BillyH

I remember Sertab getting quite a bit of airplay on music channels like The Box, which was still a very powerful channel then helping songs like XTM's Fly On The Wings of Love to huge chartruns (also based on a Eurovision winner!) but sadly it didn't get it into top 40. The early 2000s were a bit of a dark age for Eurovision here with low UK ratings and songs that weren't the home entry being completely ignored in the charts, hitting a low around 2000-01 but by '03 things were on the up and from memory that year's contest rated very well.

I remember this and it seemed to coincide with a major change that removed streaming limits on the free version of the service, before then (and since about mid-2011) if you listened to a song over five times it wouldn't let you play it anymore, which seems mad now but this is the early streaming days. It definitely marked the point for me when Spotify started to gain traction over iTunes, even though I still use my battered old iPod Nano to this day - still with a load of downloads from a computer that no longer exists. Agreed that these sales seem low but it's very common for this era, it's a shame because I prefer this stuff to the music a decade or two later even though sales/streaming figures are so astronomically different!

I mean to be fair this was also Georgia 2009, the key difference then being that everyone likes Georgia and found it funny - there was no way in a million years that they were actually expecting to sing ‘We Don’t Want To Put In’ live on stage in Moscow, it was all a statement on the recent South Ossetia conflict. Ukraine in 2016 did win with a political song but much of Europe were on their side and it was just subtle enough to be accepted into the contest. It would be pretty horrible on the artist if we had a Russia 2014/15 situation of being booed by half the arena every time they got points which was a recent low point in my memory, so I feel like if they do have to pull out because of this (which like Georgia ‘09/Belarus 2021 I do see as being slightly planned) it is probably for the best right now.

I'd been checking regularly and was just about to start work, judging by other happy people on Twitter it does look like it was a surprise early morning release! Still tons available for the grand jury final for anyone looking for those, and happily my afternoon rehearsal tickets sold within minutes and Ticketmaster Sweden allow resale tickets to UK bank cards. I'm a little worried about getting back to Copenhagen after the show in the early hours of the morning, but there does look to be an hourly nightly service and back in 2013 they arranged extra trains in both directions between 12:30am and 1:30am every 20 minutes, so hopefully I won't be stranded too long :lol: For comparison, Stockholm 2016 had a 24 hour metro service (a scrum but got home eventually), Kiev '17 one of the stewards helped call a taxi for me, Lisbon '18 I could just walk back to my hostel and Tel Aviv '19 had a free bus service that took me back to the city centre.

Thanks to a surprise release of tickets at about 8am this morning(!) I'm now going to my first live grand final since 2019 :) Slightly broke but hopefully I can resell my afternoon rehearsal tickets on Ticketmaster to get some of the money back!

Holy shit, Ultrasonic as in Annihilating Rhythm from 1994?!

Didn’t know how close 1986 was between Reet Petite and Caravan of Love! And how massive the PSB’s lead was over the Pogues in the last chart of 1987, but that is a lot closer the following week so it still counts as a notable battle.

Yep, been checking daily after failing miserably in that first on sale day.

Out of nowhere a ton of tickets for the Afternoon Rehearsal of the Grand Final suddenly appeared today for about £70 each, so that’s my first tickets secured since Turin 2022! (they’re high up and still crazy prices for a rehearsal compared to a few years ago, but I’m fine with that as I can just go back to my Copenhagen hotel that evening if needed to watch the real thing!)

LadBaby has reversed his promise and announced "Fairytale of Sausage Rolls" as a tribute to Shane. not really

I feel like every year I make a have I/haven't I got tickets post, and I hoped that this time it would be a bit more relaxed (just as Stockholm 2016 was) as we're finally back to a November release after a few years where the tickets were put on sale much closer to the contest, but...yeah, no. 172,000 in the queue at 9am UK time and I'm only just below 100,000 now. It really does seem like the 2010s days of just casually getting a ticket on the day they go on sale and flights and accommodation still being normally priced is a thing of the past now. Admittedly two of the easier years I got everything I wanted were when it was held in Ukraine and Israel (both in a safer environment than now) but even for Stockholm and Lisbon it was never this much of a scrum. I've got my flights and room booked so I guess I'll be watching from a Eurovillage in Malmo - or even better if there's one in Copenhagen so I don't have any problems getting back to my Danish hotel at whatever time it finishes!

When did Wham overtake The Pogues, was it the second half of the 2010s? During the iTunes days it seemed to be AIWFCIY and Fairytale of New York being the main battle each year.

I spent most of the night sitting at home annoyed that I’d completely failed to get anywhere near Liverpool and never had a chance (no tickets, which were too expensive anyway, and no trains able to get me there), and the end of it watching almost all my favourites completely die a death with the voting - my top 3 came 9th, 19th and last respectively. Loreen was in my top 10 but I can’t find myself particularly excited about a country who last won 8 years ago with a singer who already won 11 years ago, similar to how underwhelmed I’d have been had Russia won in 2016. I’ll be streaming the hell out of Solo anyway in the days ahead, the great 1998 summer hit that never was.

Same, although I did hold onto two £490 hospitality tickets for as long as possible in my basket (not even for the live final but the jury final) until I wisely saw sense and released them! I can't complain too much as I've been to five of them from 2016-22 and for many this will be their first opportunity. I already have my accommodation and train tickets sorted so if extras become available then great, otherwise it's very easy this time to pop back home from Liverpool to watch it at home instead. The days of €130 standing Live Grand Final tickets seen as recently as Lisbon 2018 seem pretty gone now, unless a country like Moldova win. Now watch loads of people who didn't get tickets cancel their hotel bookings they nabbed months ago and hopefully make them a bit more available and affordable!

I remember reading a few articles over the years of others who did this but I presumed this became impossible after 2008 when #1s gradually stopped being released physically - there was a lot of buzz and media interest when Crazy by Gnarls Barkley reached #1 just on downloads, but this was really only due to the rules changing at that time which allowed a song to chart a week before physical release which was still needed at the time. Coldplay’s Viva La Vida was the first with no physical release in the UK (but got one abroad) and Leona’s Run the first with no physical anywhere, neither of which got noticed outside of chart forums like this. My main physical single years spanned 2007 to 2010, I had a fair few from that time but they later got left behind in a house move. I’ll be gutted if any are worth anything now but given the amount I still see for pennies in charity shops I’m guessing not.

As a Londoner, Liverpool is brilliant news, far cheaper by train than Glasgow would have been. The hotels are already insane but I’m hoping for some extra late night trains/buses to London, or what happened in Turin when everyone cancelled their refundable hotel bookings after they failed to get tickets and after that there were loads of cheap options available. The accommodation being crazy/full from the *day of* the city announcement really has been a recent thing in this decade, as late as Tel Aviv (and Lisbon, Kiev, Stockholm before that) everything just stayed the same price and you could book easily at any time. Makes things much more annoying when planning.

A couple of years ago I did a test with my parents (born 1967) when I picked the most well-known song from every Now album and asked if they knew it or not. They knew everything from the 1980s with ease. They also knew the 1990s but a few only after listening to them rather than just reading the title & artist name. They finally reached a blank at about the year 2000 (Now 46 I think) when they’d have been 33, and only the occasional one or two after that. Having just turned 34 myself there’s at least one song in this thread that I haven’t heard at all (Easy On Me) and a few I only recently heard years after they were released (Perfect, Despacito, Someone You Loved) - this can seem absolutely baffling to those much more connected to recent music, but Random Music’s post is a good overview of how songs that can seem all conquering and unescapable do in fact escape quite a few when it isn’t part of their daily life. For me songs become much less recognisable in the last five years with the exception of Eurovision stuff and the occasional movie hit like Shallow or Greatest Showman songs. I’d agree with Valerie (the Amy cover) and Shape of You, along with the 21-era Adele tracks. Probably Happy as well, I would have said Rather Be a few years ago but not sure anymore.

It’s a bit confusing this year (and tbf every year) as there’s only a small standing area and it wasn’t put on general sale, it just went to the OGAE pre-sale etc - the seated tickets for the grand final were as high as €350 which is slightly insane. In perspective Lisbon 2018 was €120 for standing and that was a massive floor open to everyone, which subsequently shot up by about £200 the following year in Tel Aviv and hasn’t gone down that much since. I’ve just gone for the jury final the previous night which I was able to get pretty speedily yesterday, happily soon after a ton of cheap hotel/guesthouses in Turin suddenly became available again presumably from people cancelling their bookings after not getting tickets. Flights were booked at Christmas when they were really affordable (into Turin and out of Milan) so looks like I’ll be at Eurovision for the first time in three years - even if it’s just jury final and Eurovillage!

I predict this to reach #2, have a few years of underrated status, be used in a successful 2030 romcom film, and finally top the chart in 2047, just before One More Sleep finally gets there too. In all honesty I love this, I actually heard it a few weeks ago when Ed performed it at my workplace (with strict instructions not to film/record it!) and I thanked him for writing a new classic which he seemed to appreciate. Will happily have this become a new festive fave which only seems to happen about once a decade these days.

It really is less "these are the biggest songs of the year" these days and more "here's who we could get to show up". I don't think anyone on either special is in the YTD top ten? Ideal lineup would include Ed, Adele, Maneskin, Lil Nas X, Dua Lipa, Maneskin, Olivia Rodrigo and Maneskin, but I suppose getting them to show up in a cold studio in Elstree to do a couple of takes of their hit single/s and leave is too much work.

Adele feat. Ed Sheeran - Fairytale of New York (with Elton on piano for the hell of it)

Amazingly I was at this and it won’t be a surprise to say the atmosphere was euphoric - seeing them in a 800 capacity venue will be nice to compare to their Brixton gig in February which holds almost 5000! Mammamia got a crazy reaction and with the release of the video I’m hoping it’ll be another top 40 hit for them.

I sold my copies of Now 53 and 58 on cassette last summer on eBay and was genuinely shocked by how much they went for after some bidding wars - one for £28 and one for £41!! One was bought in WHSmith in 2007 for £3 (the last time I saw cassettes on sale for years) and the other cost just 30p at a car boot sale in 2008, so that was a heck of a profit! Presumably the 2000s releases are quite sought after as there can’t be many of them.

Ok, so the 21 year old me absolutely loved this to the point where me and a few other Buzzjackers predicted at the time it would be the first #1 of the 2010s - it was one of the very last songs I bought on CD single along with ‘Bad Romance’ at the end of 2009! Annoyingly the radio edit cuts out the best bit of the song that’s intact on the video version (the long build-up at the start) so to make the video mix you’d have to edit it in from the full version which I never bothered to do. I’ve seen Wiley “live” twice (V2012 and Reading 2017) but he just mimed to the original songs which was a bit underwhelming and the crowd was pretty toxic. I’ll probably bow out of this thread by around the end of 2014 as the start of the decade was peak clubbing era for me (when they’d play I Gotta Feeling about three times a night and tease the opening riff at random points between other songs) but once I turned about 26 I know less and less songs and my social life changed. But I’m more than happy to revisit the first half of the decade and if the next song is what I think it is it’s a proper evocative banger!

I don't know if this would work the other way around as US hits that did nothing chartwise in the UK seem to eventually be known here anyway - see 'Baby Got Back' (#1 US, #56 UK) and T-Pain's 'Buy U A Drank' (#1 US, #DNC UK) as two examples of that.