You Should Have Sent This Song To Eurovision Written by Ewan Spence on September 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

Ewan Spence

‘This Is Gonna Hurt’, by Bonnie Tyler (United Kingdom, 2013)

The BBC’s internal selection of Bonnie Tyler for Malmö 2013 continued a run of heritage acts with name recognition across the continent. Tyler was going to make the best use of this moment back in the limelight in every single interview… It probably wasn’t every interview, but myths are more real than reality.

“I’ve got a new album out, you know? It’s called ‘Rocks and Honey’

If there’s one thing you expect from a Bonnie Tyler song, it’s a bit of melodic grit mixed in with some rock and roll. ‘Rocks and Honey’ gets off to a barnstorming start with ‘This Is Gonna Hurt’ which sounds exactly like what you expect from Bonnie Tyler. So why would the BBC team go for the Nashville-laced ‘Believe In Me’ that sounds more like a rejected Wynonna Judd B-Side?

If you’re going to select Bonnie Tyler, send something recognisably Bonnie Tyler.

Ben Robertson

‘Superman’, by Željko Joksimović (…and a bonus Dino Merlin on the side)

He should have won the Eurovision Song Contest by now.

Željko Joksimović has been a once-in-a-generation talent, the king of the Balkan Ballad, but the two third places and one second place to his name on his Eurovision songwriting credits don’t do justice to his craftsmanship as a master songwriter of his time, and it’s unlikely the 51-year-old will grace the Eurovision stage again.

It was his debut in 2004 that saw his second-place finish in Serbia and Montenegro’s debut entry into the Song Contest. Željko Joksimović and ‘Lane Moje’ did win the Semi Final but, with an early running order in the Grand Final, the song eventually stuttered 17 points behind ‘Wild Dances’ and Ukraine’s first victory at the Contest.

Yet looking through the scoreboard shows the problem. ‘Lane Moje’ became the track that is the template upon which a whole generation of Balkan ballads have been built, but its reach was hyper-regional. All the douze points came from nations within the Balkans or with significant diaspora (or Ukraine, because you can’t vote for your own country). It’s noteworthy that the high-scoring 2nd place act received 1 point from Estonia and Monaco, 2 points from Andorra and Lithuania, and 3 points from Belgium, UK and Ireland.

The Balkan ballad as an art form suffered from being increasingly inaccessible in structure the further away from Belgrade you travelled.

If winning was the agenda then I believe Željko Joksimović should have gone to Eurovision with another song released the same year. ‘Supermen’ has the production we all know from the Balkans but has the structure of a power ballad. With powerful lyrics about friendship expressed by not just Željko but also Dino Merlin, I have no doubt that the star power combo of two of the Balkans’ biggest musicians joining forces would have seen Željko retain all those local douze points in Istanbul.

What ‘Supermen’ would have done which ‘Lane Moje’ could never do is present Balkan music in a digestible way for those in the West and the North to understand. I can fully believe that with a more tactical song choice for Eurovision 2004 Željko Joksimović would have squeezed past Ruslana and won the Eurovision Song Contest – that I’d argue nobody this century deserves more.

Harriet Robinson

‘Na Me Paris Makria’, by Tamta (Cyprus, 2019)

‘Replay‘ is my favourite song that Cyprus has ever sent to the Eurovision Song Contest. I love Tamta’s performance. Perfectly in line with the lyrics of the song, she is amused by the power she has over the person she’s addressing and she’s completely in control of her sexuality. The song is a solid bop too.

And yet, despite that I kind of wish she’d gone with a different song. ‘Replay‘ was just a bit too much like a ‘Fuego‘ re-run. The key, the tempo, the structure and feel of the song, there were just so many similarities. Even with different textures and colours, the staging of the two songs was also very close – the form-fitting outfits, the choreography, and the backing dancers in black, to name three.

From the scoreboard, it looks like the law of diminishing marginal returns hit hard. ‘Replay‘ came thirteenth in the Grand Final, compared to ‘Fuego’s‘ battle for the win and historic second place (Cyprus’s best-ever Eurovision result). And this came with an absolute collapse of the televote – ‘Replay’ got points from just four countries, compared to ‘Fueogo’s‘ clean sweep.

So what would I send instead? My favourite song by Tamta, ‘Awake’, wasn’t released until 2020 and used vocal effects that (while compatible with the current rules) would have made it ineligible, or at the very least very difficult to pull off.

Instead, I nominate ‘Na Me Paris Makria’, released in November 2018. It would need a little editing to get it down to three minutes, and perhaps it is a little generic. It’s the same tempo though, so it’s danceable, and it would have been really wonderful to have a song in Greek again after a four-year run of Cyprus sending songs in English.

Maybe it wouldn’t have done much better on the scoreboard. Maybe there was a songwriter in Greece or Cyprus with something better up their sleeve, but either way, I think Tamta was served poorly with ‘Replay’, which just felt too safe… even with the latex and PVC outfits.

Dude Points

‘Domenica‘ by Achille Lauro (San Marino, 2022)

In 2022, my soul left my body for three minutes of pure, unadulterated bliss. The cause? Achille Lauro’s performance of ‘Stripper‘. Italy’s bad boy showed up in Turin with a see-through bodysuit, a range of simulated orgasm noises, and enough pyrotechnics to burn down the Pala Alpitour. By the time Lauro mounted the plush mechanical bull he had dubbed Roberta, I was in a frenzy, sure that this was going to storm the public vote.

Yeah. About that.

What I saw as a feminist critique of the sex industry was viewed by others as ‘sleazy.’ The incisive commentary on celebrity culture? ‘Derivative.’ The playfulness with gender? ‘Queerbaiting’.

In a three-minute performance of a song called ‘Stripper’, the audience isn’t going to pick up on the nuance. They’re just going to hear the word “sex toy.”

Which is why I wish that Achille Lauro had brought ‘Domenica‘ to Eurovision. Unlike many of the songs on this list, we know how it would have been staged, as it was the song that Lauro brought to the 2022 Sanremo Festival.

Over the three nights he performed it with members of the Harlem Gospel Choir, we were reminded of Lauro’s genius at mixing the sacred and the profane. While the women behind him channelled the ecstasy found at a church service, Lauro’s performance straddled the line between the pleasures of the flesh and the promise of heaven. He started a performance clad only in tight leather pants, coyly playing with his button and fly, but by the end of the song, he has fallen to his knees, being cleansed of his sins in a self-baptism on stage.

The Vatican hated it. The crowd was tepid, But as someone who is a cultural Catholic, Domenica is an excellent representation of the relationship so many have with the church – spending Sunday in its rituals, with the rest of the week spent in sin.

Perhaps I’m too much of a Lauro fangirl, but I think the more serious tone of this performance, combined with the jury-pleasing gospel choir, is what could have gotten him to the 2022 Eurovision final. But if you ask Lauro, he’d probably respond: “Me ne frego.”

Fin Ross Russell

‘Runaway’’, by Ines (Estonia, 2002)

I’m going to twist this and change the artist instead of the song…

Having already won Eurolaul as a songwriting team in 2000 with ‘Once in a Lifetime’, Alar Kotkas, Ilmar Laisaar and Pearu Paulus were keen to ask young Estonian pop star Ines to once again perform their song. Ines initially agreed to perform but dropped out just days before Eurolaul. They struggled to garner interest from local artists and so reluctantly, decided to look across the Baltic Sea.

Swedish singer Sahlene jumped at the opportunity, flying out to Tallinn the following morning. What followed was an intense two weeks of work with the song’s composers ahead of Eurolaul. Despite this, she would win the National Final comfortably and go on to place joint third for Estonia as it hosted the Contest, a fact which caused controversy in Estonia with some blame for the situation splashing back onto Ines.

We’ll never know what would have happened had Ines opted to perform ‘Runaway’ at Tallinn 2002 but a long-established team that was comfortable working with each other would have been more confident on aspects of staging, lighting, camera angles and all the various elements that go into a Eurovision performance

Sahlene’s staging was iconic, yet it was slightly simple and ultimately no match for the brasher stagings brought by Latvia and Malta. With a local pop star who had experience of Eurovision, being the face of Estonia’s Contest, with better staging and a less dramatic run-in to May, could ‘Runaway’ have won the Eurovision Song Contest?

Gina Jones

‘Enough’’, by James Newman (United Kingdom, 2021)

Enough time has passed now. We’ve had Sam Ryder, the success of the contest in Liverpool, the Semi Finals are going to be on BBC One, for goodness sake! So… we need to talk about James Newman.

At the time it was too painful, too raw. We went through years of lacklustre entries, some dire National Finals, the indignity of Electro Velvet being relegated to the Red Button, and the shock of a cancelled Song Contest in 2020… things were pretty bleak for the United Kingdom at the Contest. We didn’t think things could get much lower until the dreaded nul points came knocking again.

What made it worse was that James Newman thoroughly did not deserve it. Yes, we can all agree the staging was awful, the outfit slightly 70s pimp-like, and the singing a little breathy, but he was by no means the worst that year, and this is the hill I will die on.

There was a further injustice that year though, one that makes it all the more heartbreaking – he had a really great song already in his back pocket, and I’m not talking about ‘My Last Breath’, his would-have-been entry for the cancelled 2020 contest. No, I’m talking about ‘Enough’. James is a terrific song writer – he’s created chart magic for many other acts – but where he sits best vocally is with more emotional material. Stuff that really rips your heart out. His voice is slightly jagged and raw. He has a vulnerability that’s hard to fake.

If he’d brought ‘Enough’ to the Song Contest the UK delegation from the BBC may have held their head higher that year. Would it have been a Top Ten finish? It’s hard to say without knowing what the staging would have been (we’re all suspicious since trumpet-gate) but it would’ve surely been better than nul points.

Rita El Khoury

‘Wielkie Tytuly’, by Ochman (Poland, 2022)

In February of 2021, Kristian Ochman who had won The Voice of Poland just two months prior, released his second single, ‘Wielkie Tytuly’ and instantly became a rumoured Eurovision contestant among our Eurovision cumminty circles. Weeks passed, the rumour died, and Poland eventually sent Rafal with ‘The Ride’ to Rotterdam.

A year later, almost to the day, Ochman was a confirmed participant of Tu bike serce Europy! and his song ‘River’ was released. He won the Polish selection, made it to the Eurovision stage, brought along some scary dementors and cheeky visual effects, and came twelfth in a year dominated by Ukraine, excellent male vocalists, Biti Zdrava’s claps, and the magnificent resurgence of the United Kingdom and Spain.

If fate had it any different, however, or if the forces that be pushed Ochman ahead of Rafal in 2021, we could be telling a whole other story thanks to ‘Wielkie Tytuly’. In 2021, a top five for Poland was guaranteed in my opinion, and a top three wouldn’t have been out of the question. Ochman might have fought Gjon’s Tears for some jury points and he would’ve done better with the public.

From the first listen, ‘Wielkie Tytuly’ is gripping in a way River only tried to be. What starts as a light piano melody turns into a dark, passionate, mysterious, and rhythmic song with all of the charm of the Polish language and none of the pedestrianism of River’s English lyrics. Ochman’s performance is haunting and his tormented voice navigates the fast verses just as well as the operatic moments. I can’t imagine a jury not falling for that masterful vocal performance and demanding pitch switches, nor can I imagine the public ignoring how this song intertwines heavy beats and symphony in such a unique way.

‘Wielkie Tytuly’ introduced me to Ochman’s voice and music, and his excellent collaborations with @Atutowy (check ‘Swiatlocienie’ and ‘Wspomnienie’ too), and it could have earned Poland one of its best results this century. Unfortunately, Europe didn’t get to see Ochman’s best.

Samantha Ross

‘Diell’, by Elhaida Dani (Albania, 2015)

As many die-hard fans know, the Albanian National Final, Festivali i Këngës, tends to be one of the earliest major events on the delightfully endless road to May. Much like its Italian counterpart, it’s a contest that preceded its nation’s debut at the Eurovision Song Contest, and in many ways retains its identity as a musical showcase for its national audience, rather than for an international one. Songs are generally performed in Albanian (although English versions are often performed at some point throughout the weeklong celebration) and Eurovision’s three-minute rule is blissfully ignored. This all, of course, does cause a bit of a speed bump when a FiK champion is announced, as victorious songs go through an inevitable revamp prior to the Heads of Delegation meeting in March.

Elhaida Dani’s star had been skyrocketing as of late, as she had won The Voice of Italy and released an EP in 2013, and took home a victory at Top Fest the previous year. Her entry in 2014’s Festivali i Këngës, ‘Diell’, had trounced the jury’s vote in Tirana, getting top marks from six out of the seven jurors (and a respectable second place from the remaining juror). A classic love ballad with a dramatic chorus and a killer climactic high note, ‘Diell’ was a vocal master class. All it needed was a nip and tuck to get it down to size, and it would have been Vienna-ready…

However, for the song’s composer, those nips and tucks were steps too far. Albanian media reported that songwriter Aldo Shllaku had been excluded from the revamp process, and he had not granted rights to broadcaster RTSH for ‘Diell’. In late February, mere weeks before the HoD meeting, RTSH announced that ‘Diell’ would no longer be performed in Austria, and that a new song was in the works.

That new song, the English-language ‘I’m Alive’, took many of the elements that made ‘Diell’ special, but it didn’t quite hit in the same way. The high note felt obligatory, rather than climactic; the structure lost all of the timelessness of the original, yet didn’t feel fresh enough to break new ground. And rather than ‘Diell’s‘ lyrics about a passionate, shared love despite distance, ‘I’m Alive’s’ text feels like a desperate cry for the person who hurt her irrevocably…to come back and make it all better.

At the end of the day, ‘I’m Alive’ did just qualify for the Grand Final (in the tenth spot), ending up in seventeenth place in the Grand Final on Saturday night. We may never know what a Eurovision edit of ‘Diell’ would have looked and sounded like, but for now, I’ll just keep replaying the last thirty seconds of her Festivali i Këngës performance.

Those are just a few of the song-swaps that could have happened to change the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. Which swaps would you have made given the chance? Was there an obvious winner left behind, or something to replace a song that performed poorly on the night? Let us know in the comments!