EUROVISION THREAD 3. THE UK ARE TOP OF THE LEADERBOARD (FOR NOW)

[RedToothBrush]

JUST THAT.

Did the UK NEED to win?

The Eurovision song contest was set up to spread unity and peace in post war Europe.

The UK winning over Ukraine would thus defeat the point of Eurovision.

What the UK NEEDED was to demonstrate we could put a good song up which others would vote for. We needed a good result.

TBH I think I'd rather come second to Ukraine than Sweden and feel we'd just missed it. I don't feel we lost. We came second but we didn't lose. It would be nice to host it / go to it, but its not the end of the world if we don't either.

I agree with Kimikos not sure what some posters are taking from thread or in general

UK ie Sam did extremely well

@KimikosNightmare it was a joke

It worked though.As I recall it was just a big soppy piano ballad, and there's no real age limit on being able to write those.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10818033/The-British-act-finally-bought-Eurovision-glory-UK.html

Daily Mail piece on Sam Ryder.

I think this is the dead interesting bit for Eurovision nerds:

Sam was selected to compete for the UK in a collaboration between the BBC and global music management company TaP Music, which has counted Lana Del Rey and Ellie Goulding among its clients.

Ahead of the contest, the talent boss who helped lead the search for the UK entry said Sam Ryder 'totally fits the Eurovision message' and will showcase 'authenticity' when he took to the stage.

TaP Music co-founder Ed Millett said he felt 'confident' Ryder could succeed in Turin, Italy, where the grand final is due to take place on Saturday night.

And

Mr Millett said that historically part of the problem in the UK had been a 'lack of investment'.

'This show is a big extravaganza and the production in the studio is phenomenal if you've got the resources to take advantage of that,' he added.

'That again was part of the conversation. If Sam is going to be the entrant, are you, as the label, going to invest properly in a showstopping TV performance? Because the staging is as much a part of it as the song.

'The BBC upped their budget and the label have really stepped up. And I think the budget this time is 10 times what it was last year. So fingers crossed.

'We brought in some really amazing people on the production side to help craft a great performance and that is all going to stand in good stead.

'So yes, I feel confident, I feel proud of all the work that Sam has done, and that everybody's fully embraced it and is going for it.'

Mr Millett said that during the selection process his team looked at new and established artists, and even considered creating a supergroup of well-known British acts.

Explaining why TaP Music took on the project, he said: 'Part of the thing was we wanted to represent the modern, pro-European, friendly, diverse country that the UK is. We felt strongly that that isn't perhaps what had been happening.

'The UK globally punches well above its weight in terms of pop music and (if you) follow that path, why wouldn't we be doing well in this competition?

'It's a song competition and we have some of the best pop music in the world.'

That’s a good article, good on them investing

I think it’ll pick up now after Sam

theres no reason we have to be terrible, there’s the talent etc here too

The removal of six jury votes was in the second semi-final, not the final...

It was both - they observed something suspicious in the second semi-final vote and replaced those jury votes with simulated numbers for the semi-final and the final.

The leaderboard was no different to Strictly and Dancing on Ice. The judges vote, and place people like Bez, Sally from Coronation Street and so on at the bottom, but once the public vote, they zoom up and are safe.

Glad someone got the memo, but also there was semi-serious talk of letting ITV have a pop at it, so I think the BBC decided to pull it's thumb out a bit as well.

But ultimately we were not taking it seriously and as the opinion piece says, we do extremely well in the area of music, we just literally didn't a toss about Eurovision.

I hope we continue taking it seriously from here onwards.

I'm probably being thick but I don't get the 'alphabets' reference.

The government are crippling the bbc funding wise and loads of people don't want to pay the licence fee so it's hardly fair to blame the bbc. Blame the government for not investing in it if it's deemed to be that important.

I don't get the reference either

If I said corruption and bungs given by certain quarters it probably makes more sense.

Apparently Georgia have sought clarification about why their jury result was not accepted. The say they awarded12 points to Ukraine, but the aggregated result gave 12 points to the UK.

eurovoix.com/2022/05/15/georgia-jury-voting-eurovision-grand-final/

Azerbaijan are claiming the same. And that the EBU just didn’t bother to connect them to announce the results.

Romania is claiming that their jury awarded 12 points to Moldova. The EBU awarded their 12 points to Ukraine.

Official information is limited but it appears that the EBU had evidence that the juries of the countries involved had agreed to vote for each other, at least in the semi-final.

DH reckons Boris put in a good word

Can’t have done - we’d definitely have got 0 if he’d tried to intervene!

I am surprised that Boris isn't claiming the credit for our second place. But on the other hand, anything with Euro..... in the title is difficult for Brexiters because their globes and maps have a space where Europe is.

I voted Remain , but honestly bore off with comments like that. Is really beyond your imagination that it is possible to have no issues with European culture and tradition and even the concept of the European Enlightenment and dislike the EU?

Are people still banging on about brexit and remain? Bloody hell. That ship has long sailed.

It’s starting to sound like the sort of people still complaining about the decimalisation of currency or the replacement of O-Levels with GCSEs. It’s just no longer relevant.

Sure, whinge about the specific issues that come up as a result of brexit. But to keep going back to the should we stay or should we go debate in the first place is pointless. As is going on about Remainers or Brexiteers.

I love that people are still arguing that Europe hates us.

I was in Turin, and as soon as people knew we were British they started singing Spaceman at us. They loved the song. LOVED it.

That's it. That's the whole story.

Codswallop.

If the Eurovision were political then Poland would have come second this year. Their song was good and the singer was great. They're hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees.

Everyone and his aunt has been sending aid of all sorts to Ukraine. Nobody is keeping a spreadsheet and whipping it out for Eurovision.

It it was political then countries which are generally well regarded on the international scene would always make it to the top of the left hand column. Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, plucky little Georgia, Finland with its admirable education system, etc.

But actually the placement of their entries reflects the quality of their songs. Ireland has tanked for a good few years now, and rightly. Iceland has been up and down. Sweden has sent some boring Eurovision-by- numbers entries for a few years, the Netherlands have been up and down, Georgia consistently sends wtf entries, and Finland sends rockers of varying quality year after year which are somewhere along the spectrum that has Nuuku Pommiin on one end and Hard Rock Hallelujah on the other.

@mathanxiety absolutely.