:eek:
You have just made my evening…
*British entry Engelbert Humperdinck, who opened the contest with his ballad Love Will Set You Free, finished second from last - despite high hopes.
However the 76-year-old was spared the humiliation of ‘nil points’.*
:o
Engledink Humperbert has been a joke at least since the 70s. Possibly longer. Aside from the occasional Eddie Izzard routine, my only experience with him was those old compilation commercials. Not unlike Boxcar Willie and Slim Whitman.
So it’s your intention to be terrible?
If so, good job again this year.
Well, he has a huge following in Asia. He is one of the most requested singers on FM station here in my city.
The RJ told me that he gets frustrated with these daily requests.
I guess it is the easy listening and the loyal fan base of retired folks .
Hey, he is not bad, If you like simple songs.
Apparently British grapes are incredibly sour.
What are you referring to? Is there some sort of whining in the press? There certainly aren’t any sour grapes in this thread. We know we’re not popular enough to win, we know it wasn’t a great song (as if that would have mattered), we know Englebert was a weird choice… but Eurovision isn’t about winning. It’s about having a stupid party and drinking several preferably fizzy, often pink, drinks, and making the queeniest comments your personality will allow about everything (ably assisted by Graham Norton’s sarcasm, though he’ll never be Terry). We like Eurovision, but we don’t take it at all seriously.
Or maybe you don’t know what sour grapes means…
As others have said, the competition is not seen as musically serious. Abba won in 1974, but no careers have been made by this knockabout event since.
From this year’s entries:
- Englebert, a 76 year old whose last chart success was in 2005 (that’ll appeal to teenagers :smack: )
- Jedward, who personify ‘no talent’ :rolleyes:
There’s also the problem that it costs a lot to host - and the winner has to host it the next year.
Still it is an example of Europe getting together.
Don’t they want to lose so they don’t have to host it next time?
I think the current round of UK dislike among the Euros is because we didn’t take on the Euro and so we do not face the same type of crisis as they do.
It does not help one bit to stand on the sidelines for the Euro crisis telling the Greeks, and imply the Southern Euro states are perhaps dishonest about their accounts and taxation, and perhaps a bit lazy.
Meantime we are telling the Germans how to sort it out, and everyone else that they must decide to do SOMETHING (and do it quickly), without actually specifying what that something should be.
We might even be right about all these things, but it comes across as smug and its always easy to blame the UK for your problems than to look closer to home.
Right now we are looking at immigration controls on Greeks who might seek to move to escape their debt problems.
We were lucky not to get ‘nul point’.
Perhaps we should run our country in a way that will make us popular with the Euros and give us a chance of winning - Hey, its a plan.
I don’t think it made her career but Céline Dion won for Switzerland in 1988 which apparently gave her a bit of a boost outside the Francophone world.
Be all that as it may, the UK entry this year was piss poor. Any way you look at it, it failed. It wasn’t done seriously enough to be treated as a real love song and the lyrics were just a string of cliches. It didn’t have any decent hooks but worst of all, it also wasn’t camp enough to be an obvious parody. It just sounded like a badly written song, performed in a so-so manner by an artist long past his prime. I don’t understand how anyone in the UK would think that that song would have got anywhere. C’mon UK, your pop artists have probably sold more records than every single other participating nation’s combined (might be slight hyperbole), you can do a lot better than this.
As a Brit I absolutely agree with this. We always say “Oh, it doesn’t matter how good the song is. It’s all cheese” but a lot of yesterday’s performers were really good singers and and the songs were at least better than our crap. We do have the problem that there is no way any decent performer with a current career would agree to represent Britain - there is no up side to being the British entry. If against all odds you win it will ruin your credibility and if - as is most likely - you end up near the bottom of the pile you are in even worse shape :dubious:
There is an episode of Father Ted which covers this (a classic, find it, best saxophone solo ever), Ireland kept winning in the late 90’s and consequently kept having to host it to much expense. They appear to be trying to fail to win it nowadays.
I don’t really watch it but I didn’t think the uk had one since the 80’s.
Also to note, there’s some sort of public competition (like I mention before I don’t keep up), to vote who will represent us in the Uk, so ultimately its up to the public to choose our song or performer (I think its song now, it used to be both).
And the type of public who usually vote either have very bad taste or are doing it for a laugh.
While it used to mean something performerwise (the likes of Bucks Fizz made a career off of wins), there’s not a snowballs chance in hell that a successful modern uk band or singer would be interested in being in it nowadays.
If you are just having fun with it, why not send a performer who is actually entertaining? Like An Gadai said, neither Engelbert (or Blue last year) were bad in a great way, or parodies - they were just mediocre and boring. Laugh at Lithuania all you want (they were terrible), they were still more interesting than the UK entry.
If you actually are being ironic or whatever, send more like this kid. He was so jaw-droppingly awful it was almost endearing.
Maybe true, but they clearly are having a ball with it. Which is what you guys are claiming to do.
I dislike Jedward intensely.
They were heavily hyped on a talent competition (even though they can’t sing or dance) and no doubt their management is making money out of them. They use autotune, background singers and anything else to disguise their lack of ability.
I prefer ‘the Voice’ where singers with class show what they can do.
P.S. I’m not sure who ‘you guys’ are, but I haven’t watched the Eurovision Song contests for 35 years!
If you don’t want Engelbert, I’LL take him.
~VOW