I am absolutely against a national selection. I'm sorry. The public cannot be trusted with ANYTHING. Seriously.

 

This. We have just had 14 years of Tory rule and BORIS JOHNSON!!!! too :lol: Also, the acts we chose via the national selection, Javeen excluded, were just awful.

 

People have an outdate view of Eurovision, and add that to the mor songs that the bbc will choose in the first place, and it's just a disaster waiting to happen.

I think you’d really struggle to get anyone of note to sign up for that right now.

 

The UK has a unique problem that, in every other country, to promote yourself via a national final is unbeatable promotion, money can’t buy. And if it winds up being the peak of your career - no issue. Here, no artist starting to make moves in their career wants to come 3rd in a selection to decide who represents the UK at Eurovision.

 

You think Rina Sawayama is fighting it through heats to see if she gets to Eurovision etc? That’s why we end up with failed X Factor early-outs and what not, because it’s all they have, but they’re nowhere near the calibre we need. It does make it difficult for us because the British public are just so judgemental. God knows this position will probably be held over Olly Alexander for years, whilst we saw how Benjamin Ingrosso is now one of Sweden’s biggest stars despite not doing great by Sweden’s standards.

 

Basically we’re just a shit negative country that makes it difficult for our artists xx

Why can’t we have as a competition for unsigned artists? As I said, get local radio to nominate someone from each area and then have a national final with regional winners. A proper grassroots competition - it’s what the BBC should be about really.

I imagine local radio would have the same older-skewing demographic as our previous national finals, and we'd probably still end up with a boring ballad. The idea in theory sure, I don't pay much attention to BBC Introducing but I'm sure there's some great stuff in there, there's just the risk of us choosing a nice enough song that lacks stage presence.

 

Spain's Benidorm Fest is probably what we should aim for in the long-term considering they were in a similar situation to us before, but I think we need a few more years of the BBC gently holding the British public's hand to get them to understand what a modern Eurovision entry looks like. I think one thing that Benidorm Fest does well is it guarantees competing artists a slot at so many events over the year (Madrid Pride, national holiday concerts and other broadcaster-related events), maybe if we did something like that then artists would see it as an opportunity for promo even if they don't win.

The problem with a selection through public vote is it will most likely be won by a vanilla pretty boy. Unless all the contenders offered something truly exciting, I think we’d be left with a bland winner.

I'm pretty convinced nothing's gonna change until the BBC radio-friendly criteria is done with, we may strike lucky occasionally with a standout ballad by a capable performer, but otherwise, we're just too darn boring.

Poor Olly, re-entry at #48 today :drama: The fact he couldn’t snatch a hit I’m sure will have him wondering why he entered in the first place.

 

He’s #1 on the vinyl and physical charts so managed to shift a decent amount.

The national selection was rather hit and miss.

 

From 2016-19, we only got one decent result (Lucie). I think the UK's expectations are (hopefully) higher after Sam, but it depends on what the choices are.

 

I thought Asanda (Legends) would have been a better choice for us in 2018 but the performance wasn't good enough.

The problem with a selection through public vote is it will most likely be won by a vanilla pretty boy. Unless all the contenders offered something truly exciting, I think we’d be left with a bland winner.

 

This, look at what we sent with the last UK public vote

 

This, look at what we sent with the last UK public vote

 

The most recent public vote was in 2019 when we sent Michael Rice.

 

Your overarching point (something which didn't do well in the vote) still stands though.

The national selection was rather hit and miss.

 

From 2016-19, we only got one decent result (Lucie). I think the UK's expectations are (hopefully) higher after Sam, but it depends on what the choices are.

 

I thought Asanda (Legends) would have been a better choice for us in 2018 but the performance wasn't good enough.

We should have sent Jordan Clarke with ‘Freaks’ in 2019. The public don’t ever get it right. Although for some reason they hyped up Michael Rice on the night so much that that no one else really stood a chance. I think the BBC just wanted give a bit of publicity to the 2nd series of All Together Now than thinking ‘Bigger Than Us’ had a chance

 

On another note I know Olly didn’t get a decent result. I do still think he was step forward compared to what we were sending over the years. His name got a lot of non BBC Radio stations and TV channels interested in Eurovision. He’s also performing at Radio 1’s Big Weekend so I do honestly think the BBC thought he would have done well.

Freaks has over 100m streams on Spotify, while Bigger Than Us, a song that was performed to 182 million people, has 6 million streams who knows if Freaks would've done all that well at Eurovision, I'm sure it would've been screwed over by the BBC's nonchalant attitude to Eurovision back then with some rubbish staging, but goes to show that songs from the national selection can find an audience somewhere. I assume almost everyone who's streamed Freaks is entirely unaware of its Eurovision connection, but it's a shame that kinda thing isn't being capitalised on when it's been proven to have a pretty wide reach for a song that hasn't really been promoted post-You Decide!