Loyal readers of this blog (dear God, who am I kidding?) will know I have a penchant for all things Eurovision and so may be wondering what I made of the recent televisual emission that was Your Country Needs You.But before I empty my brain and my spleen blogwards, a little historical preamble. The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was established in the 1950s as a cheery post-war European unifier. Great Britain is known as one of the Big Four nations (together with Germany, France and Spain), whose financial input into the contest effectively helps bankroll the whole affair. It may surprise trivia-lovers to know, however, that Britain wasn’t actually a founder in the debut contest in 1956, only joining the following year, and the Spanish didn’t get on board until 5 years later. But money talks and, in recognition of this funding, these countries automatically qualify for a place in the grand final, bypassing the two semis. But Europe is a changed continent since those halcyon days. The fall of the Soviet bloc has led to a flurry of eastern nations joining the fray. This year, as last, forty-three nations will compete; out goes San Marino (still have no idea where that is) and off the bench comes Slovakia, returning for the first time in a decade. But it’s not just geography that has changed. Pop music is a very different beast to what it was even a few years ago. Technology has put the means of production in the hands of young people and out of the expensive studios of the old guard. It has also allowed a means of distribution that completely circumvents the established labels and media channels. The worldwide web has also brought down barriers of style and taste. Urban American artists cheerfully sample Asian and Middle-Eastern music for chart topping tracks, and the oddly misnamed genre World Music has burgeoned as middle-class dinner parties are accompanied by the sounds of Gypsy tangoes, African tribal chanting, Brazilian capoeira or Japanese koto folk. Many of the newer entrants to the ESC from the eastern bloc have brought an edgier, clubbier, downright sensual dance music that brings new shades of meaning to the tired moniker Euro Beat. This is the sound of an emergent, vibrant, youthful 21st century Europe. And Britain, which has trailed at the very bottom of the results board in the recent past, still doesn’t get it.
Exhibit A, m’lud, is the recent contest to find our national representative to send to Moscow. Sure, some of the old furniture is being replaced. Out goes one old Irish presenter (Sir Terry Wogan) to be replaced by a younger, camper version (Graham Norton). But in most other respects, the whole affair was woefully outmoded. BBC1 has been battling hard for the last several years to win the Saturday evening ratings war. ITV’s allegiance with Simon Cowell has led to audience dominance when The X Factor or, to a lesser extent, Britain’s Got Talent are running. The BBC’s answer was to hark back to the Saturday evening light-entertainment of yesteryear. Bruce Forsyth was thawed from his cryogenic storage tank and fronted another reanimated corpse, Come Dancing, which was somehow made to seem more contemporary by adding the word ‘Strictly’ to it, alluding to a movie from 1992. (1992!) When this was off the air, Norton acted as host for an endless panoply of collusions with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber who mounted revivals of well-loved musicals in London’s West End, making the advert-free BBC into a massive billboard for his endeavours. Which brings us neatly to this, a weekly Saturday evening show where a Lloyd Webber production has been replaced with the ESC and entitled Your Country Needs You. The title is of course borrowed from the infamous First World War poster featuring the bloodhound stare of Lord Kitchener, now replaced in the opening sequence with the St-Bernardesque jowly visage of Lord Lloyd Webber posing arms-crossed amidst dancing musical notes and zooming Union-flag arrows. It was like a high-octane, high-gloss and bevelled CGI homage to the opening animation of Dad’s Army; surely an odd reference given the creaking ineptitude of the Home Guard characters in that sitcom, but yet embodying a patriotic idiocy that our once great hun-beating nation can conquer the Eurostate with a humble, hummable tune.
The credits revealed YCNY was devised by the “BBC F.E.D. Team” (humourous suggestions for that acronym, anyone?), a shady-sounding committee at the Beeb who are credited on IMDB for such ground-breaking shows as Never Mind the Full Stops and Sudo-Q. Despite the decision to axe Old Tel, the show still felt like something from twenty years ago. The live studio band (even the ESC itself ditched the live orchestral accompaniment years ago in favour of the ubiquitous backing track), the pokey stage (compared to the megawatt, big cajones, sensorygasm that is The X Factor setting, for example), the guest commentators sitting awkwardly on a couch in the corner (don’t they realise that if you have an opinion on these kind of shows you need to be behind a desk to give you authority?) - it all said we are going to lose spectacularly again, and that was before any of the prospective performers had even sung a note.
I won’t weigh this tirade down any more by vexating over the half-dozen competing acts individually (suffice to say they were IMHO mostly Opportunity Knocks standard, circa 1989) because in many respects the show almost wasn’t about them, though you were of course expected to call a money-making phone line to vote for your faves each week. Instead, the BBC’s USP for our entry to the ESC this year is Lloyd Webber. Together with prolific award-winning songwriter Diane Warren, he is responsible for devising our secret weapon, our dambusting bouncing pop tune bomb that Britain expects to explode the Moscow Olympic Indoor Arena, and to be met with a salvo of “douze points”. (A quick parenthetical to ask why the hell are we paying an American songsmith when we have our own equally-feted and certainly more gorgeous Cathy Dennis? Possibly Cathy - if she were asked, and I’m afraid I have no intel in this regard - may have said “no” to aligning her prowess with her country’s need. But she’s the sort of talent we need, not a musical luvvy and the woman who wrote 'Rhythm of the Night', which was but one of her songs to be given a soulless rendition by the leggy bland female contestants. At least she’s making money off the PRS.)
Unlike previous years, the elimination process to find our British hopeful was spun out over five weeks, and it wasn’t til the final installment - oh, the suspense - that we got to hear the almighty song and find out which lucky artist was going to have to take it to Russia in May. In the end it came down to three: Mark, a seasoned board-treader and panto performer with capable pipes but at heart a vapid vacuum of emotion; The Twins, ditzy blonde northern siblings who I first thought were those equally fame-hungry BB contestants from a couple of years ago; and Jade who had the best voice of all the contestants by several euro-approved kilometres. And the song? Somewhat reminiscent of Peter Kay’s brilliant spoof of the talent show genre, the “winner’s song” was interpreted in three different ways by the three artists. Mark gave it an over-sincere, strangled vocal performance fitting of the moment at the end of the first act of a West End musical when you reach for the box of chocs and start thinking about your interval drink. The Twins similarly emoted from the diaphragm, while looking like two slightly tacky angels in dazzling white dresses floating in a sea of dry ice and desperation. Finally, Jade is no Leona Lewis but she gave it the best vocal treatment despite pleading a little too much with her non-mic hand.
The tune itself, 'It’s My Time', is typical Lloyd Webber writ large, and plain and simply light years away from what a 2009 ESC entry should be. As sofa-sitter Duncan From Blue tactfully put it: “what you expect when you put Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren in a room together”. (Kinda hard to tell if Duncan was still being all-round-nice-guy fictional self from C4 comedy Plus One.) The trouble is the whole thing rides on the strength of the song alone. You can’t dance to it. You don’t get an especially good feeling humming it, it’s far too slow. I can imagine milkmen and posties whistling it with lots of vibrato on the plethora of long notes. Dare I say, for a ESC contender, it even puts that abominable Scooch song in a good light. Don’t misunderstand me - balladry always gets a fair showing at the ESC (albeit usually rock ballads), but if it’s going to fare well it needs so much more than an okay singer in a sparkly dress. Am I saying gimmickry wins the ESC? Not really, but the most recent winner with a song of this ilk was Serbia’s triumph in 2007 and at least the song had anthemic contemporary stylings and a distinctive stage performance.
A slim segment of one show was VT of Norton and Lloyd Webber watching clips of the few other Euro finalists chosen so far. And once again, even this brief glimpse showed how far from the mark we are. Turkey, for one, are on the money with a seriously sexy singer and a suitably sensual pounding eastern-beat pop song. Last year, I made a rash prediction that this year will be Ukraine’s year to shine. As far as I know, they haven’t even selected their entry yet, but I guarantee, whatever they choose, it will rate higher on the final scoreboard than lamb-to-the-slaughter Jade.
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