How did Ollie get no points in the public vote for Eurovision?

[FatAndFiftySomething]

I don’t mean ‘because people didn’t like his song’, I mean, literally how do the voting points work?

I’ve googled and not found an answer. It’s not percentages as some people got a few hundred.

Is it like 1 point per thousand public votes (or whatever the numbers are ) and he didn’t reach 1000 votes from any single country?

What went wrong?
They over thought the pink points.

the semi performance was very shaky but the final performance was spot on.

It really wasn't.

Agree. Sam Ryder was (is) very engaging and enigmatic, with a luminous face. He makes you want to smile with his vibrant energy. He is also a very good singer, and the song Spaceman was absolutely amazing. 😍 His performance at Eurovision in 2022 was outstanding.

As has been said, Olly's performance was not great. Olly is cute enough and his voice is OK, but his live singing was ropey/a bit off key, and as many people have said, the staging was horrific. Sleazy and seedy and grubby. Most people I know hated it, including people from the LGBTQ community.

Sam Ryder actually got 466 points from the public vote. Only 2 years ago. So I doubt that all of Europe hates us. 🙄

Same. Lots of young kids watch the show & my gay DS was watching when aged 13. I'd have hated him to get the message that coming out and being a gay young man means having sex with 5 strangers in a manky public shower room/toilet while wearing dirty clothes and seemingly being destitute. Did Olly Alexander /UK producers really think this was a good idea. Fucking awful.

There are a few mentions here about the set being a toilet. It's actually a shower room. Toilets have toilets in them. HTH.

I found the staging of it very seedy and his voice was weak. It appears being male in a dress with a beard or bizarre seductive acts in the bathroom are popular in today's society 🥴 I know I'm old and sound like my mother but ffs 🤦‍♀️

Right, that really improves the God awful message then doesn't it? Sex with 5 strangers in a manky shower lock is supposed to be aspirational for young gay men.... Why in the fuck was he "Dizzy" the whole thing smacks of decades old gay men tropes, illicit sex, being either homeless or in jail due to rejection, dirty ripped clothes, dizzy thanks to being spiked for chem-sex. But the cod piece... WTAF...... As I said it was awful. I'm really sad that only 3 or 4 acts were colourful, piss take, inclusive fun. Every other set featured darkness, wailing, large rocks, branches and black clothes or 5 males dancing sexually AT another male in the middle. I fucking despair.

Joie de vivre goes a long way in Eurovision. What made Sam Ryder stand out from our recent entries was a cheerful lack of angst or irony.

I think it was probably quite easy not to be in any country’s top 10. Some countries only got 4 or 5 points so not that much better.

It was supposed to be a spaceship but I thought I was a grubby urinals.

The costumes were awful- codpieces, really!?

I love camp and love homoerotic but this was so bad - it was embarrassing!

Discussion has moved on but here is the result from Italy of the public’s preferences if anyone is interested:

• Televoto italiano
• 12 punti – Israele
• 10 punti – Ucraina
• 8 punti – Croazia
• 7 punti – Svizzera
• 6 punti – Francia
• 5 punti – Georgia
• 4 punti – Armenia
• 3 punti – Irlanda
• 2 punti – Grecia
• 1 punti – Spagna

Olly just was not in the top 10 for any of the voting countries. I am surprised it only happened to him actually. I think there are usually more "nul points" countries.

I think it is political, UK did woefully around Brexit. I don't think it would have mattered what song was put forward. But every once in a while a brilliant or catchy song comes along like Spaceman or Love shine a light and that overrides the other issues.

It's more about displaced or immigrant population than political allegiance, I feel. I'm Irish and traditionally UK gives us a consistent good, this is all the Irish in UK voting. On Saturday I said to DH we are guaranteed a 12 from Australia and I was right. There are less UK migrants in European countries than the reverse. Except Spain maybe? I don't know, it might be an interesting analysis.

The Eurovision after the Brexit vote we ended up much higher than the Eurovision before the exit vote. Loads of Eurovision countries are not in the EU. No one cares about Brexit in the Eurovision context. Michael Rice deserved his position, it was as bland as boiled rice whereas the top 10 that year was super varied and well performed.

Australia's jury gave Ireland 12 votes, the public gave 8. The public had Israel first, Croatia second and Ireland third. Apart from the first one I think it was about the music- everyone loved Croatia's song and most people were a big fan of Ireland's. In 2023 the Australian public gave the 12 to Finland and the jury put Belgium first and I'm pretty sure Australia doesn't have a sizable population from either of those 2 countries.

There are a few mentions here about the set being a toilet. It's actually a shower room. Toilets have toilets in them. HTH.

You're right but "toilet" is still the general impression I was left with. I mean where you see communal shower heads and white tiles, there's usually a toilet around as well so I think the general impression is of a toilet block, but it's true there was no actual toilet. Missed a trick!

Maybe it's also because the theme seemed to be "cottaging" so that makes you think of gay men in public toilets.

Anyway I agree, didn't anyone think this through? It's a horrible stereotype to associate with gay men. Eurovision is camp, but the whole point of camp is that it's a fun, entertaining and glitzy aesthetic. It's the opposite of being made to think about loveless grimy humping in a municipal toilet shower room.

Absolutely. Sam also had absolutely zero agenda. It was beautifully, refreshingly simple. Just him and his voice.

I agree it still sounded weak and out of tune in places.

I find it so embarrassingly arrogant when Brits claim we do badly because Europeans don't like us. They don't care. We are not important. We are not the main characters in the world. Eurovision fans will vote for a good song and we consistently send mediocre performers with medicore songs then whinge that "it's all political" when better songs win.

Danny L Harle is a top songwriter though. He's the main writer and producer on Caroline Polachek's Pang and Desire, Dua Lipa's Radical Optimism and lots of other critically acclaimed work. Lacklustre is Michael Rice, SuRie or Josh Dubovie. Not a Danny L Harle song performed by the lead singer of Years and Years. On paper, it was a fantastic choice.

I think Dizzy is a very good pop song, but there's a difference between a great pop song and a great Eurovision pop song. Dizzy is very radio friendly, but I don't think it had enough 'punch' for Eurovision. But then Austria's We Will Rave was a proper Eurovision banger and that only got five points from the public. Austria's Who The Hell Is Edgar was a fantastic song and a fan favourite but it only scored 14 points with the public last year. Some songs just don't connect with viewers for whatever reason and I don't think the locker room aesthetic had the slightest thing to do with it.

Theoretically Olly could have been 11th favourite for every country but would still get 0. That's why (IMO) more 'love it or hate it' style songs do well at Eurovision. People saying it wasn't that bad he didn't deserve 0 forget that you don't have to have a bad song to get 0, just one so middle of the road that it's not in enough people's top 10.

I actually genuinely believe he was the worst singer. Some of the other songs were forgettable but the singers all sang well/in tune. Olly was very energetic and gave a good dance performance but sadly his singing was poor.
Plus everyone hates UK at the best of times.

I do think eurovision has had it's day.

I like Olly, and love his music with years and years, and also loved 'It's a Sin', but he has never been great live so it was a mistake to pick him for our entry. Add the awful choreography and it was bound to be doomed.

I think the same song with someone who could actually sing, less overproduced vocals and toned down staging would have had a more positive result

that said, he did get 46 from the jury so clearly they saw something in it

I don’t disagree but the fact that israel got such a high score form the public shows that it IS political

2021 was the first time the UK got 0 points.