I disagree. The last 3 years the UK has actually sent artist who are established. For various reasons we haven’t won (and last year vocally it let us down) but we are at least taking it seriously.
He’s pretty well liked in Europe so we stand a good chance, song dependent.
Eurovision is all about the performance and Ollie Alexander can perform well - he’s done lots of pretty cool set pieces. He’s also a nice guy who has represents a lot of good causes and seems pretty genuine, which I think counts for a lot. I reckon he’ll do alright and either way nice to see him perform and looking forward to what he comes up with.
He sacked his full band and decided to perform under the band name of ‘Years and Years’. Obviously I don’t know the ins and outs of it but sounds like a dick move.
Nil points!
This even how bands work, lead singers don’t hire the rest of the band 
We’ve done the TV show route.
We got Scooch.
I don’t think it matters who represents the UK. They’re not best liked throughout Europe. Remember it’s not a talent show, it’s a popularity contest.
I used to buy that until Sam Ryder finished second. Bear in mind too that Ukraine could have literally entered anything that year and they still would have won.
Not all songs that are popular in the UK export well. It’s as simple as that and we’ve really struggled to find songs that both resonate across the continent (and Australia) and fit the Eurovision vibe.
I saw that as a direct result of the UK’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I think there’s a genuine thing of people not wanting to do it. Until recently representing the U.K. at Eurovision has not exactly been prestigious or enviable. I can imagine the BBC made a lot of calls to a lot of agents before they ended up with Jemini.
Sam Ryder took it because he was a nice guy who just wanted to perform there, also why he did quite well, that seems to have started something.
Nah - I disagree and think that’s a bit of people trying to blame others for not putting in a good entry. ‘Doesn’t matter how hard we try - they hate us anyway!’.
Blue did ‘acceptable’ a few years back, Andrew Lloyd Webber did very well for us as well (he wrote the entry Jade Ewan performed and they definitely ‘marketed’ that entry as 'his song).
What I think happens though is countries who are neighbours generally have a similar culture so they will have similar tastes - so it’s not necessarily that Sweden always votes for Norway because they’re biased in favour of their neighbour but more that there’s a good chance that Sweden and Norway have heard each others song a lot more and so it’s recognisable to people in those countries. Or in the case of Greece and Cyprus - it’s because a lot of Cypriots live in Greece now.
Ireland, who is generally, I think, well liked across Europe and doesn’t have any Brexit issues is doing worse than us - they don’t even qualify anymore for the final most years because the only country who regularly supports them is the UK. And in the split semi-final format now, the UK doesn’t generally vote in the semi that Ireland is performing in.
For absolute Eurovision nerds (like me) it’s interesting when they publish all the vote scores after Eurovision itself - esp the public vote broken down by country. You can then see how much the public vs judges vote contradict or support each other. For example the UK won the judges vote with Sam Ryder and got the most 12s but Ukraine got literally the whole of Europe’s public vote (I think it got 12 for most countries).
Of our recent entries - I only think SuRie particularly was unfairly scores because she performed well and it was a good song. But than during her performance you had that (British) idiot who decided to do a stage invasion which threw her concentration while she performed.
We’ve tried different variations of holding a song contest to pick our entry and it’s not been any better than letting ‘industry/BBC specialist’ just pick it. We’ve tried both completely different acts performing whatever song they wanted, we’ve tried different acts performing the same song in their own style and we’ve tried one act performing different songs for the public to pick
It’ll be interesting to see how Olly does - I would expect a ‘left hand side’ of the board (ie - top half) as he should be a strong performer at least.
The proof is in the pudding. The best song doesn’t win. I appreciate ‘best song’ is subjective but this is absolutely not simply about quality.
There is tactical voting, there is political voting and even changing the voting system to allow a public vote hasnt changed that.
First clip of our entry:
Not my sort of song. Just sounds so similar to a lot of songs nowadays which just isn’t memorable for me. Although obviously, this is a short clip of it and other people like this genre of song.
Will reserve judgement, but ughhh.
Dizzy has been released and really not my sort of song. Just seems like a generic pop song and similar to essentially every piece of music coming out recently.
Yeah, it’s pretty boring actually
What is it with British Eurovision entries looking like they should be covers when they’re actually new songs? First Spaceman (Babylon Zoo), now this (Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff (and yes, I know that in itself was a cover too)).
Anyone else going to Malmo then?
Manged to get final tickets now, so Semi 2, Jury final and then the Final, all seated 
It gets more expensive every year!
I’ll be there for the final weekend, but staying in Copenhagen and getting the train over to Malmo.