BillyH

Both times I've seen Twenty One Pilots they've played Stressed Out as early as possible (usually the second song in the set) and sung it with basically no energy and a glum look on their face, which I feel like is their way of basically saying let's get this over with. Luckily my other fave of theirs 'Ride' does always get done properly.

Looking forward to the usual "We should send Steps/Robbie Williams/Adele/One Direction/Ed Sheeran/etc" crowd continuing to not understand it's a song contest and not a Who Is The Most Famous contest. Name value means nothing if the song isn't memorable as Flo Rida found out a few years back, so if Franz Ferdinand or Chvrches or whoever send an absolute banger of a tune it's game on. Blue almost got away with it but apparently they half-assed their jury final performance thinking it was just a random rehearsal(!), which cost them a ton of votes once everything was combined. There's a dark parallel universe somewhere where Ed Sheeran represented us in 2016, attempts to send a new song he's written called Castle On The Hill, but gets told by the label that it's "not Eurovision enough" (secret code for "this is too good for Eurovision, save it for the album") and instead is forced to sing You're Not Alone. Ends up coming only slightly above Joe & Jake, career ruined and Divide onwards never happens.

I think the 'live' KLF songs are all studio creations with fake crowd noise, although I also used to think they were real live recordings. The 'S.S.L.' was actually just the brand name of the mixing desk used. A weird one is Black Legend - You See The Trouble With Me, which in its original white label form sampled a 1990 live Barry White concert for the vocals, but for the single release used a soundalike for copyright reasons.

Ticket sales this year have required a Taylor Swift style 'pre-registration' which closed a few days ago, which even then doesn't guarantee you access to the on-sale but at least gets you closer to the chance of it. I wonder how many fans were aware of this in advance as many may just try logging on the day only to find out they needed to sign up weeks earlier, it's all been done to stop bots/touts/multiple accounts etc and successful customers who pre-registered will find out if they get a ticket link a few days beforehand. I did sign up for Taylor Swift and never even got as far as getting a ticket link, so hopefully I'll be a bit more successful this time! I'm still a bit scarred from all the drama of last year, so I hope things run smoother this time and we can go back to a fun-filled evening again...

In a few weeks I'm seeing James Blunt live supported by Toploader, which is going to be double the fun knowing the above :lol: The weirdest example of the life/career speech before playing The Big Hit was when I saw the band Daughtry in London a few years back, they did the whole spiel as above making me think, ok, here comes What About Now (by far their biggest UK hit and the one later covered by Westlife) and...they play #128 UK smash 'It's Not Over' instead :blink: . What About Now never got played at all!! I guess because It's Not Over was their big US breakthrough where it charted at #4 there, and they just reused the same script for London even though it didn't really apply over here.

Brilliant documentary that perfectly spanned 'my' era of pop, from being a 5 year old hearing Relight My Fire played a lot right up until Robbie rejoining Take That when I was a uni student. They could have done a fourth episode featuring JLS, The Wanted and One Direction as already mentioned as there'd be a huge amount of material spanning the last 15 years, but I suppose it wouldn't really have had the nicest ending given what happened to poor Tom Parker and Liam Payne (who in both cases are the only two members of each band I've met, both four years ago when my workplace was doing some filming while it was shut to the public). Ending as it began with Take That reunited and the other boybands now mostly doing well for themselves did give it much more closure, and while it did mean the whole documentary could have been made circa 2010 perhaps it's not quite time yet to tell the story of the later boybands in such great detail, both because it's a bit too raw and recent for the band members themselves and also because the 2010s don't have that 'full' nostalgia factor for many just yet, although admittedly the earlier part of the decade is perhaps starting to for those who were kids or teenagers then. I also found the tabloid intrusion quite sickening especially the Five honeytrap story, which felt like full on entrapment that they probably got away with legally as it took place in a foreign country. I already knew much of their story from The Big Reunion, but I feel like if they hadn't imploded the way they did then they'd have probably carried on maybe another year or two before calling it a day anyway around 2003, as music landscapes were shifting around this time with anything 1990s being cast aside in favour of new artists and reality TV acts. Agreed that a Girlbands Forever would work too starting with Eternal and the Spice Girls in the first episode, and if they did want to include the last decade this time they could feature Little Mix as well and finish with the 2019 Spice Girls reunion.

Luckily in 2016 this was uploaded which, although with a longer intro than the Now 49 one, is primarily the 'right' version of Castles in the Sky: 0aa7KWLkzXc It's still further down the first page of the results as the other mix is at the top despite having less views, probably because it's from an official artist channel.

There's a whole thread that can be made out of "Songs that charted in the UK in a different mix but now the main one that gets played is the original instead" except with a snappier title. I remember about a decade ago, it was irritatingly impossible to find the 'right' version of Ian Van Dahl's Castles in the Sky on YouTube, I think I ended up finding it on something like page 11 or 12 of the results as all the other versions were this weird other mix that might have been the original. ATB's 9pm has been mentioned here before where the original, 1998 version seems to have replaced the Sequential One 1999 mix that was the main one people bought and danced to on its UK smash release. As for Corona, it was the UK mix I heard all the time until some point in the 2010s, possibly even as late as 2017 when the film 'The Disaster Artist' used it.

Two weeks that stand out as having exciting close races but the 'wrong' result for me were 25/09/1993 (the Pet Shop Boys missing #1 thanks to Will Smith) and 27/12/2003 (Darkness/Gary Jules). The '93 one is a bit before my time but I do remember Xmas 2003 quite well, watching CD:UK and hearing Cat Deeley say The Darkness were in the lead as of midweek made their defeat even worse! I did fear it would be Pop Idol that year, so Gary Jules at least felt like a semi-victory and Simon Cowell never troubled the festive #1 spot again. I just about remember Blur/Oasis when I was 6 and I was happy that Blur won as I couldn't understand a word that Oasis lot were singing. I also wanted Mike Flowers Pops to be Christmas number 1 that year as I preferred it to the original.

Spotify and streaming mean many just listen to the same things everywhere in the world now, with not as much localisation as recently as the 2000s when even the English and Scottish #1s were often very different. There were always worldwide hits and international artists who smashed everywhere, but it seems inconceivable that you’d get a situation now where someone is massive in the UK or US but comparatively unknown in the other country, like Take That being one hit wonders in the States and Robbie Williams infamously failing to build a huge following over there. The 2010s/early 2020s had the likes of Adele and Ed Sheeran dominating on both sides of the Atlantic, and Simon Cowell was able to break some big UK acts stateside, but I guess there’s not been many in more recent times judging from the few modern hits I know. The dominance of TikTok hits is a good shout too, they at least do occasionally also help non-US acts like Maneskin a few years back where arguably it was both TikTok and Eurovision that helped them be so successful. I think 2007 was the last time a US #1 missed the UK top 100, unless there’s been any since? It was even worse over in Ireland for a while, no Irish acts were #1 there from Hometown in April 2015 to Dermot Kennedy in November 2020, and since then at least there’s been Jazzy and Hozier!

I’m too spooked by events such as Christmas 2015 when many people here were saying there’s no way A Bridge Over You will get anywhere near the sales of the almighty Justin Bieber and the Xmas #1 is definitely his. I’ve only made one online bet in my life and it was for the winner of Eurovision 2018, luckily I won but it was a close one!

I never had much luck with this, when I used to go to festivals in the late 00s/early 10s I'd see a lot of smaller artists who I thought were about to blow up, only for them to never get any big break at all and disappear soon after. Or I'd get really into a new artist once they'd have their one big hit usually at the start of the year thinking it was the start of many, but they'd end up as a one-hit wonder - David Jordan, Sam Sparro etc. I was a fan of David Guetta around the time of 'The World is Mine' in 2004, which got to #49 here and he just seemed like one of many DJs around then, not realising he'd go on to absolutely dominate the end of that decade into the next. Similarly I saw Calvin Harris live in 2009 when he was still a solo artist making quirky electropop hits, I wouldn't count it as 'before they were cool' as he'd already had a #1 with I'm Not Alone, but he performed in the middle of the day during Wireless Festival which even just two years later once We Found Love came out would have been mad.

Does the famous version of Underworld's 'Born Slippy' count? It started out as just a fun B-side remix of a different song released a year earlier, but that version got used in the film Trainspotting, was released as a single and became a huge #2 hit in the UK - Underworld's Rick Smith was genuinely shocked when he heard it on daytime radio, that was a big year for harder dance music making its way into the mainstream along with Faithless's Insomnia which also blew up that year.

And it’s Basel! I paid more for accommodation than I normally would, but when everyone’s just grabbing a hotel in every major Swiss city for every Saturday in May 2025 minutes after the end of the contest and then cancelling the cities/dates they don’t need, there’s never going to be much choice even straight after the announcement this morning. £95(!) for a hotel on the Saturday, a bit out of the city centre but even on a normal non-Eurovision weekend there’s a tram and bus going there from the stadium until 3am, so looked like a good choice. Gatwick-Basel flights were £50 when I bought them this morning (I’m just doing the Saturday-Sunday to avoid bankruptcy in a country where the cheapest McDonalds cheeseburger meal is over £10), and just over two hours later they’re over £200. So it’s the Family or Grand Final for me depending on how mad and (un?)affordable the ticket sales will be!

Not really been keeping track of this but it sounds like she’s in that awkward place where she’s been around too long to be seen as current or relevant, but not long enough yet to be a big nostalgia act who people remember from when they were kids, so in other words she’s neither Olivia Rodrigo or Avril Lavigne. The Pet Shop Boys had this same problem in the late 90s/early 00s when no one outside their fanbase cared about their new material, the tours were selling poorly and their big attempt at a west end musical had to close early after lack of ticket sales and they later admitted they almost threw in the towel and gave up around that time, until later in the 00s when they won a Brit award and transitioned successfully into a legacy/National Treasure act who pack out venues again, even if few casual fans know any of their stuff from the last 25 years. Having just read the BBC News article about this it’s all seeming a bit cruel right now like people desperately want her to fail, I hope she emerges from this in the future even if she’s stuck just singing her 2008-2017 material until the end of time from now on.

Get rid of streaming completely, along with YouTube plays, ACR/SCR and whatever else they’ve added in the last decade. Songs can be downloaded on iTunes again for 79p or 59p later in their run, and every single one MUST have a CD single released at some point to be eligible, sold at supermarkets etc and HMV. A full wall of CDs of every song in the top 40 must be stocked by all retailers by law, and airplay on radio and the return of mediums like The Box and Top of the Pops to help TV play, they can then go over to Magic or VH1 once they’ve been out for a few decades. In addition, songs can only be Christmas number one once, and anyone born after December 1989 is banned from the charts meaning Taylor Swift and Jordin Sparks are the youngest popstars are ever allowed to be.

Exactly the same! Two huge classics of their era surrounded by a lot of big artists with not so big songs.

I remember 2010 having a really low rating in the UK compared to most others in the last twenty years, probably because there was very little hype for Josh Dubovie to do well at all compared to Jade and Blue either side of it and no obvious big novelty entries that year to tune into. I think it also took place on a very sunny day which might have hit ratings further. Many of my friends this year didn’t even realise it was on compared to the massive publicity Liverpool got, and yeah no one ever thought Olly had a shot at winning compared to his almost-namesake Molly a decade ago, which was another big ratings year here.

Yeah, this all felt a bit odd as if something was missing, like they planned for some big cameo moment (even just one or two of them) and it all fell through late on causing them to frantically rewrite based on what they had. I don’t feel like the ABBA Voyage material did much to help the London show, as they were shown so close up it was very obviously CGI rather than the clever effect on stage of them actually looking like they are in front of you - not that the show really needs help as it sells so well. In an ideal world Bjorn and Benny show up and do a fun routine with Petra and Malin, only to be interrupted by Agnetha and Anni-Frid to get a nice moment with them all on the Eurovision stage together again, but I suppose they had made it clear early on in the planning that it wasn’t happening in a million years.

What a year to be back at the live grand final for the first time since Tel Aviv in 2019. First of all, I feel the same way about the crowd’s reaction to Israel as I did about Russia a decade ago - booing any contestant no matter what people’s political opinions are is utterly unacceptable and disgusting, and huge credit to Eden for still putting on a great performance and handling herself so well throughout even if the rumours of some of her delegation not quite being as sporting are true. Her song was in my top ten and part of me perversely wanted her to win just to see the utter meltdown that would take place, but then I did spent most of the night on edge that something bad was going to happen (whether it be a stage invasion or a full on massive audience brawl in the arena) so maybe it’s for the best that she can still be happy with her result and others can be relieved it was another country that won instead. My section was luckily mostly well behaved except for one or two annoying loud men, once of which after the UK/Israel double televote whammy did start screaming obscenities a bit too intensely but he calmed down after Ukraine’s votes came in. If anything Martin Österdahl got booed more than Israel and that wasn’t helped by a lot of angry Dutch fans over what happened with their entry. Speaking of the UK, as lovely as Olly is based on when I met him a few years back, Dizzy was your classic “it’s ok but not great” entry we’ve had over and over again that rarely translates into many points, and without Sam Ryder I think we’d just be numb and used to this by now so it would be a shame if we went back to unknown artists who chart outside the UK top 100 and are never heard of again, it was nice to see him do a James Newman and take it in good humour and I hope his career continues happily. Austria was also a disappointment as that was SO my thing, but it was the last to perform and also got lost behind a few big favourites. As for The Netherlands, I still think there’s more to the story of their disqualification - maybe he’d been a problem behind the scenes all week and a throwaway comment was the final straw to the EBU, or whether they just desperately needed a distraction from the Israel situation so chucked out a country that had already hosted it in recent years and wasn’t expected to win. Croatia was my favourite and I’m sad it missed out at the last second as it would finally be a cheap country to get to next year again - Switzerland is going to utterly bankrupt me!! But they have won for the first time since the year I was born, so it’s nice for it not to be one of the regular winners this time. If I can I’ll try and stay closer to the venue next year as travelling back to Copenhagen after the contest was unexpectedly hellish, they added lots of extra trains back to various parts of Sweden but not as many to Denmark (they did in 2013 but then look who the runaway favourites and eventual winner were that year) so we waited almost an hour on an increasingly rammed platform, the first train was already full for reasons I still can’t understand so none of us got on it, and while thank god an empty train arrived five minutes later and not the hour later we were fearing, everyone panicked and started pushing their way onto it causing me and a few others to almost fall into the gap onto the tracks. I’m now on a Flixbus to Gothenburg still exhausted from the drama of last night, and I hope for everyone’s sake we’re back next year to the fun, less political Eurovision I know and love!

From memory it’s about now in 2018 when Fuego overtook Toy in the odds, causing many to think there’d be the third shock winner in a row after Ukraine and Portugal (beating long time odds favourites Russia and Italy respectively) but Netta held on in the end. That year also had a huge rise for Ireland in the odds from the moment they qualified that didn’t translate into a big result in the final. The only other close year in recent times, 2021, I think Italy had reached #1 in the odds by now (getting ahead of the battle between Switzerland, Malta and France) but it still came as a great surprise when that huge public vote came in. I’ll be very happy for a Croatia win this time, a cheap country who’ve never won before (1989 doesn’t count) would be ideal for next year!

Pop! were just too late to the party really, they'd have fit in much better earlier in the decade but even by then seemed like something from a different era comparing them to the likes of Girls Aloud and the Sugababes. I completely ignored them as a 15-16 year old at the time but now I'm quite enjoying them :lol: Good point on how they were marketed, the "right" way to do dancepop videos at the time was usually a colourful CGI video that got a lot of music channel play (XTM, Eyeopener, Dana Rayne etc) for the Eurodance songs, and for house it was usually three minutes of women not wearing much with the words 'CONTAINS THE VIDEO' in massive letters on the CD single cover.

I'm not sure if this one counts, but this 80s cover randomly got a lot of music channel airplay in late 2008 despite the song being four years old (a #2 hit in Germany in 2004) and sounding completely out of step with pop by the end of the decade: 5D7r_n5m7QE One of my earliest Buzzjack posts was about it and wondering why something so "90s sounding" was being pushed! If it did get a release it didn't chart.

Please tell me they're backdating them as I want artists like MC Mario, Zig & Zag and the WWF Superstars to finally get their shining moment.

Shiny Disco Balls was a big hit that went top 20, peaking at #15 and making it on Now 53 - it charted at #69 just on import sales before properly being released the following week.