Welcome to September and another ESC Insight Newsletter. As the news and suspense around Eurovision 2016 races off the start line, we’ll be bringing you all the news, reviews and updates from now and until that dramatic final high-speed corner. Read it in full here, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already done so.
This week we look at the news of countries confirming to enter in Stockholm, as well as the latest entrants confirmed for the Junior Eurovision Contest just two months away. In the regular column Robertson’s Reflection our Newsletter Editor Ben Robertson gives a review of the Guy Sebastian concert in Stockholm and how he grasped the opportunity to spread his career.
Guy Sebastian plays Stockholm (image: Ben Robertson)
Guy opened up on stage and felt relaxed enough to talk through the unobvious mistakes he made and to joke about all the beautiful Swedish ladies in the audience (to be fair, he had a point, the demographic was mixed but certainly had a gender balance you wouldn’t have got in Vienna). It almost had the impression of this being Guy’s working holiday. He regaled us repeatedly about how he’d just came back over to Europe from a big arena tour in Australia selling out 15,000 locations. Looking deeper, perhaps there’s a sense of bitterness in not being somewhere bigger here in Sweden’s capital, but also it doesn’t matter and he knows it. The aim was to get here, and he made it.
The set itself was fantastic, I never looked deep into Guy’s back catalogue, but those eight albums of him show off some amazing songwriting. Some of Guy’s lyrics are poignant and crafted in a way I had previously dismissed from him. Also live his vocal gymnastics are some of the best I have ever heard and not any point in the 90 minute show did I feel he was over-doing it. This was a pro going through his motions with a freedom that befitted the tale that led to him being in Stockholm over one sunny summer weekend.
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He’s not bitter about the different concert audience sizes. He knows he has to start somewhere over there. He does small and large gigs in Australia too – enjoys them both.