Eurovision: Your Country Needs You (2010)

Last Friday night the BBC put on a one off show to select the singer of this year's United Kingdom entry for Eurovision 2010. It consisted of 6 'acts' thrown together seemingly at random by the BBC, in order for Pete Waterman and then the public to select a singer for the Waterman and Mike Stock penned 'That Sounds Good To Me', which is supposed to emulate the UK's success last year. In 2009, there was a 4 part show to select the singer, and Jade Ewen was selected to sing Andrew Lloyd Webber's massive ballad 'It's My Time', which ended up at 5th place - the UK's best performance in years. 

This year everything seemed very amateur. Why the BBC insists on shoving an untried, unsuccessful-in-their-home-country, amateur vocalist into Eurovision I've no idea. Last year it worked. This year? Well, we'll see. The song itself, as premiered on Friday night, was ok. People may scoff 'when did Pete Waterman last have a hit?' (with Steps I guess), but then when did Lloyd Webber last set the charts alight? OK the Lord has successfully picked Nancies and Josephs for the West End, but as far as I know he's not had a catchy tune for a while, until Eurovision 2009 that is! 

Pete Waterman might seem like a perfect fit for Eurovision, if all you know about the show is fuelled by the media that still makes out that it's an embarrassing cheese-fest. But for those people who watch it and appreciate it every year, it's only rarely that acts are so bad - the UK (and Ireland - remember the singing turkey?) is the one that can't stop taking the piss. The reason Europe responded to 'It's My Time' was probably because the UK for once seemed to be taking the show seriously - and for one of the show's 'Big Four' and thus a major financial contributor to Eurovision, you'd think the BBC would have more reason to take it seriously. 

The acts the BBC chose this year had barely any experience between them - the awfully named Uni5 was a 5-piece group consisting of solo singers with no experience of working together prior to Your Country Needs You, and it showed. Even Pete Waterman said they didn't work as a group - and this was an act the BBC deemed good enough to possibly represent the country at Eurovision! This sort of rubbish should have been weeded out long before Graham Norton introduced them to the nation. The other group was poor, and the 2 solo female singers were so-so. Thankfully the solo guys were great singers, and both beautiful in their own ways too. 

The pretty Alexis (above) came runner up to eventual winner Josh Dubovie (right), a lovely lad with a fantastic voice - he sounds very 'Eurovision' somehow, it's hard to define. I rooted for him from his first performance, and I'm glad he won out. I read today on Mike Stock's blog (or something) that the song is going to be reworked now that they know who's singing it, because how hard must it be to write a song to suit a male, a female and a group, not knowing who may end up singing it? So I haven't given up all hope. They may create a mini pop masterpiece yet. But I won't hold my breath.