiet).
Why should Elton or Robbie or Gary Barlow or Brian Higgins or whoever go forward and take the risk of coming 25th out of 25 because no one wants to alienate Russia with all that gas and all that oil and nobody else in Europe likes us anyway because of Kosovo/Iraq/Bush umbilical cord-related reasons? Would it enhance their standing or demean it? If the latter, then the whole mechanism of Eurovision needs to be looked at. Why should they waste their time and effort if they’re going to be humiliated?
3. Non-patronising.
I’d very much like to see the total erosion of camp from Eurovision, whether it’s the dead eyes of Scooch or the pantomime rubbish of Latvia or the Leslie Crowther Macarena of Spain or the Irish glove puppet. It’s not “a laugh,” it’s not “subversion,” it’s a great big hateful fart in the face of the viewers – THIS is how little we think of you.
Or, alternately, make it one or the other, make it total pantomime horse camp or an actual serious music contest.
Then again, on general reflection, Yusuf Islam’s lawyers should be contacted re. Russia’s entry (“Wild World”?), the Greek entry was nondescript Beyonce plus bouzoukis, and oddly (or not) the more “rockist” entries (Bosnia/Herzegovina, Armenia, Turkey) were for me far more convincing as songs.
This year’s UK entry was neither one nor the other (apart from owing more than something to Sydney Youngblood’s “If Only I Could”); a decent enough number, decently performed, but we need something more than “decent.”
4. Stagecraft
Britain can’t do “circus” except in a 1971 Billy Smart sense (cf. Same Difference). The German group were Girls Aloud clones and look how well they did.
5. Semi-Finals
Again, who would watch it in the UK if there were no guaranteed UK involvement (or is upcoming, already signed for Euro 2008 coverage going to demonstrate how well this works in practice?)?
But, as far as Britain is concerned at least, there is a sixth point which I feel is absolutely vital if Eurovision is going to continue as a useful or entertaining competition, and that is:
6. ABOLISH THE THREE MINUTE SONG LIMIT.
I mean, this really is a relic from the sixties, innit? The pop song has expanded naturally over the last four decades and cramming everything into three minutes is unsurprisingly going to make most contemporary Eurovision entries sound constipated and boxed in. Even the sort of Westlife-type songs which would WALK Eurovision, love ‘em or hate ‘em, tend to have a natural developmental length of around four minutes. Something like “That’s Not My Name” clocks in at five minutes plus in its full version. And it discourages adventure; so we get no “Bo Rhap” or “Total Eclipse” wannabes.
This would of course necessitate a significant reduction in the number of countries making the final (down from 25 to 16, I’d say) but I don’t think this is a bad thing (point seven?) and would have the double advantage of (a) discouraging next door neighbour kneejerk voting and (b) ensuring that countries worked harder on their songs and presentation to ensure that they were good enough to get to the final.
re point #2: according to a dude in the Guardian this morning (i.e. I have not checked this), the Russian guy has had #1 hits the length and breadth of Eastern Europe, which I am not sure is true of dear old Sebastian Tellier, who I agree put in a good show.
Ah, now that does make sense.
Generally I do think there was more of an effort (though still fudged) to vote for songs in terms of their merit as songs this time around; the failure of rep reliables like Malta to give the UK any points probably speaks volumes beyond just political bias.
Mobilising the UK expat community is clearly key. Since Eurovision is apparently big in Australia, maybe we can… um, ‘arrange’ for them to be able to vote! Although that will more likely benefit the Greeks, Serbs and Croats than us.
in re the uk and “circus”, the strangest thing about “our” attitude is that virtually EVERYTHING to do with “rock culture” since c.68 and indeed “post-rock culture” has been taken off the table (left off the table by the giffers perhaps, but also not put ON the table by “rock” culture: it’s as if we’re saying, “well, to work to our strengths would merely taint us all”
bviously a broad cultural discussion of what our strengths pop and/or rock-wise ARE would instantly turn into a massive flamewar across all of everywhere, but maybe this would be a good thing?
i think kevin rowland should stand
I heard “Back Street Luv” by top ’71 circus band Curved Air on the radio the other day and that would have pwned Eurovision this year if sent to the Eastern Bloc for consideration.
Kevin doesn’t really “do” Eurovision songs, though, does he, unless you count the My Beauty stuff with altered Kev lyrics.
well i guess my suggestion is that we (“we”) entirely set aside the concept of what constitutes a “eurovision” song and concentrate on entering a song that we judge to have quality in ANY other sphere or zone or genre
haha ok what follows is half a joke but HALF NOT: why not make it a condition of winning the mercury that your next er “outing” be to focus all your talents and energies on a eurovision entry — it’s not as if we could do worse than we’re currently doing, why not gamble on an actual value judgment (obviously a contested one, it wouldn’t be a value judgment if it wasn’t contested), instead of another year of “truculent pastiche of so-called value judgments of TEH SO-CALLED EUROPES, values we despise and resent and can’t be bothered really to get and can’t believe are being taken seriously”
woganismus is manifestly a symptom of our (“our”) bad faith– the fact that he’s been allowed to host for so long is a more EXTREME version of the scooch issue
hee i hate wogan so much
You’ll hate Graham Norton worse.
Again I have to drag in that humunculus of all attempted risk and adventure in this sphere, viz. the Family Audience, viz. mustn’t upset Grandma/tot/&c.
The immediate trouble with your Mercury theory is that M People probably would have gone on to do something Eurovisiony.
m-people might have come up with something good bcz out of their own comfort zone)! (obviously my strategy is a bit contradictory here: it would have to involve me and you and _______ and ________ coming in and giving a workshop on avoding bad assumptions and embracing adventure) (yodel-i-ee nim nim)
also even if you feel m-people are very extremely lame they are self-evidently not what tom is calling the mangiest of brit-industry pups, by virtue of actually winning the mercury
They won it for POLITICAL reasons, i.e. Frith looking for premature reactive popism and finding it in the wrong place.
If M People had gone forth to Eurovision it would have been a “Search For The Bastard Hero” clone and well you know it.
M People’s win gave birth to popism!
well ok, maybe, but if the winner had had to go on to craft a eurovision entry, frith’s “political” reasons would have had to evolve in a complicated new dimension!
(and at least he takes tactical and positional play seriously — ie does it for reasons he actually believes in! i am merely taking his seriousness seriously, in order to raise HIS game: win-win!)
(PLUS if they’d entered a “Search For The Bastard Hero” clone and come last, RESULT! win-win-win!)
Part of the reason Katrina & the Waves got drafted in to do it in ’97 was that many inside punters reckoned that the Gina G song would have had a much better chance of winning in ’96 had Kylie done it.
One great thing about living in Ireland is that you can watch the Eurovision without having to listen to Terry Wogan.
It would be great if some widely hated British figure had been sent to Ireland to do our coverage for us, but this is not the case.
What are the chances that the girl/dog act currently wowing the viewers on Britain’s Got Talent will perform next year’s entry?
We had an “are you allowed animals on stage at Eurovision?” conversation on Saturday night and decided that no, probably you aren’t, just because we’d have seen them by now.
“Katrina & the Waves” <— not to be mean but surely this is some steps below the level of “at least they successfully ran the value-judgement gauntlet of SOME extant constituency” that i have in mind: ie the choice consciously attempted to address a specific issue but kinda sorta veers off right when it comes to the solution
(were K&tW for example ever ANYONE’S favourite popgroup? possibly the answer here is YES OF COURSE — to me they always seemed more a ‘middle way choice careful not to offend key constuencies)
animals: bah the eastern europes would cheat there too, with heard of cuet yak and sturgeons and bears and etc
er yes that’d be HERDS (said the fellow putting together a large paper on the need for org-wide sub-editing and proofing)
K&tW:
a) were no doubt the first act asked to say yes;
b) probably everyone’s favourite Newmarket-based expatriate American pop group. Simon Barnes to thread for confirmation plz.
yes of course the other downside to my OBVIOUSLY BRILLIANT PLANS is that it’s the acts themselves that have been leery, at all levels, of the accolade — at least since the days of Lord Cliff of Tastic. Doubtless if I go round grabbing lapels and EXPLAINING DEMENTEDLY this leeriness will dissipate
Well, since the days of Motherhood of Bran, when The Man decided that Britain could just put together a floating pool of session singers, give them a different funny name every year and stick with the oompah-oompah business until the scheme REBOUNDED on them but SB is twitching.
we laff in the face of Spoiler Bunny away from popular ;)
are you mainly talking about 76-81 Marcello? BARDO (still my favourite UK entry) didn’t rly fit this mould post-bucks fizz did they? mind you i couldn’t name another UK entry from then ’til sonia so perhaps i am proving my own point here. um, that one with smantha janus in, err michael ball?
Note of course that BARDO with their NEW POP EUROVISION TRIUMPH (written and produced by Andy Hill and Nicola Martin, just like Bucks Fizz) were CRIMINALLY robbed of their RIGHTFUL VICTORY by nauseatingly niggling reminders of Britain’s then current involvement in ACTUAL WAR thus tut tut sit down and learn DIGNITY from TEENAGE MUTANT AUSTRIAN NUN singing “A Little Piss” (which, to rub the SB-excluded salt in, was the 500th number one single in Britain whereas BARDO were STOPPED at number two by Paul and Stevie living in a piano).
Wogan took a dim view of that too.
I say, shrewd call by Marcello re. Graham N!
“Maybe come a respectable fifth” – job done.