The ESC Insight team are or the ground, everything appears to be working, so let’s round up the last seven days and look forward with our latest Newsletter.
This week Ben Robertson looks over the schedules and five ways to keep the excitement building as the rehearsals get under way, and , he looks at the issues of songwriters working with other countries…
Eurovision songs do represent a country. By doing this you invoke the wave of passion that drives it to an atmosphere of World Cup Final proportions. It does feel fake that sometimes these are shoe-horned in from other countries when it doesn’t match them. Swedes writing ‘What If’ for Russia or ‘Waterfall’ for Georgia last year or ‘Facebook’ have little resemblance to national identities. Still remember though that somebody on the broadcaster though has made that call, and it isn’t just the Swedes themselves who are forcing their way in. And in other countries, Swedes have went and won national selections. Maybe, as Jonas says, ‘composers from other countries need to try harder’ to keep up.
Anyone can read this week’s newsletter online, and subscribe at the same time, from this link. The newsletter will now be going daily until we have a winner for the 2014 Song Contest!