OPINION
CHARLOTTE RUNCIE Bonnie Tyler has been unveiled as the UK’s entry for Eurovision 2013. It would have been a nice idea 30 years ago. But if we want to avoid hearing the dreaded ‘nul points’, isn’t it time we took the competition seriously?
T he morning when we find out the UK’s representative at Eurovision is like mini- Christmas, a surprise waiting to be unwrapped when we wake up. But evidently, for the last two years, we’ve been on the ‘naughty’ list, being allocated once-great acts with tired songs that jar with the fresh, exuberant spirit of the contest. If we want to win the prize, we need to start picking music that people might actually want to listen to now.
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Bonnie Tyler would have been a wonderful choice to represent the UK at Eurovision, if it was still 1984 and she was singing ‘Holding Out for a Hero’. Unfortunately, it’s 2013, and she’s singing the kind of countrified soft rock B-side ballad that hasn’t seen the business end of the Top 40 since Natalie Imbruglia’s heyday. I don’t much fancy our chances.
There’s a simple reason why the UK never wins Eurovision, and it’s this: there is no point sending Bonnie Tyler when the rest of Europe knows that we have Adele. It’s no use hiding her. Come out from behind the curtains, Adele. The game’s up. Adele has sold so many copies of her album that the middle classes have started to use them as coasters. People buy Adele’s albums because they can’t remember a time before they bought them. They are a weekly household essential, like milk. If album sales were votes, Adele would crash Eurovision’s phone lines.
The people of Europe know this. And they know
10 THE LIST 21 Mar–18 Apr 2013
we have One Direction. We have Emeli Sandé. They know that, in a pinch, we have Ellie Goulding. So why, they ask us, in a language we haven’t bothered to learn (the language of nul points), do we insist on sending someone whose music is 30 years out of date?
It’s so obvious that Britain has an internationally thriving music industry that when we don’t send our freshest and brightest to Eurovision, it looks like we’re not taking it seriously. It comes across as selfish. And nobody’s going to vote for a country that doesn’t look like it cares.
The problem’s got worse since it was decided that the best way to pick a winner was for a faceless BBC committee to meet under cover of darkness and then announce their decree to the nation one cold March morning. In other countries there are weeks of X Factor-style sing-offs, rounds of voting and live TV shows offering a choice of songs. In Britain, we just have a team of suits ringing through the Yellow Pages to see if anyone has a free afternoon. Eurovision is a celebration of the state of European music now, in all its varied, spangly, bass-pumping glory. We’re never going to capture its heart if we keep failing to engage with it, and then acting furious when we lose. No offence to Bonnie herself, but in terms of Britain’s Eurovision hopefuls, I’m still holding out for a hero.
Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Malmö, Sat 18 May. Charlotte Runcie is a freelance writer based in Edinburgh.
2012’s Eurovision winner, Loreen from Sweden
S E S N A H S A M O H T
‘Come out from behind the curtains, Adele, the game’s up’