By far the best song and best performance of the night, so a deserved winner. And perhaps Brexit might be a factor in alternative ways - would be the ultimate irony for Europe to vote for loads of Europeans to go to Britain next year.
The show tonight was pretty dire though - poor filler, not the greatest of stages and considering the opportunity the combined vote system had a very lazy winners announcement at the end. The best bit of it was Mans and Petra.
It was a huge improvement on last year - the production values were occasionally a bit of a mess and much of it didn't feel finished, but in terms of being a show it didn't feel like an afterthought. The little inserts also feel like the BBC slowing trying to educate the British public on what you actually need to win Eurovision these days. It's going slowly in the right direction.
The winning song was the best option given how everyone performed on the night. The last one, the one that went "put down our weapons", was the most relevant song, the one that sounded most like a modern Eurovision song, but she the live performance wasn't up to scratch from note one. Also, there's less the BBC can get wrong with the Lucie Jones song - hopefully we will be spared comedy drummers or long lingering shots of backing singers, and they'll just bung a spotlight on her and let her sing.
In terms of "Oh we're doomed because of Brexit", while politics will inevitably to some degree come in to voting intentions it's not as much as you'd imagine. Russia does very well every year and everyone hates them - it's because they send good songs with good staging. We've been sending trashing for pretty much the whole of the 21st century and we're just rebuilding our reputation now.
I would like us to come top five, just to shut up the "it's all political these days" brigade.
Not convinced this is the song to do it, though. As ever, it's too safe, too clean, and will probably barely register on the night with all the other countries. Every year, on the night, our performance seems a bit meh and gets lost amongst eveything else. This years song doesn't really go anywhere.
There is always a danger of not being good or bad enough to be spotted.
The UK's trajectory this year seems similar to Poland last year. They had a super-relevant modern pop song in their national final but it didn't translate live, so they set the guy who looked like a musketeer. Juries hated it, but the public loved it. Accepting disapora will be part of that but not all of it - because it doesn't translate into Polish votes every year - you wonder if there are any lessons to be learned for us in terms of selling a safe ballad.
It would be nice if we could win and then host the finals in 2018 right in the midst of the soon-to-be-tragically-hilariously-bad Article 50 negotiations.
:-(
A former member
You never know, there might vote for use to win to keep us in
The song has got to number 47 on the iTunes chart already and was trending for searches on Apple Music last night. It's growing on me the more I listen to it.
You never know, there might vote for use to win to keep us in
Its the people on social media asking how we can still compete in the ESC when we leave the EU that makes me laugh (most being Remain supporters, I must add). đ
Well we haven't competed for years - just been an irrelevant sideshow far less important to Europe than they are to us. Heck, a precursor for Brexit when you think about it.
