Haven't put this in the Music section as, well, it isn't really, but was sort of looking forward to seeing what Bonnie Tyler would come up with as our entry for the next contest. May be knocking on a bit but hasn't lost her voice.

Sadly, as you can verify by judicious pasting of the phrase "Bonnie Tyler - Believe In Me (Live in Germany 2013) - UK Eurovision 2013" into a popular video site, the news is not good. A really poor, dirge-like, formula verse-and chorus mass-produced pap effort, without even a decent finish, and no hook worthy of the name, nothing novel, no excitement, it's a bit of a disaster, and a right no-hoper.

Who's in charge of this perennial fiasco now for us? I mean, Engelbert last year was cringeworthy and at least she'll probably finish a few places higher, but surely they could come up with a thousand better prospects than this "song". The favourite at the moment is the Denmark entry "Only Teardrops", by Denmark's answer to Janet Devlin, which isn't great, but at least has some urgency about it, and it would sound a whole lot better and be a shorter priced favourite if Tyler was given the opportunity to get her sturdy tonsils round it.

The point is, though, if that's all there is to beat, surely a country which leads world music should easily be able to piiss this contest, it's not as if we'd even need Adele or Muse to beat the might of other nations, is it?

Bloody irritating.

Bonnie Tyler



Didn't we learn anything from last year?

I always wondered why decent British acts don't have a go at it.

You get the chance to show how good you are to tens of millions around Europe in one go.

Guys, guys ... Eurovision is the musical equivalent of [iJeux sans Frontieres[/i.

Winning it is not a prize, it merely labels the winning country as a wannabe cultural desert.
Why anyone would want to win is is mystery to me.

ABBA ( cough).

OK, Abba, I grant you, made a mint.
But what else has Eurovision ever done for us?

BTW ... my comment about the cultural desert still stands.

"Power to the boys that play rock 'n' roll, and make my life so sweeeeeet..."

Disagree entirely. It's the majority of the songs that do that.

There is no reason why there couldn't be a contest once where there was a significant number of songs from leading /bang-up-to-the-minute acts from a significant number of countries, which would instantly change the whole ethos and status of the competition. Indeed as would the participation of even one decent turn. It would go hand in hand with a different demographic tuning in to watch. If for just a top of my head example, we had put up Kaiser Chiefs, in the year they made their breakthrough, with, say, I Predict A Riot, it would have walked the contest, attracted a whole new young audience and forced other countries to do something completely different to the Europap or novelty stuff. Which is only churned out because that's how it's always been.

There's no reason it has to stay that way.



Well, Abba would be one case in point, they were a brilliant group, with a brilliant song, and used it as a showcase which gave them instant fame plus millions, not that that's the be-all and end-all but you get the point. . This is what you want, new, hungry and brilliant musicians being given the gig and let them do what they want with it. The present format is an over-expensive, dire flop, even the organisers surely know it, but I don't see why a simple change in what acts are entered couldn't change the whole thing round overnight.

If I went to see a concert in Hyde Park in 2012 and all the acts were rubbish, I don't really see what relevance that has to what they could make of the 2013 concert. It's a blank page.

[url=http://www.nme.com/news/black-sabbath/69069Meanwhile real British talent writes for a country that takes it seriously...[/url

almost as good a guitarist as Randy Rhoads

I'm pretty certain that there used to be some rules in place to prevent established acts participating (hence complete nobodies generally being the norm).

In any event, its never ever been about British 'popular' music. Its always been British music with the bands and musicians removed, leaving space for third-rate 'composers' to put together songs-by-numbers and non-entities to sing them (often embarrassingly badly).

The perfromer(s) is/are completely incidental, it's the song that is judged.

So any performer cn be used but the song must be previously unrecorded/released