The ESC Insight newsletter is back once more with the stories and happenings from across the Eurovision world. The ESC Insight team themselves were on the ground in Moldova for the National Final experience of a lifetime. Click onto this link for the full review of the news.
The newsletter also features the opinion’s of our editor Ben Robertson in his Robertson’s Reflection section. This week he tackles the hot topic of allowing foreign acts into different National Selections.
Congratulations to both Ireland and Moldova for selecting their Eurovision songs this week. Both countries have been dragged through controversy about their selection processes in the same way during the build-up for the same root cause. Kitty Brucknell and Erika Selin started off conversation chains that never really met in the middle, and Edvard’s resulting victory in Moldova has reignited the debate again over the weekend, is it ever ok to have completely foreign acts taking part in beloved National Finals? Yes, to a point.
None of these acts manipulated or fiddled the rule book personally to get their entries selected. Both Ireland and Moldova openly allowed composers to send their entries in from wherever they lived across our glorious planet. I hope what happened next is that a panel of esteemed music experts then listened through all the tracks submitted anonymously and selected the best ones to go through. Songs are songs at the end of the day, and if they are chosen to be good enough they are good enough. As long as this process is fair and gives equal chance to all then who are we to be critical if not just one but every song came from a foreign field. It just means the local composers weren’t good enough.
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