Dix Points!

Did you watch it?  The Eurovision Song Contest that is. I had vowed not to, but in the end I did. I should have known better. A whole evening, and a Saturday evening at that, watching performers, most of whom would never get past the opening heats of a talent show, singing or perhaps performing would be a better way of describing it, songs that will never be heard of again. Were they even songs? Could you sing any of them in the way you can sing most pop songs? I doubt it. I confess I can’t remember a note of a single entry. And poor Graham Norton. Never a good replacement for Wogan, he struggled to make a few amusing remarks and whip up some sort of enthusiasm for the UK entry. But even he after the first few turns realised he was on a good hiding to nothing and gave up.

The UK offering was a weak entry, poorly presented, and performed by a young man whose inexperience was even more obvious than his inability to hold a note for more than a fraction of second. Naturally and rightly it came last with just ten points. I felt cheated, it should have been nil points. There is at least some sort of distinction about that score. But dix points! Well Really!!! It will of course raise the whole question of whether we should bother to enter the Euro Song Contest. The way the voting goes means that even if we produce a truly outstanding piece of music and convince a really big name to perform it, we have no chance of ever winning the competition again.

But isn’t it strange that the country that gave The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and countless other stars to the world, and that is, by and large, the centre of the pop music business, can’t produce a piece of music that can even perform well never mind win this second rate competition. Think of how many pop songs originate in this country, consider how many pop stars started here and went on to achieve world fame. Cast your mind over the musical shows running in London attracting visitors from all over the world. Music is one of our major achievements and exports.

But we can’t perform in the ESC arena. Why not? One explanation may have been given, inadvertently, by Graham Norton. When giving the background to the German entry he mentioned the marketing backup that had supported it. He didn’t describe it in that way but that’s what it amounted to. Apparently it had been performed in many forms of media all over the continent and by the evening of the competition it was well known and recognised. Certainly the group that performed it did so with confidence, energy and enthusiasm. Is this the way forward? Flood the market with the song weeks before the competition so that it is familiar on the night? Surely that’s against the spirit of the event if not the rules. Perhaps we did the same, maybe they all did. If so we didn’t do it as well. Anyway the Germans won and well done to them! I have a different suggestion to make that may go some way towards explaining why we don’t reach the heights in this competition any more. Look at it this way. Modern music falls into clearly defined genres, Jazz, Pop, Classical, Rock, R & B, Alternative and sub-sections of lots of other categories. When ESC started all the songs submitted were just that, songs. Groups like Abba and Bucks Fizz and artists like Cliff Richard and  Sandy Shaw and the others sang them, both flourished and the show was an enjoyable event. Over the years the type of ‘song’ entered has changed beyond all recognition, goodness only knows what genre the entries now fall into, and major artists avoid becoming involved. Who can blame them?

It seems to me that the entries have changed from being songs you can sing and relate to, maybe even understand, to performances of a musical number created for the night and to win a competition. We are still submitting ‘pop’ songs to compete with this new genre of music. It’s rather like us ending a football team to a Euro competition only to find when the team trots out onto the field, that the game to be played is rugby! If we want to improve our position we must surely pay much more attention to the type of show in which we are taking part. Then having researched the market and created our entry based on what we found, we must set about marketing the ‘song’ and the performer, we are world class in the music business and likewise in the marketing of goods and services. Weld the two activities together and surely we must be able to take on Europe at their own game…. It says in the script.