Tom: The last chance before Jedward. What’ve we got?
Tim: The cheap route for the video here, going for the ‘let’s take some cameras into the recording studio and film it a few times’ method. And fill it out with some waffle at the end about how we want you to vote for us. Believe it or not.
Tom: Oh my word, it’s like the Eurovision of the 1990s has come back to haunt us.
Tim: If only.
The good thing about this video, and in particular the ‘cut the screen up to show what’s happening’ effect, is that is helps to point out that while this starts out fairly sensible, it gradually gets more and more excited throughout the song, until we get to about 2:30, when we’ve got nine things going on at once and it can only really be described as ‘batshit crazy’.
Tom: This is the first of the Irish songs where I’ve found my foot automatically tapping along. Which means it’s good – it’s also incredibly cheesy, though, and while it’d do well ten years ago (Love Shine A Light, anyone?) the rest of Europe is looking for modern pop music, not something that could have been written as a dodgy anthem for the Barcelona Olympics.
Tim: Oh, but I like the cheese.
Tom: I do, in general, but this is too much: this is a whole industrial-size buffet-style fondue set. It reminds me of the Brittas Empire for some reason. That’s not a good thing.
Tim: I think this is fantastic, I really do, because, well, there’s just so much happening. Even though the video makes it look like David has to consult his lyrics sheet on a couple of occasions, everything and everyone just seems so energised – they have PURPLE VIOLINS, for crying out loud. The two of them seem to be competing with regard to who can sing most enthusiastically, and part of me wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out they decided to throw that key change in on the day just for the hell of it.
This is amazing, brilliant, almost out of this world pop music, and I love it.
Tom: And it’ll do terribly if Ireland picks it. Which is a great shame.
Tim: You think? You did see last year’s winner, didn’t you? Or fourth placer? There’s still a place for this stuff.
In fact, I’m going to go off on one now, about everyone (especially the Great British Public every time our song is chosen) who say ‘oh, it’s not a Eurovision song.’ I wrote a thing on my long-defunct Canada blog a couple of years back after the 2010 contest. Full thing’s here, but two important sentences are:
‘[When it started in 1956] the idea was that each country would join in, play what they thought was good music, and hope that other countries would agree with them.
‘In the top 5 [in 2010], we have variants of Kate Nash, Muse, Alphabeat, a strange combination of ‘Every Breath You Take’ and ‘Simply The Best’ and a three-minute climax of a Leona Lewis song.’
Basically, my point is that there’s no such thing as a Eurovision song and we should choose music we like, and I’d hoped that you would agree.
Tom: It depends whether you want to follow that original idea – play good music and hope people agree – or whether you want to win. I’m talking about these with the latter in mind.
Tim: No – you’ve completely missed my point, which is that it’s pointless choosing them based on ‘what’s going to win’, because there’s no way of predicting it. Like I said earlier, last year’s winner wasn’t far off this in cheese terms, and who the hell would have predicted a victory for Lordi?
But even if you’re right, and if it would do terribly, I don’t care about that – I want it performed on a massive stage, with insane production values (sadly the Late Late Show set isn’t really built for that), if only to see what they come up with.