There’s no such thing as a quiet Saturday during the Eurovision national final season, but there’s always one week when things get particularly hectic – and in 2019, that was last night. While six countries held semi-finals on the way to deciding their entry for this year’s contest, there were no fewer than four finals for fans to choose between. Like everyone in the online ESC fan community, we set up shop in our #esc chat all night long, juggling the various webstreams and voting on as many of the songs as possible along the way. It was a lot of fun, but it’s easy to lose sight of what actually happened. So who’s heading to Tel Aviv in May?

Thanks to timezones and scheduling, the first part of the Eesti Laul final in Estonia was free from clashes with other finals. Our favourite in the chat was the old-school charm of “Soovide puu” by Sandra Nurmsalu, which failed to reach the superfinal (that never happens to a chat fave). Instead, the superfinal was an all-male affair. Stefan (“Without You”) and Uku Suviste (“Pretty Little Liar”) put up a decent fight, but despite the jury’s best efforts to prevent him from making the final three in the first place, the televote fell head over heels in love with Swedish import Victor Crone and his song “Storm”.

With two finals beginning at 20 CET, there was a decision to make, and most of our chatters went with Croatia and the return of the legendary national final format Dora. (We’re nostalgic like that.) A lot of the fansphere seemed indifferent to it, but we really enjoyed the Croatian final, sending no fewer than six (!) songs from it into the next heat of our SongHunt. Our chat favourite, “Indigo” by Domenica, was largely ignored by the juries and televoters alike – but despite the cheesy performance involving a huge pair of wings (songwriter Jacques Houdek not being known for understatement), we were quite fond of the eventual winner too. “The Dream”, performed by teenager Roko Blažević, will be hoping to make it three qualifications out of four for Croatia since the country’s return to ESC in 2016.

Poor Raiven. She keeps getting so close to representing Slovenia at the Eurovision Song Contest, and the ticket keeps getting snatched away from her at the last minute. Following a painfully close second place in 2016 and a slightly more distant third in 2017, this year broadcaster RTV Slovenija tried to make things as easy as possible by sending her song “Kaos” – also our chat’s favourite, albeit on a countback – into a televote-only head-to-head with “Sebi” (“Oneself”) by Zala Kralj & Gašper Šantl, an incredibly introverted piece of electropop that felt more like a losing Portuguese semi-finalist than something that would come from Slovenia. So of course the Slovenian public duly gave Zala and Gašper a landslide victory. Raiven, if you’re interested, we hear the San Marino entry can be yours for the right price…

The fourth final of the night, Latvia, fell through the gaps in our chat somewhat because of the schedule clash. That’s a shame, because the first years of the Supernova format were a real favourite of ours, particularly when the heats took place on a quiet Sunday night after a heavy weekend of national final action (and with the now-legendary Rīgas Bebrs interludes). In keeping with doing things on the quiet this year, Latvia went and made an interesting choice for ESC 2019, the calm and unassuming “That Night” by Carousel – which feels like the kind of song that could land just about anywhere on the scoreboard.

Speaking of Sunday shows after a busy Super Saturday, the weekend concluded with the national final in Romania. Having been preceded by two semi-finals, there was a wide assumption that this would be a head-to-head duel between Laura Bretan and Bella Santiago, with the former in pole position – though with a system where each of the six jurors had the same weighting as the entire televote (!), anything was possible. And so it proved, as Laura and Bella had to give way to Ester Peony and “On A Sunday”, a song all about the day when Romania holds its national finals. Despite finishing just 8th in the televote, Ester had the jurors firmly on her side, so she is the person tasked with returning Romania to the ESC grand final following their first ever non-qualification last year.

And now we get to breathe for a few days, go on a crash diet to recover from all the wine and crisps we consume every single Super Saturday, and reconvene on Friday for the national final in Germany – always a very watchable bit of television. Why not join us in the #esc chat and share the moment with us?

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On a busy weekend of action in the world of Eurovision, we have three new additions to the ESC 2019 line-up – and a Sanremo winner that, as usual, may or may not represent Italy.

The United Kingdom held a national final with a new format – read more about it here. After being whittled down by the jury, the three remaining candidates went into battle for the public’s affections. Only the winner was announced: 21-year-old Michael Rice and the big ballad with the even bigger key change, “Bigger Than Us”. The fans in attendance may have had their EU flags confiscated on their way in to Friday night’s venue, but as one of the “big five”, the UK flag will definitely be flying on the grand final scoreboard in Tel Aviv.

On the other side of the world, Australia held a national final for the first time to select its fifth ESC entry. There were generally felt to be three clear favourites: indie-pop band Sheppard, Kate Miller-Heidke with her alternative operatic vocal stylings, and electro-poppers Electric Fields. Those three were indeed the favourites of the professional jury and the public vote alike – and there was no doubt about the winner, as “Zero Gravity” by Kate Miller-Heidke took the crown with both demographics. Now all they have to do is raise the funds to transport her dress to Israel.

Having got up early in the morning for Australia, viewers in Europe recharged their batteries in time for the five-song final in Montenegro – which was won by the only English-language song in the line-up, “Heaven” by D-mol (or D-Moll, or whichever variation of their name will eventually be settled on).

And finally on Saturday night, we saw the traditional late finish to Italy‘s Sanremo Festival, which sometimes – but by no means always – provides their ESC entry. Despite the audience all but rioting when Loredana Bertè failed to reach the top three, the show was eventually allowed to continue. In the end, this year’s winner was “Soldi” (“Money”) by Mahmood, and despite initial claims that he had accepted, at time of writing it remains to be seen if he will take the song to Tel Aviv as the Italian entry – or, indeed, whether he will accept the job of Italian representative at all.

Now we look forward to next weekend and possibly the busiest Super Saturday of them all, with finals in Slovenia, Croatia, Estonia and Latvia as well as semi-finals in six (!) other countries. As always, you’re very welcome to join us in the #esc chat to watch and rate the songs and juggle all the webstreams with us!

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We are proud to announce the return of SongHunt – our competition to find the best non-winning Eurovision national final song of the season – for its fifth edition!

Who will follow in the footsteps of MNTHA, The Hardkiss, Instinct and Dora Gaitanovici to take the SongHunt title for 2019? Once again, the 96 most popular national final songs from around Europe according to our chatters and editors will take part in eight heats, followed by four quarter-finals, two semi-finals, the grand final and an exciting superfinal. The superfinal takes place in our #esc chat, and all of the other stages will be held as online polls in which you can vote and support your favourites.

The first heat of SongHunt 2019 will be launched on Sunday 3 February and, like last year, the competition will run until the week after ESC 2019.

How does it work again?

• 12 songs participate in each heat. 9 of them are the chatters’ favourites from the national finals (and we do mean finals), with the remaining 3 songs being carefully selected by our editors.
• The 9 chatters’ favourites come from the top 9 of a rolling chart containing all the entries from all 2019 national finals, sorted by the average scores that they achieved in the votings in our #esc chatroom during the respective live shows.
• The 3 editors’ choices can come from any stage of a national preselection. In other words, they might be songs that got knocked out in a country’s preliminary rounds, or they could be finalists that polarised our chatters, so they got a lower average mark despite being loved by some people. The only restriction is that no winners of national finals get to compete in SongHunt. The aim is to find the best national final song that didn’t make it to ESC!

What do you need to do?

• Simply join the chat and take part in the live voting for each national final show! Even if your scores for the heats and semi-finals don’t get counted for the rolling SongHunt chart, they might have an influence on our editors’ choices – we’ll be keeping a close eye on those chat favourites that were “robbed”. And, of course, your votes in each country’s final will be included in the calculation for SongHunt.
• If your favourite in a heat or semi-final doesn’t reach that country’s national final or gets ignored by the other chatters, don’t despair! You can still help it to reach the SongHunt polls by suggesting it in a private message to MartinF or FelixK in the chat. There are no guarantees, but if you draw our attention to a song, we might well take it into consideration for our editors’ choice.

And that’s all for now! Join us in the chat as the 2019 national final season starts to heat up – and don’t forget to keep your eyes open for the first heat of SongHunt 2019 when it launches this Sunday.

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Who says exciting things only happen on Super Saturday? It’s been a busy working week in the world of Eurovision as the 2019 contest moves ever closer!

On Monday, the Czech Republic completed its non-televised selection, with a public vote and a jury of recent ESC participants choosing their favourite from eight contenders. The band Lake Malawi, led by singer Albert Černý, finished second in the televote but took overall victory thanks to a good chunk of jury love. Their song “Friend Of A Friend” will duly represent the Czechs in Tel Aviv in May – and for all the final was conducted entirely online, you can get a feel for Lake Malawi as live performers with this “unplugged” version of the song:

In other internal selections, we learned that Austria will seek to maintain its good recent record in the contest with the electropop singer Paenda and “Limits” – though we won’t get to hear the song until much later in the season – while Macedonia, still trading as “FYR Macedonia” for Eurovision purposes despite the recent legislation on their new country name, announced the return of their 2008 representative Tamara Todevska in solo form for the 2019 edition.

Perhaps most excitingly of all, Finland announced that they will be repeating last year’s national final format (one artist, three songs) and that the artist in question will be none other than Darude, responsible for one of the biggest club hits of the early 21st century with “Sandstorm”. All three of the songs in the final on March 2nd are expected to feature Sebastian Rejman on vocals. Some evil genius on the internet almost immediately came up with the perfect mashup to celebrate Darude’s arrival in the pantheon of Finnish entrants – we love it.

The 2019 season continues to gather pace with tonight’s first Estonian semi-final, followed by a whole clutch of shows on Saturday night – including the first heat of Melodifestivalen. Don’t forget you can join us in the #esc chat to watch the shows together and give your votes and thoughts!

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The allocation draw for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest took place today at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

As in recent years, the countries had previously been divided into “pots” based on their voting history with the aim of ensuring a balanced spread across the two semi-finals. To allow the delegations to make their travel plans based on the preliminary rehearsal schedule, the participating countries were also assigned to either the first or second half of the respective show.

The draw was as follows:

The “big five” countries, who are already qualified for the grand final, and host nation Israel were also assigned to the semi-finals that they are required to broadcast and vote in:

France, Israel and Spain will vote in the first semi-final on Tuesday 14 May.
Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom will vote in the second semi-final on Thursday 16 May.

As has been the case since ESC 2013, the exact order of performance will be decided by the producers once all the entries have been chosen, the aim being to create a varied and interesting running order.

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We all know when Eurovision ends: it’s when we hear the final seconds of the closing Te Deum. But when does the new season start? There’s no one answer. Is it September 1st? Or when the first artist is announced? Maybe it’s when the first national final reveals its songs, or the first national final of the season is broadcast? For me, the season starts when the first selection I really care about takes place, and this year the honor fell to Spain.

I’ve watched all ten editions of Operacion Triunfo, five of which have been used for the Eurovision entry selection – so that explains a lot about the level of my emotional involvement, and more so why I find myself paying a lot of attention to the details. There are many countries that are yet to “get” the modern Eurovision game, and even though they try, change is hard and getting it right is harder. I always say that we want to see things go from point A to point B, but in reality, you typically have to go via a whole load of other letters first. It’s a process, and sometimes even seeing enough small changes in the right direction is a good reason to be (cautiously) optimistic.

Spain, in particular, is one case where you’d be better off not developing any real expectations. Hope never dies and all that, but this isn’t my first rodeo, you know. Using a talent show as a platform for picking an ESC entry, especially when Eurovision isn’t the sole goal, is always tricky. In Spain, things are extra complicated because the audience gets to view a live feed from the academy every day throughout the 15 weeks of the show, and that’s a lot of time to relate to participants in ways that have nothing to do with music, songs or performances.

That’s what happened to them last year: Amaia became Spain’s darling and a phenomenon, the country fell in love with her and with her love story with Alfred, and suddenly no one could imagine anything other than a duet of the two of them at ESC. Except of course no one outside Spain had a clue about who they were or the opportunity to get to know them the way their local audience did.

RTVE had a much more open field this year, partly because there was no clear-cut favorite – the audience picked a different favorite and even a different top three pretty much every week, based on performances and the events of the week. Out of all ten seasons, it was actually the one when it was the least obvious who the front runners were. On top of that, for the first time in an OT selection, the final wasn’t limited to the eventual finalists of the show. Any of the contestants who made it to the live shows of OT could participate, assuming that the writers requested them for their submitted entry and that this entry was selected.

This resulted in a very impressive cadre of established performers, producers and composers submitting songs to the selection. When we have a final made of newcomer performers it can be easy to forget that there can still be many years of experience involved in the process. I appreciated the fact that, like last year, the Eurovision selection show prominently featured the songwriters as well as the songs, and also continued the tradition of having the composer of last year’s winning entry among the jury panel (made extra special by the fact Doron Medalie not only speaks Spanish – who knew? – but has been an OT fan who watched the first season already, saying that that’s what inspired him to take a plunge and attempt making a career as a songwriter).

What was both clear and controversial was RTVE’s effort to put the songs first. By not even trying to assign each candidate to a song and not making that part of the format, they could focus on picking the best song/performer combinations out of the submissions without having to make compromises and marry songs to less suitable performers, or having to give up good songs because a performer already had one song that worked for them. It made many fans complain about favoritism and the unfairness of the process in general, but for me it was a positive sign: making sure a song competition is song-focused is never a bad thing, after all.

Having scheduled the final for a date that was a few weeks after the final of the regular season, there was no full time coverage of the rehearsals like last year, which meant we were prevented from seeing any “Lo malo”-esque meltdowns, sadly, and though even the broadcast itself was – shockingly enough – drama-free, we were not entirely without dramatic events, at least in the lead-up to the final. And there’s something to learn there too.

There were two participants in particular who dropped several hints to media about not being exactly enthusiastic about participating in ESC. While they never fully said as much, they expressed their discontent with it taking place in Israel – which they already knew at the time of singing the contract for OT participation (which included an ESC clause) – and also showed very vocal support (literally) for another entry in the line-up. While that can be interpreted as just being supportive of a friend, it did essentially come across as asking for votes to be diverted away from them. Many argued – and I actually felt the same – that it was disrespectful both to their fellow participants who didn’t even receive a song to begin with, and to the writers of their own songs.

Future advice, broadcasters? Give your contestants a quick overview of some legal concepts ahead of signing their contracts. When you put your name on the dotted line, you need to agree to everything it asks you to. You don’t get to pick and choose.

When I discussed this a friend, she argued that as long as the singers didn’t ask to withdraw from the national final, they were fulfilling their contract and therefore were free to at least be honest about how they felt about it.  But even beyond the more moral aspects of showing respect to other participants, songwriters and the audience, it’s not even legally true: in Western Contract Law, Spain included, there’s a principle called “in good faith”, according to which all parties to a contract are expected to act honestly, fairly and in good faith so that the other side is not prevented from enjoying its benefits. In this case, participating in an NF but trying actively to not win it doesn’t actually honor the contract. While it’s not something RTVE (or any broadcaster, for that matter) will necessarily do anything about legally after the fact, making sure everyone is a willing participant (or at least willing to behave) ahead of time can minimize headaches like this considerably.

Unfortunately for Spanish Eurofans, one of the unwilling participants was Maria, whose “Muerdeme” joined the long list of fan favorites to have finished second in the Spanish selection. Except, of course, her fellow list members like Coral and Mirela actually wanted to go to the contest. Maria’s performance, by contrast, made it crystal clear that she couldn’t be bothered with all this Eurovision nonsense. At the end of the day, it’s such a waste: even if “Muerdeme” was an amazing song (which I didn’t agree with, but taste is taste) and even if Maria was an amazing performer (which she isn’t, not even on her best day), there’s a little point in sending a performer who isn’t at least committed to the song, to the team, and to trying to do her best if only out of professional self-respect.

For what it’s worth, though, there were plenty more positive things to take away from the Spanish final than were negative. Not least the broadcast itself becoming more efficient and concise, and therefore way easier to consume in geographical regions that are not the Mediterranean. But the most important thing, as we know, is the songs, and that’s where the interesting story of this final was. Not just by having big names among the songwriters, but mostly because of what the songs chosen for the final line up represented.

Like quite a few other countries, Spain has been trying for a very long time to find what they believe is a song suited for Eurovision, which often translates into the perfect recipe for a line-up with little actual relation to the music of the country. And indeed, the final ten songs this year weren’t entirely free of past sins – they still included a couple of imports with a more stereotypical Eurovision sound, adapted to Spanish, albeit at least well suited for their performers, Famous and Marilia.

After the huge success of “Lo malo” last year, this year’s line-up had far more current Spanish pop in it, sounding more like what you’d hear on the radio and less like what people from other countries think Spanish pop sounds like. “La clave”, co-written among others by Ander Perez (of “Dime” fame) and veteran pop singer Merche, was an urban pop track made to fit Natalia, a strong vocalist and a talented dancer whose performances during the season made me envision exactly this kind of number for her. While not necessarily the strongest in the line-up, the song tried to follow in the footsteps of “Lo malo” a lot more than it did “Toy” or “Fuego”, because it had to make sense inside Spain first, and only then look outwards. Natalia’s other entry, together with Miki, was a more Latin-infused pop, but thankfully not the tourist kind – you know, the type you play for foreigners because they think that’s what Latin music sounds like. And of course “Muerdeme” was conceived in that same vein.

Even though all the songs in the line up were in Spanish with not even a phrase in any other of Spain’s regional languages, at least musically we got a little taste from a few regions. Sabela, this edition’s only Galician contestant (there were three last year!) performed two songs during the season in Galician – that’s a lot, considering only one song in the language was performed in the previous nine seasons combined. For the Eurovision show, she was given the ethnic ballad “Hoy soñaré”, which had a very Galician instrumental arrangement. Julia’s ballad, co-written by mega flamenco pop star India Martinez (who, like Julia, is Andalucian), was representative of both the genre and the material Julia loves to perform and excels at. This is a great example of the best way to make a national final relevant: she only finished 8th, but the song is right for her and strong for the genre and therefore still serves as a fantastic first single and business card for a performer fresh out of a talent show.

And something like that works to everyone’s benefit. The more musically relevant the show becomes, the easier it will be to get more big names involved in various roles, and “Lo malo” led the way on this: you can lose the national final and still win elsewhere. The record company in charge will be happy with as much success as possible, and for the young performers, it should be a huge privilege to have recognized artists and songwriters wanting them to perform their songs.

This can be demonstrated by two more mainstream songs from the line up, one that finished 5th and the other one last. Noelia’s ballad did sound very “Spain at Eurovision”, but it also sounded like something that would be recorded in Spain, and once again we had big names – singer/songwriter Alex Ubago and internationally renowned producer Jacobo Calderon – asking Noelia to perform their entry, which fits her style and preferences perfectly.

Carlos Right performed a pleasant pop/rock track penned by half of insanely popular Colombian group Morat that was entirely in his style – and he was ecstatic about getting to work with them and perform a song they wrote. Even though he finished last with only 1% of the vote (mostly because this song doesn’t really work in the context of a competition), he now has a very nice first single and a song specifically identified with him that he can perform on the Operacion Triunfo 2018 tour.

All this was especially true for the eventual winner of the final, too. “La venda” was written by Adria Salas, the singer of La Pegatina, a well known ska/Catalan rumba band that has been active since the early 2000s, in the same musical style of the band’s output. Miki, who was the first in the history of the show’s ten seasons to perform a song in Catalan, is actually a fan of the group and attended many of their concerts (including the first concert he ever attended) – and with Miki and Salas being from nearby towns in Catalunya, Salas had also seen Miki perform with his own band even before his OT participation. This familiarity, and the fact Miki’s performances on OT were the best when they were in a similar style, convinced him to request Miki to perform his song.

While some participants expressed their desire to go to Eurovision, like Famous and Noelia – and others made sure we knew they really didn’t want to – Miki was neither here or there, essentially open to the possibilities but waiting to see how things shaped up. But getting the right song – a song he liked and that was well-suited to him – and working with its writer, did their magic. The more he worked and the the more he got invested in the song, the more he wanted to go, and his joy when he won was evident, as was his exuberance in the follow-up interviews and press conference. The contrast between his investment in “La venda” and Maria’s nonchalant performance of “Muerdeme” was very stark. I even think that if the songs had been revealed on the night itself and Maria hadn’t had the time to become the frontrunner and gather initial support, she would have received as many votes as she did on the night (22% and second place behind Miki’s 34%), and it was a good call to drop the superfinal – seeing the result breakdown for the ten songs showed a second voting round was unnecessary.

I wasn’t a big fan of Miki throughout the season – though I did like the few performances that were similar to “La venda” – but he sold the song, and he created a “moment”, having the entire studio – audience, songwriter, host, other contestants and even the entire jury – on their feet, dancing throughout the song, because it was impossible to resist. I want to have songs I like in Eurovision, sure, but give me 42 performers who look thrilled to perform their songs and I’ll be happy.

I can only imagine how thrilled the Spanish delegation must be with the result, too. I’m sure the prospect of spending the next few months working with someone who doesn’t want do it, doesn’t want to perform in Israel and is generally not great at filtering anything wasn’t particularly inspiring for anyone there. But not only did Miki end up being extremely enthusiastic about going, he breezed through the press conference and interviews – including all the expected political questions – like a trooper, with patience, a smile and answers straight to the point which left no room for follow-up questions on the subject.

We’re still nearly four months away from the final night in Tel Aviv, so most conclusions can wait until then, but I’m already happy that Spain is sending something that is truly representative of their music (albeit in a niche genre) – and this sentiment was actually echoed by other Spanish artists after the final. Besides, it’s always great to see something new from an “old” ESC country. Now, if they can maintain that direction while making sure that everyone competing actually wants to do so, this will really show that they are learning something. Because while getting good results at Eurovision is really nice (trust me, I know!), at the end of the day, only one country can win, and Eurovision is way bigger than that – it really is about the experience, about all the clichés of opportunities, coming together and discovering new things: people, places, cultures, music. It’s about the joy of it all. Like the Spanish entry says: La venda ya cayó y solo quedó la alegría.

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It’s been a funny few years for the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. On the surface, the three entries since the BBC reintroduced its national final in 2016 have been broadly unsuccessful, with the 24th places recorded by Joe & Jake and SuRie punctuated only by the brief flurry of excitement when Lucie Jones’s “Never Give Up On You” looked like it might be heading for the left-hand side of the scoreboard, only for its bubble to be burst by an underwhelming televote score.

Despite this, the mood around the contest in the UK feels more positive than I can remember it being in a long time. “We” may not do especially well – and there will always be people saying we should withdraw because “they” all hate us anyway – but the BBC Eurovision team has done a pretty good job of reframing ESC as a week-long celebration and a social media event, where it doesn’t really matter if the Union Flag ends up occupying its usual position at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen once the voting comes along. That’s an important step in the post-Wogan era and one that deserves to be applauded.

Taking the easy road?
With viewing figures solid no matter who represents the UK, of course, a cynic might say that gives the BBC a good excuse not to try especially hard when it comes to selecting its entry. Certainly, the recent British national finals can be accused of harbouring a fairly safe bunch of songs, largely sourced from collaborative writing camps at home and abroad (with the occasional Dulcima slipping through the net). There have been positive innovations too, though: Getting Måns Zelmerlöw on board as a host, moving the show around the country a bit – last year Brighton, this year Salford – and, perhaps most notably of all, the new format the BBC has introduced for the 2019 edition, which will see three songs each being performed in two musically different styles by two different artists.

Yesterday, those songs and interpretations were revealed to the public for the first time. Inevitably, then, the big question is: Can any of them change the UK’s fortunes on the international stage? Let’s take a closer look at their chances.

Bigger Than Us
With a decidedly Swedish look to the songwriting team, it’s no surprise that “Bigger Than Us” feels a little been-there-done-that, not least since the rather po-faced Michael Rice interpretation also ends up strongly reminiscent of a recent Australian entry. That said, even with its desperately clunky key change, it’s clearly the better of the two versions – the “pop-country” beat that’s been lazily laid on top of Holly Tandy’s take adds very little and gives the entry a monotonous feel. Mind you, we said something similar about SuRie’s “Storm” last year only for her to perform the arse off it and take a deserved victory at the national final stage, and it’s possible that X Factor alumnus Tandy will have something similar up her sleeve.

Freaks
An immediate headdesk moment here thanks to that “locker/soccer” rhyme in the first two lines (and can we really accept the prospect of a British entry that calls football “soccer”?), but once “Freaks” gets going, you can kind of see what they’re trying to achieve with it. While cheesy to the extreme, both versions have a Greatest Showman air about them – Jordan Clarke’s goofy circus ringmaster vs. MAID’s creepy house of horrors – and if the UK final has any kind of budget for staging, there’s potential for some interesting visuals here. The tone remains decidedly safe and middle-of-the-road, of course – we’re talking mid-2000s Melodifestivalen rather than the Dresden Dolls here – but it’s the nearest thing to a risk in this line-up, albeit in a very BBC Light Entertainment kind of way, so thumbs up for that at least.

Sweet Lies
Taking the temperature of the online fandom, it’s fair to say that “Sweet Lies” has made the biggest impact of the three songs so far. That’s perhaps unsurprising, since the version by Kerrie-Anne ticks a lot of the fanboy cliché boxes, being a bit of a basic upbeat banger – not that there’s anything wrong with that. Kerrie-Anne also seems like she could be a fun person to represent the UK, in the same way as SuRie proved to be a witty and self-aware ambassador for the contest last year, so if she can bring the performance in Salford on February 8th then she may well be in pole position for the victory. Whereas “Sweet Lies” isn’t really a strong enough song to merit the stripped-down arrangement they’ve given to Anisa, but we’ve seen how an outstanding vocal can win over the UK public, so there’s potential there too. The worry with that mindset, of course, is that almost everyone at ESC these days is a pretty decent singer, so you do need a bit more than that to stand out.

Wanting it and needing it
All in all, then, and despite the new format, we seem to be telling the same old story when it comes to the UK’s Eurovision hopefuls. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these songs, and there seem to be some capable performers in the line-up too, but there’s nothing that will set the scoreboard on fire in Tel Aviv in May. We’ve established that the BBC doesn’t need to be successful on the scoreboard to have a popular show on its hands, of course – in a way, the more interesting question is whether they even want to be.

The online response to yesterday’s song presentation was a study in confirmation bias, with the usual mixture of people who automatically hate on everything the BBC does and people who think everyone hates on everything the BBC does and so make a point of arguing the exact opposite regardless of whether they actually believe it. Fandom, eh? While the truth lies somewhere in the middle, it’s perhaps most surprising that the tweaks to the UK’s national final format don’t seem to reflect a change in the underlying approach: assemble some group-think songs from Scandinavia and beyond, attach them to some people who’ve popped up on TV singing shows in the last few years so can probably hold a tune, and that’ll do.

It’s not wrong as such – certainly, none of the last three UK entries have been a disgrace – but that doesn’t mean it’s right either. Over the same period, the winners of the Eurovision Song Contest have been a slice of wartime deportation-themed trip-hop, a wistful La La Land waltz, and a kooky #MeToo pop bop with Japanese cat figurines and chicken noises – none of which would ever have seen the light of day in a safety-first UK final. By contrast, whatever else it may achieve, the BBC’s low-risk approach is basically guaranteed not to pick a winner. And while there are song and singer combinations in the 2019 line-up that can absolutely replicate Lucie Jones’s result if they’re given the right staging, wouldn’t it be nice to aim a little higher for once?

You can listen to all six UK contenders here. The UK final will be held at MediaCityUK in Salford on Friday 8 February.

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