UK selects jazz pastiche as Eurovision act
Not happy with Guy Sebastian? The Brits aren't too rapt with Electro Velvet either.
- Published by David Knox
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Did our chances at Eurovision just increase? Possibly.
The BBC has announced Electro Velvet as the United Kingdom’s entry for Vienna 2015 and it has resulted in shocked reactions from social media (it kinda comes with the territory).
The style of Still in Love with You is Cotton Club swing attempting to blend old with new, but The Guardian called it “nightmarish” while on Twitter, Eurovision expert Paul Jordan admitted: “We’ve sent worse”.
The Telegraph’s Neil McCormick called the song “a Cole Porter-style 20s jazz pastiche, with strained faux witty lyrics that are clearly meant to represent a kind of old world British sophistication”.
President of the UK arm of the international Eurovision fan club, Paul Marks-Jones said, “People just assume we won’t win again but any country can win. This song will stand out a lot because there are a lot of ballads this year and they have something different. But I don’t think this year will be the year that we win.”
Meanwhile Germany’s Andreas Kummert has turned down the opportunity to appear following a national contest to select their act, Live on TV.
“I’m really not in the right shape to accept this… I give my title to Ann Sophie,” he said, hand-balling the honour to his runner-up.
Each broadcaster can decide how to choose the act to represent their nation at Eurovision with SBS anointing Guy Sebastian for Australia last week.
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7 Responses
I am convinced that the UK deliberatley sabotages it’s chances each year so they do not have to host this mega-expensive production! 🙂
Yeah the electro-funk is just wrong for this and neither of them would make the finals of The Voice or X-Factor.
Needs more cow-bell.
I don’t know that they’re particularly strong singers, particularly the man. Not great.
I could’ve done with less Electro and more Velvet, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
I had a similar response. Cut out the overdone electro near the beginning.
More generally in the music arena, one to watch is the wonderful gal who wrote songs for the Endeavour series, Rachel D’Arcy. You can find her on SoundCloud although some of the songs there are slower than what was done in Endeavour. Brit gal and clearly talented.
At least it’s sorta fun, which is 90% of the point to a good Eurovision entry (although I suspect a few people might get upset with the UV faux(ish)-blackface in the video).
Let’s hope that Guy Sebastian does something 1/10th as fun (or interesting, or memorable…).