I'm pretty certain that there used to be some rules in place to prevent established acts participating (hence complete nobodies generally being the norm).



In any event, its never ever been about British 'popular' music. Its always been British music with the bands and musicians removed, leaving space for third-rate 'composers' to put together songs-by-numbers and non-entities to sing them (often embarrassingly badly).

The perfromer(s) is/are completely incidental, it's the song that is judged.



So any performer cn be used but the song must be previously unrecorded/released

But we know it will, don't we?





I've already conceded that point (albeit grudgingly as, to my mind, Abba songs were merely jauntily formulaic and a large part of their popularity was down the videos that they gave away to TV companies but, as the first band to do that, you've got to give them high marks for marketing nous).

I can see why the performers would want to win, what I should have said as that I don't know why anyone would want to watch the chosen performer from their country perform a lowest-common-denominator song usually on a par with a nursery rhyme in the hope that that performer would win.





Sure, it's a blank page but pretty much the same stuff gets written on it every year.

With the amazing hope and faith you are demonstrating here, it would be nice for it to be fulfilled ... but, personally, I can't see it happening.



Anyway, I can see the way this thread is going and, being someone whose imagination can't stretch as far as believing that this year's show might be worth watching, I'd better back out of the thread ... a la Dally when he has no answer ... but with better grace, I know when I'm beaten.

Nope. See "Richard, Cliff", for example.





Er, no it hasn't. It's a European song event.



Nevertheless it is valid to reference "British 'popular' music" simply because the best of that, or even the most commercially successful of that, if you look at it ignoring what some might call 'artistic merit' would probably win or finish in the top 3 every single time.



The reason that the winning song rarely dents the UK charts is not xenophobia but because there are usually at least 20 better songs already in the UK charts and plenty of them aren't right cracking either, but still better. So, we could have entered "any of the above" and still won.

Whatever the merits of our song, I don't think we should forget the partisan voting.

It's a joke and skews the contest.

You can almost predict where some votes will go irrespective of song quality.



We appear to held in low regard and will continue to struggle.

I blame Blair and his wars!

Both brilliant guitarists but sadly Randy Rhoads was taken so young. How he would have progressed we'll never know but ask Ozzy about him and he'll tell you what he beieves Randy would have done in the future.

No.

a) if we keep getting flogged and humiliated then eventually things will have to have a sea change.

b) nothing ever stays the same, if you think about it we have been trying to tinker with it and make significant changes, national jury shows, getting Lloyd-Webber in, etc., it's more IMHO a case of the people at present in charge of the tinkering are a bit lost, to be frank.





But they don't. It may get a lot of viewers but I'm certain that in recent times the demographic that views it is loaded with people who are not into music.





... which should make it a piece of pisz to win, there's effectively no competition to a good song.





I can't see the overall contest efforts changing much, as frankly few of the other countries seem to have people who even "get" modern music. But I can imagine us for once making a sensible choice, and winning it, which would be bound to have a knock-on effect as we would then set the bar at a new height (well, as matters stand, at least lift one end of it it off the floor

).



But my point isn't really about whether suddenly the contest will be brimming with great music, I agree with you that won't happen, ever, as most of the countries don't [ihave[/i great pop or rock music or a tradition of it. What I just would like to see is us putting up a fight for once instead of every year announcing yet another turkey, to universal dismay. If WE can all see it's a no-hoper (again), why can't the selectors?





Maybe you do, but sadly whoever is in charge of song selection for the UK clearly doesn't. Anybody could have told him/her/them that it's a turkey. They're not up to the job. As for "worth watching", that's hard one. It was to me always worth watching as a good laugh, watching the truly awful and sometimes frankly laugh-out-loud turns, and listening to Tel's sparkling put-downs, and the truly painful, heavily accented attempts at trendy Eenglish which for god knows what reason the other national presenters invariably affect. But I suppose unless you enjoy cringe-making and cringe-worthy, and countries taking the pisz out of themselves without ever realising it, there's not much else.



PS I doubt very much that the song as sung on the night by Bonnie Tyler will be the same version as on that YouTube vid. It has been so roundly bagged that I bet they have been working on it non-stop to try to inject some life, so at least it (probably) won't be quite as bad as in that vid.



PPS Did you know that the actual national votes by the national juries are cast based not on the live transmitted performance, but all done on the full-scale rehearsal? I didn't know this, but seemingly Engelbert made a right porridge of the rehearsal despite making the best of a bad job in the live show. Seems wrong to me that there already is a winner before anybody sings a note on the night.

I'm quite proud of the fact that the UK is crap at Eurovision.

So am I, it works when you realise that we're rubbish in a rubbish song contest, hence we must be good.

Like two negatives equal a positive?



As an aside, because we part-fund this nonsense, we ought to have a clause inserted to the effect that we have to win the thing every so many years, if only to keep Aardvark happy (if that's possible), otherwise we will withdraw our funding.

It's only fair, value for money and all that.

We need to recruit a bunch of Bulgarian grannies in traditional dress, waving union flags if we really are serious about making a statement of intent to win it.

But it's not "nonsense", it is just the most mammoth thing, it's so big, there's nothing even remotely to compare with it. Literally hundreds of millions are spent on it. So whatever you think of the actual end product, it is as big a deal as there is in that context.



If I gave you exactly the same funding, do you think you could turn it into something credible? I'm damn sure I could. My issue with it is that why pisz all that money down the toilet that the end product has become? The sheer weight of money available should very easily transform it into a top music event, and I can't understand why it doesn't. Particularly as the thing has got so bloody big whole countries wouldn't even be able to afford to stage it if they won.





Heheh there's more chance of Bonnie winning than that

Its fundamental problem is that good quality songs usually need to be listened to a few times to be fully appreciated. Eurovision panders to instantly absorbed bubblegum. To make it into a contest that genuinely attracts good songs would require the judges to listen to each song 3 or 4 times. Eurovision doesn't work like that, certainly not when there's a pubic vote.

Good point, but all the songs are available long before the contest. I'd accept the majority of people wouldn't have listened to them all, though, certainly.



But it is the same for all entries, and so full appreciation isn't required, but yes, instant immediate appeal is.



What isn't immediately apparent though is why so many entries think that the standard cliched Euroclone song fits that bill - it no longer does, those songs never do well.





Is there? Well, that WOULD attract a whole new demographic!





Meanwhile, Engelbert has spoken. He congratulated our Bonnie on "being the one" and went on:







If anybody can post a translation of this for me, I'd be grateful.

Loosely translated it means I was robbed, good luck to the Welsh Warbler.

Do people really take the Eurovision serious??...





The UK comes close to the bottom every year, which, if we are taking it seriously, means we are pretty dire at the whole music thing, yet we gave the world The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin the list is endless??



Instead of the Eurovision, just show re-runs of the music from the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games and then stick two fingers up to the rest of Europe and tell them to match that....

I don't know, ABBA are at least a million times better than Jessie J.

Really?.....Both are utter shiite, both just sound like camp disco, aimed at teenage girls and homosexuals to me.

I'm neither but I like ABBA. You can keep Jessie J, Spice Girls, Emeli Sande, Artic Monkeys, One Direction, Elbow, Kaiser Cheifs and all those who made the opening/closing ceremonys so great.

I fully respect that music is all about personal musical choice and preference, so I'll just move away from the debate giggling at the idea that ABBA are better than Elbow or the Arctic Monkeys....

The problem with contemporary music is just the fact that its contemporary, and it doesn't have a very long shelf life.



Its easy to forget, given how commercially successful Abba were, that in the 1970's/80s they were simply chart music pulp purveyors in the same way that Kaiser Cheifs are/were, they wrote tunes to hum along to, tunes to jump up and down and chant along to at a gig, simple tunes, simple lyrics, twice through the ears and they are lodged in your brain and you buy the album - thats the recipe.



Years later they are venerated as some kind of musical genuises, held up as a shining example to all as a pinnacle of musical perfection - they just got the recipe right, at the right time, and their skill meant that they had a slightly longer shelf life.



That is popular chart music in a nutshelf.





Just to throw something else into the mix I listened to guitarist Jon Gomm (jongomm.com) (watch him play "Ain't nobody on YouTube) on radio Leeds the other day speaking about music, writing music, teaching music, specifically for the guitar and he mentioned that he learned to play the guitar as a four year old child after an uncle brought home from Spain a three quarter flamenco guitar and a Beatles guitar music book.



He was asked why it was that in every guitar students case their is always a Beatles songbook and whether its because the Beatles tunes were so easy to play.



His reply was the contrary, that most popular chart music is much, much easier to learn than a standard Beatles tune mainly because most of the chart music for the past 20 years or so has been based on only four or five chord sequences, and usually very common, simple chords, whereas (he said) the Beatles, certainly George Harrison and Paul McCartney learned to play the guitar with help from an older pupil at their high school who had studied jazz guitar and that influence is apparent in many of their compositions with chords and sequences that are not seen in popular music now.



So there you are.

Yet another entire evening of tedious, utter tripe being dished out by the BBC.



What a brilliant excuse for going down to a pub with no telly

It stopped being a song contest the day we let all the little independant states in who just blatantly vote for their neighbours etc. 99 times out of 100 you could probably get almost the same voting results without actually hearing any songs !!.



We used to be good at it, i remember us always there or thereabouts when i was younger, but because we probably know that due to political opinions etc we wont get many votes anyway these days we tend to not take the song part of it as serious as we used to hence some of the dire awful stuff we're happy to send to 'compete'.

We do seemingly take it very seriously, what with paying Lloyd Webber and a legendary US songwriter to team up the other year. Mind you their effort was still pretty dire, but the point is we did seem keen on it unlike what you think.



The neighbours voting thing is just a quirk, it never won anyone the contest. A great song would always win the contest.

OK, so who is going to win, based on your 'best song' theory.

Take as much time as you wish, up to the actual performances of course.

You're the expert apparently.

We can then check out your theory.