I've been planning to write a post with that title (a quote from Walt Whitman) for a good few weeks, by way of an admission that I jumped the gun in saying that Engelbert Humperdinck's UK Eurovision entry was bound to have only a niche appeal, before I'd even heard it. But I winced when Alex Massie gave the quote a spin in the Scotsman recently, because now it's bound to look like that's where I stole the idea from. Cheers, Alex.
Anyway, having totally immersed myself in the Eurovision national final season for a few weeks, I drifted away again, and I thought it was high time I caught up with the latest standings in the betting and fan polls. I wasn't really expecting any surprises - but I was wrong. Italy second in the betting, Russia third. What is going on? I was so uninspired by Italy's entry that my first listen to it a few weeks ago was also my last until today. It's grown on me a bit, and I suppose it has a quirky side to it, but unless they do something absolutely astonishing with the staging, it's not a winner. I presume Russia are only so high because British bookies/punters think that 'barking mad' always wins votes at the Eurovision. Well, they're half right - we could easily see it finishing in the top half of the table come the night of the final (particularly with the assistance of the pro-Russian bloc vote), but it has virtually no chance of winning.
One thing that isn't a surprise is to see Sweden leading the betting - it's been the fan favourite from the word go. But again, I'm not at all convinced. Dance tracks have a uniformly atrocious record at the contest, including one or two that were tipped to win - the superb Je t'adore by Kate Ryan famously failed to even qualify for the final in 2006. So at this stage, I'll go out on a limb and more or less exclude Sweden's chances of outright victory.
So who does that leave? Next highest in the betting are Serbia, the UK and Denmark, in that order. I think the UK have every right to go in with as much confidence as they did under Andrew Lloyd-Webber's direction three years ago - when they (or "we" as I must force myself to say) finished fifth. So I think that's the sort of placing we're probably looking at again. We're not going to win, because a new law of physics was discovered circa 1999 stating that the UK can't win Eurovision anymore. As for Denmark, they have a lovely song, but also one that's not desperately original or likely to reach out of the screen and grab people on a first listen.
Having eliminated virtually everyone else's chances, could this then be one of those rare years where a song wins purely on quality? Serbia, Spain and Iceland are the class songs of the field in my opinion, and in comparison with the competition they all look ideally placed. And with Serbia having the Balkan bloc vote behind them, and with the name/face recognition factor of their performer (Željko Joksimović), they would be my hot tip for the time being.
And then of course there's Jedward. Ahem...
Showing posts with label Engelbert Humperdinck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Engelbert Humperdinck. Show all posts
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
UK Eurovision choice : a hump-dincker?
Four years ago, when Andy Abraham was picked to represent the UK at Eurovision, I checked through the records and discovered that, at the age of 43, he was by some distance the oldest ever person to sing for the UK (leaving aside backing vocalists). That seemed fairly incredible given that many other countries have routinely spanned the age spectrum. Well, Andy can stop feeling self-conscious now, because his record is about to be broken by the small matter of thirty-three years. I don't think that's a bad thing at all - it's not hard to imagine someone like Tom Jones going down a storm at Eurovision. But is Engelbert Humperdinck the right choice of older singer? Ah hae ma doots. He seems to have been picked mainly because, decades after his heyday, he still has a residual following in approximately six European countries. Much the same can be said of Lutheranism.
This is the second year in a row that the BBC have dispensed with the previous tradition of giving the viewing public some say over the UK entry. I've been trying to pin down what it is that bothers me about that. It certainly isn't that it lessens the chance of a good result - the public repeatedly demonstrated themselves perfectly capable of making idiotic decisions in the national selection, most notably by picking Jemini rather than Emily Reed in 2003, and Scooch rather than Cyndi in 2007. But I think what the old system did was give 'us' some kind of ownership over 'our' entry. Obviously as a Scottish nationalist, it's a bit difficult to get enthused by anything with a UK label on it, but at least having watched and voted in the national selection I could nevertheless just about feel 'represented' by the UK entry. Whatever song is dreamt up for Humperdinck (and given the nature of what he does, it can only have a niche appeal at best) is bound to feel like an alien body. I'll have no more stake in it than the French or Icelandic entries (which are both crackers, incidentally) and I'm not even sure whether I'll be particularly cheering it on.
If there really must be an internal selection, the approach being taken is entirely the wrong way round. The first step is to find an absolutely killer song, and then it doesn't matter whether the performer is well-known or not, as long as they can sing it well - the vast majority of Eurovision winners are unknowns. Admittedly there's no harm in a singer whose name carries a bit of a 'wow' factor...but to look for that and come up with a man whose last Top 40 hit was in 1972? It's hard to escape the conclusion that they were getting a bit desperate, rather like Jock Brown was when he said to himself "if I play my cards right here, I could bring Jozef Venglos to Celtic".
Lastly, I'll just make my customary point at this time of year - this is now the twenty-fourth year in succession that there has been no Scottish involvement in the UK Eurovision entry. France and Cyprus have both been represented by Scots more recently than the UK has.
The union dividend in action.
This is the second year in a row that the BBC have dispensed with the previous tradition of giving the viewing public some say over the UK entry. I've been trying to pin down what it is that bothers me about that. It certainly isn't that it lessens the chance of a good result - the public repeatedly demonstrated themselves perfectly capable of making idiotic decisions in the national selection, most notably by picking Jemini rather than Emily Reed in 2003, and Scooch rather than Cyndi in 2007. But I think what the old system did was give 'us' some kind of ownership over 'our' entry. Obviously as a Scottish nationalist, it's a bit difficult to get enthused by anything with a UK label on it, but at least having watched and voted in the national selection I could nevertheless just about feel 'represented' by the UK entry. Whatever song is dreamt up for Humperdinck (and given the nature of what he does, it can only have a niche appeal at best) is bound to feel like an alien body. I'll have no more stake in it than the French or Icelandic entries (which are both crackers, incidentally) and I'm not even sure whether I'll be particularly cheering it on.
If there really must be an internal selection, the approach being taken is entirely the wrong way round. The first step is to find an absolutely killer song, and then it doesn't matter whether the performer is well-known or not, as long as they can sing it well - the vast majority of Eurovision winners are unknowns. Admittedly there's no harm in a singer whose name carries a bit of a 'wow' factor...but to look for that and come up with a man whose last Top 40 hit was in 1972? It's hard to escape the conclusion that they were getting a bit desperate, rather like Jock Brown was when he said to himself "if I play my cards right here, I could bring Jozef Venglos to Celtic".
Lastly, I'll just make my customary point at this time of year - this is now the twenty-fourth year in succession that there has been no Scottish involvement in the UK Eurovision entry. France and Cyprus have both been represented by Scots more recently than the UK has.
The union dividend in action.
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