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RTÉ News
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Eurovision - what's next for Ireland?
Last night, Emmy's Eurovision party came to a sudden end at the St Jacobshalle in Basel, Switzerland. After a busy week of rehearsals, promotions and build-up, the Norwegian singer's entry Laika Party failed to qualify for Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final. Ten of the sixteen countries in the second semi-final got the votes to see them safely through to the final, and the stage is now set for the 26 finalists to compete to win the 69th edition of the competition on Saturday night. It has been a difficult pill for Irish fans to swallow after the celebrations last year when Bambie Thug sailed into the final, so are there steps to be taken to ensure our success in the future? Eurovision Song contest Tom - ESC Tom - is the host of a YouTube channel which celebrates all things Eurovision. All week in Basel, he was crunching the numbers, following the odds, and he was clear that Ireland had a battle on its hands to qualify. Last night after the semi-final, he told RTÉ News that he had been optimistic in the build-up because "it's such a catchy song", but he added that when the bookies were saying that it was not going to qualify, "I was a little bit prepared for this, but I am disappointed." For the fans outside the venue, that same word rang true: disappointment. Many, including friends Michelle and Martina, who had travelled from Ireland, made it clear they thought Emmy had done a "wonderful job" and they were "very grateful to her for all she had done for Ireland" and that she "should be proud." Emmy herself spoke about how grateful she was for the experience, and wrote a message on her social media saying, "I'm SO sorry, Ireland. We will forever love you and be grateful and honoured to have represented you." Sharp disappointment from all sides, and some Eurovision Irish fans are now calling for a change to how the Irish candidate is chosen. Even though Ireland has not placed highly in recent years, with the last win coming almost thirty years ago in 1996 for Eimear Quinn's The Voice, there is a deep and on-going affection for Eurovision in Ireland. It was sparked when an 18-year-old schoolgirl Dana first won the contest for Ireland in 1970 with All Kinds Of Everything. Ten years later, when Johnny Logan scooped the top spot with What's Another Year? in his white suit, the die was cast and Irish fans took ownership of the competition. His win again in 1987 with Hold Me Now cemented the deal. Then the glory days in the 1990s when Ireland had an impressive run of winners, including Linda Martin with Why Me? in 1992, a song also written by Logan, Niamh Kavanagh's In Your Eyes in 1993, and Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan with Rock 'n' Roll Kids in 1994. At this point in this year's betting, Sweden is topping the poll for tomorrow night's competition. If they win, they will knock Ireland off the top spot in the Eurovision hierarchy. Both Ireland and Sweden are currently tied at seven wins each, so an eighth win for Sweden will mean an unwelcome update to the record books. So why can't Ireland reclaim its former glory on the Eurovision stage? For Michael Kealy, head of the RTE Delegation, it is a competition that is "getting harder and harder to do well in." Speaking in Basel after last night's disappointment he said, "I am like a broken record sometimes, about the constraints that RTE have unfortunately compared to other broadcasters around Europe. "Look at the time and effort that other countries put into, selecting and supporting an act, the 360 degree support you need from social media from the moment they are selected". For Irish fans, they continue to have questions about RTÉ's approach to the selection process and Ireland's reliance on a single dedicated Late Late Show Eurosong special to choose the final entry. When asked if Ireland needed to change this, Mr Kealy pointed out "what we did this year was exactly the same as we did last year, which got us a top 10 finalist with Bambie Thug." He pointed to the differences in the scales here and went on to describe how Finland's entry, for example, is chosen in front of a massive audience at an arena. He outlined his view that "it's a question of resources and it's a simple as that," adding that "you don't want to hear about RTÉ's woes from me but that's the truth." Experts and devoted fans like ESCTom agree about the gaps between the selection processes here and other European competitors, too. ESCTom told RTÉ News, "There are 37 eligible countries in this competition - with 26 of them hosting dedicated national finals and shows including rounds, semi-finals and then finals to choose their songs. "Eurovision fans like myself have been calling for this for Ireland for years." In his view this approach would lead to showing "the Irish public several options and letting them choose a really great final competitor." But while the fans continue to thrash out the mechanics and processes behind the Eurovision spotlight, it is clear that even without the wins in recent years, the song contest continues to hold a unique place in people's hearts and it has a magic that is inexplicable to many. Just ask nine-year-old Dubliner Katie Lovett whose parents flew her to Basel this week as a special treat because she is such a big Eurovision fan. In her lifetime, Ireland has only made it to the final once, with Bambie Thug last year, and yet she loves the competition. "I love music and I love that loads of different people come from different countries and I just think it's really nice." she said. After the lights come down on the grand final in Basel tomorrow night, Ireland's Eurovision fans will once more be knee deep in analysis of what can be done to get Ireland back in centre stage, because who doesn't Laika party?
New European
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Caught in a Eurovision controversy
Eurovison's slogan is United By Music. Given that an estimated 163 million people watched the 2024 broadcast, it seems fair enough. This year's contest, in Basel in mid-May, will mark 70 years since the European Broadcasting Union set up the committee that devised the song contest, intending it to promote cultural understanding and peaceful cooperation in a continent still recovering from the destruction and animosities of WWII. Yet among the harmony, there can be discord. Just ask Chris Harms. Harms, singer with Hamburg goth/metal rockers Lord of the Lost, knows what it is like to be caught up in a Eurovision controversy. While overtly political songs or nationalistic statements have been banned from the start, rows have still managed to erupt over Israel (which joined the EBU in 1973), over the Balkan conflict, over a border dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan and more recently over Ukraine and Russia. The Lost of Germany reacts during the voting following performances of the final of the Eurovision Song contest 2023. Photo: OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images Harms's band, who will tour the UK later in the year, were the German entry in 2023. That was the year Liverpool played host on behalf of Ukraine, who had won the previous year but were unable to stage it at home in the wake of the invasion, for which Russia was banned. Even for a seasoned musician who says he had 'played 1,000 shows before that already, been on tours in more than 40 countries' the experience was a blur. 'I still feel like I haven't really processed all of it,' he tells me, 'because it was one of the most intense times in our career.' Harms, who recently released a surprisingly different solo album, 1980, talks about the numbers – hundreds of interviews over two weeks on Merseyside, 55 seconds for the changeover between acts, 100 people rushing on and off stage at a time and 20 cameras recording it all. But what he can't avoid is what happened to Lord of the Lost and their song, Blood & Glitter. It all started, he says, with the Grand Final Flag Parade, first introduced in 2013, in which the competitors walk out on stage one after the other, holding their national colours. At the 2023 contest, waving flags was never likely to be a completely neutral gesture, and the fervently anti-nationalist Lord of the Lost's solution was not to carry one at all. Harms says, 'We said in many interviews over the years, 'you will never see us going somewhere waving our national flag'. We thought that running around with this sheet would just look stupid. I totally despise nationalism in general. Germany Entry Lord of the Lost performs on stage during The Eurovision Song Contest 2023 Grand Final. Photo:'I myself am very happy that I was born here, I feel very privileged, but I cannot be proud at being German. There are so many people waving the flag for the wrong reasons. The people you usually see on the street waving the flag are the people you don't wanna see wave any flag. 'Then for the [official Eurovision] TikTok reel where everybody was waving their flag, we said, 'We can wave the St Pauli flag from our football team, because it's the skull and bones, it looks beautiful, we can wave the white flag for peace, you know, or a pride flag'. They said 'Yeah, we have a pride flag', so we did that.'' Lord of the Lost had enjoyed a good fortnight in Liverpool – visiting a local school to play music with pupils and answer questions, and doing an acoustic show at the Cavern Club – but this was the start of a bad night. When the final votes were counted, Sweden's Loreen was top with 583 points. Germany were some way behind, with 18. They finished rock bottom, even beaten by the UK. What was to follow was even worse. While the band were accustomed to playing 50,000-seat stadiums supporting Iron Maiden, exposure to a live television audience of 167 million was in another category completely, gaining them a significant number of new fans worldwide, yet simultaneously exposing them to a whole new level of scrutiny and abuse, including death threats. 'After Eurovision,' says Chris, 'the amount of hate comments from German right wing people about the flag and stuff, it was so intense, we had to block them all, and I needed to clear my mind about that. It took me a while to understand that when someone writes something about you in a hate comment, it doesn't say anything about you but it says everything about these people.' Once the fury had died down, Lord of the Lost decided that there had been so many good things about their Eurovision week that they decided to travel to 2024 host city Malmö and perform a show of their own the night before the Grand Final. Echoing the belief of the competition's founders that music can be a unifying force, Chris states that the band would happily do it all over again. 'If you just go there because of the contest and you lose the sense of musicality and the art and the togetherness, it doesn't mean a thing,' he says. 'We would still enjoy it even if we'd go last again.' Chris Harms' solo album, 1980, is out now, and Lord of the Lost will tour the UK in October and November
