Let’s do the timewarp again

In the aftermath of the Eurovision embarrassment for Royaume-Uni as Englebert Humperdinck limped home with 12 points, people are divided about making another effort to try and snaffle a high-profile star for next year or just quitting the competition altogether.  The UK is one of the five favoured countries (along with France, Germany, Spain and Italy) that always qualifies, no matter how lowly its ranking, because it provides a substantial swathe of funding. 

Second to last is not good enough for a country that has more world-renowned song-writing and singing capability and heritage than, say, the highly placed Albania.  At least Norway kept Britain off the absolute bottom (losing 1-0 to England on Saturday made it a thoroughly rotten weekend for the Norwegians).  Being the first to play in the contest was not good, given that 41 more entrants must play before voting can begin.  An unremarkable melody of a first track of an unfamiliar album of 12 songs or so after only listening to it once would be starting to fade by the end, let alone a playlist of 42, which is more than a double album.  This is part of the reason why you have political voting, since if the choice is mind-boggling you go for songs with common cultural resonance i.e. that of your neighbours.  If the competition was drastically pruned to 20 songs, it would reduce geopolitical bias, (a) for there would be fewer neighbours in the competition to whom to give the vote and (b) people would have half a chance of remembering all the songs.  It would alos make Eurovision a far better show.  Politicking won’t be entirely eliminated for not only did Greece give Cyprus the maximum 12 points (and receive it in return, although is that a good thing, for the last thing it would want would be emerge top and forced to pay to host it next year), it pointedly didn’t award any marks to Germany, though threatened Eurozone countries, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy all did in trying to curry favour with the Teutonic piggybank.

It usually is the case that the best (or most outlandish) song does win out, with the neighbourly love-in affecting only the middle-ranking (and, honestly, who cares about that).  Sweden won a crushing victory.  The tune ‘euphoria’ didn’t really prompt that in me though.  It was okay but not a patch on Abba’s Waterloo, which wasn’t even the foursome’s best song – they were the first to win it for their country and the nation has triumphed roughly once a decade thereafter, drawing level this year with the UK in overall wins.  I do believe that if you had something akin to the early Beatles’ alchemy e.g. I Want to Hold Your Hand, it would sweep the board, even accounting for political bias and all other things being equal.  After all, Eurovision brand of music is retro-kitsch, that is, stuck in the past.