BillyH

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.

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?!

It needs to be #1 next year because then it’ll be a huge story of the same song being Xmas #1 twice, two years in a row. It also needs to be #1 in 2026 due to it being 40 years since Wham’s split and 10 years since George Michael died. It also needs to be #1 in 2027 as that’ll be the big 40 Years since Fairytale of New York chart battle. It also needs to be #1 in 2028 to celebrate 30 years since George Michael came out, and for what have been his 65th birthday. It also needs to be #1 in 2029 to celebrate 10 years since the film ‘Last Christmas’…

Slade really was the king of all Christmas songs right up until probably the mid-2000s, until Love Actually for Mariah and Kirsty's death/the 2005 re-release for The Pogues pushed them both ahead. Someone at work thought Slade were a one hit wonder who only did that one song, which even for a 80s baby like me sounds mad.

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.