Um...anyone questioning when this stopped being a song contest?! A well-known songwriter has stepped in, invited an American to write the lyrics to the UK entry (as fab as she is, we have great lyricists ALW could've gone to such as Don Black, Tim Rice or maybe for a modern twist someone like Gary Barlow??). It gives the impression that the UK doesn't have talented enough lyricsts to contribute. Or talented enough songwriters. So it becomes a talnet contest, in which all entrants seemed to be desperate stage school rejects, except for the chap in the final who will continue his stage career I'm sure successfully. The contest now has a stigma attached to it and a lot of songwriters don't want to write for it anymore as many of the entries are deemed to be tacky. Our best bet is not to enter a sappy ballad or conform to what we think Europe will buy into and like. Our best bet is to put in the best SONG we can come up with, not with a view to winning but a view to being proud of the song our country enters. We should worry less about how to get around tactical voting and politics and more about entering the best our country has to offer in contemporary pop songwriting. And the 2009 is definitely not contemporary or exciting. Can the BBC get it's act together next year please and revert back to the SONG not the ACT.

Some good points there, however Eurovision is not a serious music contest as far as the UK is concerned, but it most definitely is in many other countries, particularly eastern Europe. Here, it is a bit of frothy light entertainment, and even as a serious ESC fan, this does not bother me at all. It's all good fun in the end.

Very few famous British acts/composers/writers would bother entering the contest. Why take the risk of being beaten by some unknown from Moldova? And even if they did enter, they probably wouldn't bother risking their best material on it.

I do agree the BBC needs to get back to finding the best song. I cannot believe the shortlisted songs over the last few years are really the best out of hundreds of entries. During the few years under JK, the quality of all the Song for Europe songs was way way higher. I bet even I could find a rejected song from for example last years crop which could have made the top ten at Eurovision.

Anthony wrote:


I do agree the BBC needs to get back to finding the best song. I cannot believe the shortlisted songs over the last few years are really the best out of hundreds of entries. During the few years under JK, the quality of all the Song for Europe songs was way way higher. I bet even I could find a rejected song from for example last years crop which could have made the top ten at Eurovision.

JK had a naughty habit of using old unsigned tracks from the tipsheet, some of which had appeared more than a year before the relevant song for europe contest. This just proves the strength of the tip sheet and the ability of JK to know what suits what !

I think the main point of annoyance this year was ALW claiming he would write the winning song for the chosen singer when clearly he wrote a shouting woman song for Jade.