An open letter to the U.K. regarding #Eurovision. 🇬🇧

All of those of you who know me know by now that I LOVE the Eurovision Song Contest. Not in a “it’s-one-evening-a-year-and-I-want-to-take-the-piss-out-of-foreigners” way, but I celebrate everything the competition stands for: inclusion, diversity, unity, celebration, music, national pride, equality, excitement, technological advancements, the list goes on…

I listen to Eurovision music all year round. I follow each country’s national selection process (and there is even more musical diversity in the hundreds of songs that don’t make it to the Eurovision stage).

But I want to address the same complaint I hear EVERY year. “Eurovision is political”.

It just isn’t.

There are no countries in the world less popular right now than Azerbaijan, Israel and Russia, and they nearly always do extremely well at Eurovision. We in the U.K. have been fed this imperialist lie that we are somehow better than other countries. Newsflash: every other country feels the same about themselves. As they should.

If Brexit is so important to everyone else, why did 3 EU countries also get 0 points from every country in this year’s televote? And what about the fact that fewer than half of the competing countries are even in the EU?

Yes, Greece and Cyprus exchange 12 points every year. Yes, Moldova and Romania do the same. But how often do any of them win? Greece has won once. The others, not at all. The U.K. is ALSO on that list, by the way. We are nearly always the country that gives the most points to Ireland. Do we do that because of “politics”? No. We have similar tastes, and there is a crossover in celebrity. Newsflash: so do other countries. The Serbian group Hurricane are MASSIVE in the Slavic countries. But we’ll never hear them on Radio 1 because they sing in Foreign. Similarly, we have had a slew of international superstars from former-Soviet countries such as Sergei Lazarev and Ani Lorak, who have done exceptionally well in Eurovision because they’re deservedly-beloved artists. But because we’ve never heard of them, it’s “politics”.

We just use that as an excuse for being half-arsed about our entry and then arrogant enough to think that that will be enough. To get even one point, you need to be in someone’s top 10. After last night’s show, if you can think of 16 countries that deserved to be below us on anyone’s ranking I don’t think you’re being objective. I actually preferred our song to Italy’s, but they won by a landslide so fair play to them. But I definitely can’t think of 16 worse songs out of all 39, let alone just the 26 in the final. If anything, we stood out as the ones that couldn’t be bothered capturing your attention for three whole minutes, and gave nobody a reason to pick up the phone and vote for it.

And yet the U.K. has won 5 times and come second 15 times. That’s an outcome only beaten by Sweden. (Ireland have the most wins, but way more poor results overall). France and Spain haven’t won in my lifetime. Cyprus, Malta and Iceland have NEVER won. Yet these countries don’t bitch about it and cry to pull out; they just seize the opportunity to showcase their artists and culture every year. We have to automatically qualify because the EBU knows we won’t bother watching if we’re not in the final. In Iceland, the viewing figures for Eurovision are nearly 100% audience share every year, even when they don’t make it out of the semifinals.

How many of you even KNEW there were semifinals? Two of them. We are privileged enough to not have to qualify for the final, so the BBC don’t give them the respect they’re due and bury them on BBC4. Multiple of my favourites fall at that stage every year. Frankly, we should be one of them.

Because this is the point: If you’re only watching Eurovision to see what scores the U.K. get, you’re doing it wrong. If you skipped ANY of the songs, let alone all of them, you’re doing it wrong. It is a SONG contest. Listen to all of the songs. Watch all of the performances. Score and rank them. If the U.K. has objectively made your top 10, then by all means feel upset that one of your favourites didn’t do as well as you hoped. But whilst I support the U.K. entry ever year (even when I don’t like it), I care MORE about the songs I LIKE. (In a SONG contest? I know, crazy, right?)

Well every artist that makes it to the competition, wherever they come in the results, is revered by the Eurovision fandom. In many cases, even artists that have never even made it to the Eurovision stage are beheld as legends. You think everyone hates the U.K. entry? Look up any YouTube video of our artists performing at one of the many multi-national fan events, and then tell me that.

Even Graham Norton is dropping the Wogan-esque snark and sour grapes from his commentary and is now celebrating every entry in its own right, as he should. Because they deserve it. And when we enter a song that is objectively popular across the continent(s), we will deserve it too.

NB None of this is intended to disrespect any of the U.K. entries that performed poorly. James Newman absolutely made me a proud Brit last night, but I am also proud of the audience’s repturous, encouraging response to him accepting his last place.

THAT is the true “politics” of Eurovision.