Its crazy to think a country who has won 5 times and placed second 15 times is struggling so much. Specially if that country is a music powerhouse like the Uk its even more mind blowing. Are the people responsible to organise it old and out of touch?
Yes! They are.
If your mind is blown by this, and given that I am guessing you are from
Portugal, I imagine you have some idea how it feels to actually BE British. I remember when we were actually good in the 1990s and the brief, blissful moments this century when it looked like something was happening (*cough* Jessica, Jade, Blue, Molly, even Lucie)...
It's breathtaking to me how many false-starts and chances for change there have been and not taken. And the artists that
could have been gone for us if the BBC had just had the brains. Katie Melua is the one everyone likes to bring up, but someone like Sophie Ellis Bextor in her prime (2003-2008), combining neo-disco with her indie roots from her
theaudience days would have been scored points and given that she still has ties to the BBC and did serve on the
You Decide Jury in 2019 and given her 'Kitchen Disco' exploits over Lockdown, she might have been willing to do it if she'd had confidence in the staging team. There have been two generations of good artists who might have happily gone and done reasonably well who have been knowingly ignored in the name of Josh Dubovie. I'm sure Josh is lovely, he seems nice, but my God was that a let down!
There's a weird numerical pattern through the 2010s onto '20s:
2010-Josh (Bottom 5)
2011-Blue (11th)
2012-Engelbert (Bottom 5)
2013-Bonnie (19th, Bottom 6)
2014-Molly (17th)
2015-ElectroVelvet (Bottom 5)
2016-Joe and Jake (Bottom 5)
2017-Lucie (15th)
2018-SuRie (Bottom 5)
2019-Michael (last)
2020-no contest
2021-James (last)
Every three years for the last decade we have a blip of relative success, followed by an immediate return to the Bottom 5, usually 24th. We missed out last year, which was due to be our year to do better, and then, we know what happens next. By that maths, 2023 is our year to land somewhere in the middle, before having an immediate collapse in 2024 and 2025-which DOESN'T bode well.
Given the state of Scottish politics (I come from a solidly Unionist area right next to England and is economically reliant on its relationship with northern England, so naturally independence wouldn't be a great thing for this area), we may actually have a 'yes' on indyref2 in 2023 or '24 BEFORE the BBC gets its act together and then maybe a withdrawal for a few years whilst the BBC breaks itself up and much like
Yugoslavia, all that history and those 5 wins, 15 2nd places and the 3rds, Sir Terry when he was good, Sir Cliff, all of it, goes into the waste-bucket of history, which is terrifying to me. It's even possible that some longer-term thinking MIGHT have snuck in somewhere, somehow if they are assuming they WILL have to break up and are trying a few things out, not to win as the
UK, but to give the broken broadcaster the best chance of knowing what NOT to do when the Scottish public broadcaster has to start entering (to the Semis), which is an SNP goal per the white paper 'Scotland's Future' published pre-2014.
I would hope that either they continue with the BMG partnership for a few years, trying out different genres and styles and being open to getting it wrong but still willing to experiment until we find whatever our 'brand' is or a large segment of voters decide we don't want to be in the same country anymore, whichever comes first.
It's not as if other countries don't know who they are:
Belgium,
Italy,
France, and
Portugal are the hipster countries with
Bulgaria and
The Netherlands contenting the pop-friendly hipsters.
Sweden does IKEA-machine pop,
Malta,
Greece, and
Cyprus do Yas, Queen, Slay,
Finland is usually tormented,
Moldova is pop-madness,
Ukraine mixes pop-madness with cultural and linguist pride,
Israel sends songs which use Klezmer music undertones in the instrumentation so there are enough traditional Jewish elements slipped in to know it's from where it is.
Iceland is the unpredictable little scrappy.
San Marino does neo-disco.
Czech Republic,
Norway, and
Denmark look like they are going down the chart-friendly pop route.
Ireland used to lean into their ethnicity and when it tried in 2007 and 2012 it didn't work so it abandoned it and seemingly lost the will to live. The
UK does NONE of this, we have no identity whatsoever except that we are failures, and that's meant there was no consistency or development beyond continued failure.
We are world-beaters at rock, indie, alt, electronica, urban, and a bunch of other sounds. We last came 2nd with a garage song in a period where most of Europe had not encountered the genre yet for Christ's sake! Hell, I'd even be fine with a full-on big ass, heart-on-the-sleeve ballad because we are better at musicals than anyone else except the Americans, its an indigenous music form and done properly, with an emotionally affecting lyric and performance and proper (i.e. virtually no staging, just using lighting, tight angles and perhaps a bit of back projection to tell your story), it could score points. It's better than trying to do a summer bop that fails.
The ONE thing I DON'T want us to do is to reach for the obvious, either try and get someone people have heard of, but are out of date like Steps which is SO lazy, or go down the novelty route like Bill Bailey or something desperate like that that will just get us laughed at further. Someone credible at one they do, in their 20s, who is part of a current UK music scene, genre non-specific PLEASE. I am DONE with feeling like crying after every f**king Contest!