Umi

The only choice that matters in relation to the success of the singles run is the first one. 'American Life' defined the era and everything else had no real agency. As long as your plan has 'American Life' as the first single, I really don't see anything that follows charting.

Yeah this really did go on forever and the production did feel pretty low value. I was positively surprised by the quality overall though, as I expected it to be a really huge dive from Destination Eurovision.

36k in the US second week which is extremely impressive given the 60k opening. This album is so good, 'Gimme What I Want' is the best thing she's ever done.

We rank music by popularity primarily because it has utility to the music industry and its various stakeholders. Integrity is worth pursuing as long as it makes the chart more useful, but if it ever reduces the utility of the chart, it ought to and will be compromised. This is how we arrived at ACR in the first place, obviously. Maybe ACR isn't the right way to make the chart function in the streaming era but I don't think this conversation can be had from a place of "maximum integrity is inherently good". For you it's good because it makes the chart more interesting for you if it's more legitimate, but that is obviously personal. If we're to talk getting rid of ACR, we need to talk about who actually benefits from doing that. From my perspective it looks bad for labels and artists, bad for the OCC, bad for music industry stakeholders (e.g. radio), bad for music fans and controversial for chart fans. It looks difficult to argue in favour of the change based on that.

Well yes, the fact that the Christmas charts will get quite dull if Mariah ever starts to actually hit #1 consistently is the point of my post. It's OK (at least for me) now because, despite the general inevitability of Christmas domination, there is speculation to be had about exactly how it will play out. That said, I'm surprised to see people so negative about the Christmas charts altogether anyway. They are worse than the rest of the year in terms of predictability but the majority of the top 40 still won't be Christmas songs, and there is interest to be had in watching the performance of non-festive songs be warped around the season.

Well, that's probably the one benefit to Mariah being permanently stuck at #2. "Will she finally get the #1 this year?" is basically the only storyline we have to follow every Christmas.

I'm kind of sad that this has attracted such controversy on here of all places. It's fine to have your own experience with the song but as Liam said, it's about being able to relate to and understand the needs of other people. This is a forum with a large LGBTQ+ community and it's a shame to see people advocate for that community's comfort in society to be deprioritised in order to gain ... nothing, really. I've not actually seen any argument for evading censorship in this case other than "Don't give into the snowflakes!" and the rather vacant "Don't erase history!" (why do we care about this in relation to 'Fairytale of New York'? let's go beyond far-right slogans). I think that is perhaps the most saddening thing - nobody is actually arguing that their enjoyment of the song is substantially reduced by the censorship. LGBTQ+ people are asked to deal with hearing slurs against them in exchange for nothing other than the majority group feeling the freedom to use slurs in what they deem acceptable contexts. It's not about offense, anyway. It's about inclusion. It's about being in a marginalised group and being expected to hear slurs directed at yourself for the enjoyment of the majority who couldn't even imagine what that feels like. "Deal with hearing f***** on the radio, snowflakes" being said by people who view being asked to avoid using a single word as an unconscionable assault on their life is a fine example of majority privilege. The argument that you're not meant to like or agree with the character in the song doesn't hold water either. No matter what context the song is dressed up in, it's a direct reminder to LGBTQ+ people of a time in the recent past when homophobic slurs were in mainstream discourse. It's a direct reminder of how little their societal comfort was worth to the majority until very recently. Why do we expect people of that community to enjoy this? Why do we care so much about having the right to force them to experience this? Why are they worth so little to us? To be honest, I am quite disappointed even with the people who are neutral on this. It's one thing to be outright bigoted (you don't expect homophobes to advocate for the gayz) but I don't know how you can be on the fence on a topic like "should we expect LGBTQ+ people to relive personal and in-group trauma so the majority that inflicted said trauma can have fun?". It's not appropriate. It's good that this particular example is on its way out.

I can't believe I'm just seeing this; I am absolutely paralysed with shock. I rarely spoke with Tyler so I feel almost guilty for having such a strong reaction to this but he was such a beacon and I had so much admiration for him. I wish I could thank him for the happiness he brought so many of us on here over the years. I know it's extremely late but I'm so sorry to everyone who was close to him and I really wish I could offer something more helpful than this. Thank you for writing this Jon (I can't imagine how difficult it was) and thank you for keeping this thread pinned - it's a nice way to respect Tyler and the impact he's had on so many of us.

'Gooba' missing #1 while both 'Say So' and 'Savage' make it is the literal ideal scenario.

I know it's not the end of the world in relation to everything else but what's distressing me so much right now is the hoarding. I am so tired of going into supermarkets recently and either finding them utterly empty or seeing queues out the door. I desperately don't want to be one of those people queueing up at 7am to get in and yet I'm starting to wonder how else I'm ever going to get pretty much any actual food. I'm trying to go at social hours and buy reasonable amounts but it's empty empty empty, and worse every day. You can't tell a virus not to kill people but we *can* control our attitude and the fact that the entire country is making a concerted effort to *not* be even remotely social is just so upsetting to me. Solitary confinement under a pandemic is stressful enough without adding in worrying about actually having food because people are filling entire freezers with anything they can find. Again, small thing, and I mean no disrespect to the disease that is hanging over all of our heads, but this situation would be at least slightly less disheartening if it wasn't bringing out the worst in eeeeeeeveryone. Seeing people act this way is just destroying me at the moment.

I like it. It lends itself to strong staging and it'll stand out more than 'Roots' would have, I think. Curious to see how it does.

France have given up, haven't they? It was nice while it lasted I suppose.

Honestly didn't mind Felix. Much better than his first entry and the production values on his performance are much better than most of tonight. The song is fine, at least it's a relevant topic.

This is awful.

Make a mockery of our chart rules, queen *.*

I'm curious about the quality of this one because, as mentioned, she's spoken about being in a 5-album contract that she is extremely eager to get out of. The last time she phoned an album in, it was dire, but she also hated every second of making and promoting it. This could be very bad, but it seems unlikely that she'd put herself through that twice. No Shame was beautiful so I'm optimistic but at the same time, it felt like such a labour of love and time and so defining to her after the inital post-2009 break. I find it hard to see where she goes from there so quickly after putting that out. It would feel slightly weird to me if she went back to political commentary, but another autobiographical album would seem almost needless. In other words, I have no idea what to expect or even what I want.

I think what the UK needs more than anything is an actual artist. The main difference I noticed between the UK and everyone else this year wasn't the quality of the song but the obvious lack of authenticity in it compared to the rest of the competition. Bops can just be bops, but when you send a ballad I really don't think you can afford it being inauthentic unless you've got Russia-tier staging. I'm sure a lot of the people in this contest were singing songs that were written for them but they were all at least able to sell the song as being theirs or as meaning something to them (and this is especially important with ballads). Michael's song was easily the most autopilot ballad of the contest lyrically and there was just no reason to find it credible. I know it sounds kind of pretentious but ballads are meant to touch people and I'm not sure if something as emotionally wooden as 'Bigger Than Us' actually can. You could feel the sadness in Duncan and the force of will in Tamara, but Michael just looked like ... a guy singing a song he was told to sing. It does make me wonder if the UK's musical culture being tempered so heavily by the dominance of X Factor in recent decades has caused the UK to disconnect heavily from the rest of Europe in what it wants from musical contest performers. Authenticity and artistry seems extremely undervalued in the UK's Eurovision selection process compared to very mathematical song choices (key changes and money notes can make up for anything!) and someone being able to adlib effectively in a final chorus. When you look at the songs that do well in Eurovision, the priorities are jarringly different to those of the UK. Maybe it's that the contest's reputation is so toxic that actual artists are unreachable for the UK's delegation, but that's something that needs fixing if so.

I think North Macedonia and San Marino qualifying has done a lot to alleviate that. Last year I think we spoke about both of those, plus there was a bit of speculation about Azerbaijan (which thankfully ended up being silly). I guess we could ask questions about Montenegro this year, but I think we've landed in a good spot where most countries have a qualification in recent memory at this point, thankfully!

I would be extremely hesitant to blame Sweden's comparatively meh televote performances on anything political. In fact, in the past couple of years I've felt more that there are dynamics in the jury working in Sweden's favour unjustly ("it's Sweden, it must be credible") than anything to do with the televote. I honestly don't find it surprising at all that the consistently vanilla nature of Sweden's entries is getting them left behind on the televote at all, even if all of the songs are fantastically well-made and the performers are very competent. At the moment it feels that they're gunning for jury votes above televotes and they're getting the appropriate rewards for that. Australia is a weirder case for this year in particular but I see similar dynamics to Sweden in a broader sense, where very safe entries are passed by on the televote in favour of more striking ones. This year I suspect that the Eurovision fandom's lack of love for the entry was telling, and operatic pop just seems kind of dodgy (see 'La Forza' getting a slightly underwhelming result) for some reason, no matter how spectacular it was. Kate definitely deserved better.

That's interesting, I always assumed that they did. I guess there's no reason that educated guesswork couldn't resemble having knowledge of the results. Well, that gives me a bit more hope!

I'm guessing Norway didn't have a great semi then.

Am I right in thinking that we'll find out the results of the DNQs tonight?

The juries have carried Australia to the final every single year they've entered, no matter the opinion of the public. This year won't be any different.

Srbuk seems like a really bad opener to me honestly. I don't think anybody wants to start a show with a song like that.

Just say what you want to say - there is no need to hide behind indirect questions. You may wish it was the case that wanting to leave the EU was the same thing as being willing to leave the EU under any circumstance, but that is not the case for many people. It is not contradictory to vote to leave the EU but decide that you would rather stay than leave in the way you are being asked to.