Eurovision may be over for another year, but that does not mean that we on the ESC Insight team are quite finished with our work. Oh no. For a start, you can subscribe to our email newsletter which we will be posting out to you fortnightly throughout the summer and beyond. In the newsletter Ben Robertson rounds up the Eurovision news from across the continent as well as picking out the highlights of videos and articles to build up the excitement before our trips to Malta and Vienna in the next season.
He also takes a moment in each newsletter to give ‘Robertson’s Reflection‘ – with his views on the contest. This time it’s an argument that the right song won Eurovision.
“It is so easy to look at the charts now as our proxy, but that’s not what Eurovision is about. That is a chart of popular music, and Eurovision is a song contest. Songs have a subtle difference compared with music, they have to grab attention, they have to entice you to join in, to be a part of the entire act. Music can have that purpose, but can have many others as well. You can dance to it, play it in the background, create soundtracks to it, but a song is more unique, more personal and more at the forefront when it is on.
When I first heard ‘Rise Like A Phoenix‘ via Austrian radio, I groaned. It didn’t have the chemistry, it didn’t have the sparkle, it didn’t explode and take me on the journey. When you see it live though, the meshing of the story and the character and growth through the three minutes is captivating. That’s not to say that ‘Calm After The Storm‘ wasn’t like this, but the mood didn’t capture the crowd and the continent as much as Conchita stole them all in Copenhagen.”
To read more of this newsletter follow the link here. The archive to all the old newsletters is also available to browse at your pleasure, and you can sign up to the mailing list via this link.
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