This evening is Eurovision You Decide, when the UK will choose its entry for the contest later this year in Tel Aviv. The format is unusual this year; each of three songs are performed by two artists, with an expert panel then choosing which of each match-up goes through to a second round public vote for the eventual winner.
Unfortunately, the songs this year are distinctly lacklustre. As each song is sung in two different ways, I’m mostly going to look at the lyrics.
Freaks
This song is meant to be a hopeful and possibly empowering song for people who have been bullied or picked on for being different or unusual. Unfortunately, it works better as a recruiting song for some sort of cult.
The chorus runs
Come to the land of the lost and lonely
Don’t be afraid, we’ll be one big family
Of freaks, like you and me
I know a place where the bruised and broken
Live like the kings and the queens of tragedy
Just freaks, like you and me
We are the freaks
It never actually tells you where the ‘land of the lost and lonely’ is, but I suspect that reaching their involves Kool-Aid, particularly when we’re told we can ‘live like the kings and queens of tragedy’. I’m not sure whether these are fictional kings and queens (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Claudius and Gertrude, Lear) or real kings and queens (Dipendra, Anne Boleyn, Nicholas II), but it didn’t end well for them. However, we’ll be one big family in the land of the lost and lonely, so that’s fine and not at all creepy.
The cult aspect is brought home in the second verse:
We could all be disciples
And we’ll write our own Bible
We’ll put freaks in the titles
which put me in mind of Napoleon wanting to write a new Koran, not getting away from bullies. The outro includes ‘come home’ a couple of times, and now I can’t help but see it as someone wearing white robes telling vulnerable listeners to come and join the family.
There are a couple of another annoyances in the song. The first two lines are
I’ve been locked in the locker
I was picked last in soccer
Which immediately makes people think this song was written for an American artist and has been repurposed for Eurovision; not an auspicious start. The other annoyance is the repeated line
It’s me, you, your, tu and moi, vous
Which translates as ‘it’s me, you, your, you and me, you’, which is gobbledegook, but I presume that adding in three French words will make it appeal to a European audience, or somesuch nonsense. That may be why they sample Pachebel’s Canon, too.
I can’t decide which version I dislike more; I’m sure the singers are perfectly competent, but I can’t get past the lyrics’ mixture of banality and accidental creepiness. I think my preference is probably for the version by MAID, largely because the version from Jordan Clarke sounds like a singalong version from early morning children’s television, though I’m afraid neither recording has much to commend it.
Bigger Than Us
The word ‘bigger’ is repeated thirty-six times. The song, per Eurovision rules, is three minutes long. That’s an average of a bigger every five seconds. The lyrics to the song are uninspiring (but, on the positive side, hardly reminiscent of a cult at all), so it’s going to be much more the performance that matters.
The first two lines fall foul of showing, not telling.
Hear these words that I sing to you
I will make it clear, it’s me and you
Starting a song with an appeal to listen to the song does not suggest much about the author’s confidence in its appeal. Then we have more and more about ‘it’ being ‘bigger than us’. We’re not actually told what ‘it’ is, but I’m assuming that it’s love.
Take my hand and I’ll lead you home
Can you understand?
You will never be alone?
Oops, we’re verging into creepy again. I think this is meant to be sweet, but it has definite shades of looking through a window-pane. ‘Bigger than us’ also implies that it’s more important than us or our desires – and all of a sudden, we’re back at the cult, with the cult leader singing to prospective concubine #14.
The first version of the song, by Michael Rice, sounds like a very generic song released by a talent show winner; he won All Together Now, a talent show on the BBC, so it fits. It’s not a bad song, and it’s sung well enough; it’s just uninspired. There are some “emotional” sections where Michael can show off the depth of feeling that comes across, despite the power in his voice, as a bit flat. I find myself thinking that I need to creosote the fence, which suggests that the song would get lost if it reached Eurovision.
The second version, sung by Holly Tandy, I prefer; it has a slight country vibe to it, to which I’m partial anyway, that would make it stand out at Eurovision.
Sweet Lies
The last song is Sweet Lies. It has, I think, the best set of lyrics of the three. I find the chorus a bit weird:
We’re lying skin to skin
Our love is paper thin
I need you skin to skin (I need you)
Don’t tell me where you’ve been
Don’t wanna hear a thing
Don’t tell me where you’ve been
The ‘skin to skin’ line works, just about, the first time round; I suppose skin to skin could mean anything from holding hands in bed to being in flagrante delicto. Repeating the exact same, slightly weird, phrase two lines later is awkward, and just serves to emphasise something that would be better left unemphasised.
Unfortunately, it says a lot that my favourite of the three songs is the one I can pick least holes in, rather than there being anything particularly to commend it.
One of the versions is, frankly, a bit dull and plodding:
The other, by Kerrie-Anne, is the only one of the six that has any life to it. Once we move past the pre-chorus, she uses the song to show her vocal talents. I can’t help but feel that we’d have had a better end result if she’d had a song written for her, rather than one written for anyone to be able to put a spin on.
The selection format is odd, and one of the effects of writing a song that can be sung by two different people is that we end up with blancmange. Last year’s selection wasn’t, I think, quite as blancmange-y. ‘I Feel the Love’ by Goldstone and ‘Astronaut’ by Liam Tamne were dull, but any of the other four could have served. I wasn’t massively keen on ‘Storm’, the eventual winner, but SuRie’s performance was excellent. Asanda, singing ‘Legends’, seemed to bite off more than she could chew with her performance. My favourite combination was Jaz Ellington singing ‘You’. I think that a lot of it will come down to the performance on the night. That’s as it should be, but there’s no stand-out best song; it’s all just a bit middle of the road.
In terms of the pairings, for ‘Freaks’, I prefer MAID; for ‘Bigger than Us’, I prefer Holly Tandy; and for ‘Sweet Lies’, I prefer Kerrie-Anne. Ranking them from top to bottom, I would go for Kerrie-Anne, Holly Tandy, Anisa, Michael Rice, MAID, and Jordan Clarke.
I don’t think we’re going to be troubling the left hand side of the scoreboard this year.
I very much like the Spanish entry, ‘La Venda’ by Miki (although it has to be a live version, where Mike really sells it; the album version is insipid).
I also really like one of the entries in the Australian selection, ‘2000 and Whatever’ by Electric Fields.
Nukkun ya drekkly.