And On The Subject Of Sweden….
....I'm going to talk about the British system for choosing our Eurovision Song Contest entry. No - there is a logic here, but you'll have to wait a couple of postings to see how it all hangs together. Before we went away, we caught the tail end (the voting bit) of Making Your Mind Up (do you see what they did there?), the British selection programme. For anyone who missed it (how could you?), six songs performed by a selection of luminaries are performed at teatime on a Saturday and The Great British Public(tm) then vote for the one they most want to see carry the hopes of the nation into the Grand Prix in (this year) Athens. Now, because we only saw the voting, we didn't see any but the winning song, but here I am, pondering the imponderable: Surely, at least one of those other five, never mind some small selection from among the 'long list', must have been better than the dreck we have once again chosen.
Seriously, a middle-aged white guy rapping while some mutton-dressed-as-lamb dancers prance around in schoolgirl costumes? Are we just giving up on quality from the off and resigning ourselves to aiming for the novelty vote? Or the sympathy vote? Or is it a grand post-modern statement about the nature of 'pop', the mainstream audience, and the anodyne sheen of EuroSong?
Nah - it's just a crap song that'll probably be an embarassment to us all on the night.