If ever there was a song to continue my self-indulgent stroll through the endless hours of songs which graced the Eurovision stage, it's this one.
Forty-eight hours after Andy Abraham gave a sterling performance in Belgrade of a song I loved the first moment I heard it in rehearsals nearly three months before, I like a lot of people am left feeling bereft. Watching the video back now I'm still convinced the boy did good for the UK and the boy most definitely deserved more than the 14 points and last place he ended up with.
Not only that, he's one of the few people I've seen do Eurovision in recent years who clearly displays his commitment to the three minutes of doom so many UK artists shy away from.
OK, so it may not have been a winner, but I listened to it a lot on my iPod thingy in the run up to the 2008 contest. That's makes it a goodun for me.
And yes. I'm biassed.
See shots of Andy and the other competitors in the UK's Eurovision:Your Decision rehearsals here.
3 comments:
Well, you certainly won't get much argument out of me that this deserved to do much better than it did. It's without question the best UK entry since 2002 and possibly since 1999.
However - for me, the key to its shocking placing lies in two factors. Firstly, it had a terrible draw in the famous Eurovision "slot of death" from which no song has won in 53 tries. It was bound to be forgotten, especially after the Icelandic entry preceding it.
But mostly, it demonstrated a telling level of indifference to the fundamentals of a good 21st century entry. Andy is a good singer, but his performance lacked cut-through power. The disco stage backdrop looked impressive, but was very hard on the eyes and he tended to get lost in the long shots.
And the stage presentation fell well short of requirements. Andy's shuffling about looked embarrassingly amateurish, he failed to nail the camera on several occasions ("doing a Javine") and the totally immobile backing singers and band didn't help. Where were the dancers for such an uptempo song?!?
May I welcome back the thoroughlygoodeurovisionblogspot to the ether?
I agree with everything Talkon says. And I agree with everything Jon says about Andy's commitment and that it didn't deserve last place.
I'm really sorry to say that I also think racism (latent or otherwise) will have played a part - there's a lot of intolerance the further east you go.
He doesn't make eye contact with the camera (compare and contrast with Mr Bilan); and a lot of people (not including myself) say they can never remember how the song goes. This is not good for the three-minute-impact stuff.
I have to confess this is a song I skip as opposed to play, even though it's entertaining to listen to.
I voted for Andy in the BBC qualifiers and still believe it was the best song of the lot and I'm proud that for a change the UK sent someone to Eurovision who can sing and not embarass us. However, I totally agree with Talkon - Andy would have done well in the 70's maybe, but he didn't have what it takes to be memorable in the 00's. Competing second didn't help either.
OK, so he didn't deserve 14 points, but there are 24 songs to choose from, and each country can only vote for 10 others. These days, you need a very memorable performance to find a place in another country's top 10, and Andy didn't have that :-(
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