gooddelta

The fact that no current music video was played on the music channels more than 15 times last week is pretty sad. No wonder a lot of artists don’t put as much effort into videos anymore or just chuck out lyric videos, it’s basically you watch it yourself online or you don’t see it. It’s such a shame that so few channels remain and none are dedicated to new music. I would definitely abolish the chart, what’s the point of it. 21 plays represents nothing apart from what looks like a 90s number one singles countdown on loop.

Akon for me, quite an annoying hook and I at least like everything else in the list to some extent.

Fall Out Boy for me too.

Not a bad set overall, going for Emma. I don’t care for that cover much either.

Meat Loaf is even more strange than Gina G last week. At least Eurovision explained that away. And what is Three Lions doing there, did I miss a football tournament? 😄

Much better: Rave.djIf Video Til You Get Even - RaveDJMashup featuring Michael Jackson & Andyabraham made at rave.dj

Many thanks Addy, and have a great time with the family!

Oh that is a real shame for Summericia and Spodic Empire, I voted for both as well as Kylienips, which was way better than last but it was a good semi. Congrats to Jim and Jonjo - both deserved!

Again, all four were good, gah!

A brilliant pair!

Finally got a Turkish language song in after the last two failed 🥰 Thank you kind voters! Iconic to be going through with SINNER too!

Jupiterdonia was lovely and a shame to see it out but all four of that batch were good. The Aeroche entry is strong for me, I’ve had it in my head! Well done to Leww and Herbs with another finalist and an inspired entry!

I can’t think of anything that would beat it! Only the Boyzone song wasn’t really huge selling and that did ok for itself too, but everything else must have been platinum at the very least.

I don’t care for Dizzy much and really have nothing to say about it apart from why would you enter an album filler with no oomph to a competition. But I do genuinely love I Wrote A Song! Granted it wasn’t very good live - maybe difficult to pull off a TikTok-aimed pop hit on the live stage, but I think the studio track is very good and the video was strong. I’m glad it wasn’t a nul pointer on the televote and that it managed a few weeks in the top 40 and a top ten peak, it was a popular song on the radio at the time although sure, the Sam hype the year before helped her get onto those playlists. Agreed on the surprise at Andy not being up yet, one of blandest entries we ever sent and Terry Wogan quit half in protest at it doing badly didn’t he? Despite it having no relevance to late 00s Eurovision at all and sounding like Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough with an undeveloped melody and bassline. Maybe it would have worked better in 1978 than 2008.

Hopefully she will put any Vault tracks from those eras out anyway even if she doesn’t re-record those two albums. I’m pleased for her, and happy I can go back to the original versions of several songs that weren’t improved by the re-records.

Atomic Kitten's Right Now launched around Christmas too. They were defintiely pushed as a major concern although clearly took some time to get going. The late 1997 sales are just absolutely enormous all round, what a classic period for music. Huuuuge sales for Lucky Man and Angels both at No.7, I still cannot fathom why he released South of the Border before this - ok it suits the Christmas market well but that track could have derailed everything before he got to it. How many of those Chickenshed singles had to be pulped or ended up in bargain bins. An advance order of 250k to sell little over 30k in week one is mad. I understand the sentiment behind it and why it might have appealed to fans of Diana but it just isn't a particularly good song, and was extremely dated sounding in this late '97 chart.

Ouch, My Last Breath's studio version is one of our better entries and on paper it could have come midtable with a decent jury score and a handful of low televotes, a bit like Germany's Isaak last year. As it is a modern chart sounding/radio song after all like you say. But I didn't recall or had erased from my memory that live performance. It doesn't sound as good in that lower key and he didn't perform it very well. So maybe it would have just been another bottom five, eek!

I couldn't remember any other songs from the 2004 UK National Final, so looked them up and four of six really were terrible. This song that came 2nd wasn't too bad though - it feasibly sounds like what Blue might have sent to Eurovision if they'd entered in 2004 and not 2011 (when they basically just sent Written In The Stars 🤣). Having said that, Blue's sound had matured a bit by 2004, this song is more like their 2001 material. I think this would have placed similar to James Fox, we certainly didn't throw away any hits that year.

30 years for the 1995 release of Set You Free by N-Trance, or 24 since the Rob Searle remix I loved. I'm not counting the original from 1992 as I don't like the vocal on it.

James Fox was one of the more forgettable but competent entries we've had this century I would say. I don't care for the song whatsoever, but I can see its appeal, and it performed fairly in the contest, it was no better or worse than the position it got. I listened to it just then for the first time in ages and just thought how slow it plodded along, could have done with a bit of a faster BPM and different production to make more of an impact. But it's a perfectly pleasant melody and just a safe palette cleanser after Jemini in a reliable pair of hands I guess, but it was never challenging to be a hit of any kind in the contest. These reviews and the pros and cons are mostly spot on - great thread.

Completely agree. Michael being a good singer is the one and only good thing about it. It just gave me flashbacks to bad X Factor winning songs, and worse still - there was a much better similar song written by the same artist in the same final (Too Late For Love), which was going to eat up any small chance of support this had. I think it might be my last place of the songs that have been so far because again, it's something I will never listen to again out of choice because it's such a dull plod, whereas others have more bite even if elements of them were crap.

My first listen is blind on Spotify which hopefully removes any bias. After that I will properly look at who sent what. Then often I'll have a second on the listenthrough, and then sift out any I'm definitely not going to vote for and have the rest on rotation until I come to vote.

We all really need to study the art of FARC.

I don't think there is any conscious bias - although I know we've discussed this at length before on here. But I do think people might tend to - without realising - pay more attention to songs by countries they more often vote for and will therefore expect to enjoy, so it can become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, we did hold one BJSC anonymously many, many years ago (2010) and the same countries did well/badly as usual! Obviously it was a long time ago though, and also these days you don't tend to get the same countries in the top five every single month like you did back then. There are obviously some countries who consistently do well, but it's not AS consistently in the top five as the days of 2010-2014.

I think Fat Dog just hammered its niche really really well, rather than collecting votes from almost everyone (I can't imagine it had a huge amount of pop voter appeal), but I can't remember now how many it got.