Something feels different about Eurovision this year. And that’s not just because the Graham Norton-narrated song competition is being held on home turf this time round. It’s something else: a sense of – dare I say it – hope? Confidence in our act, even?
It’s a new feeling for those of us whose experiences of watching the pop music marathon started post-Bucks Fizz. Since the year 2000, the UK has put in an objectively tragic shift on the show, offering up a conveyor belt of talent show rejects (although I stand by Javine), past-their-prime pop stars and almost offensively bad novelty acts. (See: Scooch stepping onto the stage like they were the cast of Airport.) And we’ve, deservedly, racked up low, low scores for it.
We’re entering a new era now, though. First, Sam Ryder – with his beaded boiler suit, choppy ginger layers and punchy soprano vocals – bagged us second place in Turin last year, and now we’ve got Mae Muller to represent us: an actually cool pop star, who came up supporting Little Mix and whose track “I Wrote A Song” is earworm-level-catchy. This change isn’t down to luck. It’s because the brains behind the success of Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey, Caroline Polachek, Ellie Goulding and Leigh-Anne Pinnock have stepped in to help the BBC with their battle for British Eurovision victory.
Few people know how to create pop megastars like Ed Millett and Ben Mawson, co-founders of Tap Music. “We got an email out of the blue from the BBC about one of our artists asking if they’d be up for doing Eurovision,” says Mawson of how the pair first got involved with the show. “Ed actually snapped back ‘no thanks’.” But when the duo began researching the event further, their interest was piqued. They came on board as consultants after discovering two things: that Eurovision’s audience is getting younger and younger, and twice as many people watch it as the Super Bowl Halftime Show. “I just realised what an absolutely monumental opportunity it was for anyone,” says Mawson. “Because, in a world where it’s harder and harder for new artists to break through – it’s TikTok or nothing, almost – this is a single night that can potentially have an enormous impact.”
Convincing label bosses to put forward new talent for the event was more of a challenge. Millett tells me that labels wouldn’t take meetings with them if they knew they were about Eurovision, so they’d organise meet-ups under different guises. “In truth, two years ago, it was very hard to get people to sign onto it. Eurovision almost exists outside of the music business. It’s not on anyone’s radar,” he says, noting that labels were particularly worried about artists getting low scores because of politics – something that data showed was unfounded. “Obviously, Sam Ryder’s success went a big way to proving that all of the stories about it being political were just nonsense.”
This time around, Millett and Mawson were originally considering entering a song by a super group of more established artists, when Mae Muller came to them with “I Wrote A Song”. Already on their radar because of her voice, warm personality and passion for Eurovision, the track, which she turned around in a week, solidified her as their top choice. “Because you’ve only got three minutes, it’s got to be a snappy pop song,” says Mawson. “A track with instrumental flourishes that lend themselves to staging and choreography.”
Muller’s preparation for this week has been as much about “diplomacy” as anything else. In the past, British stars have made the critical error of failing to establish a fanbase beyond the UK, Millett tells me. “And there’s a whole strategy that goes into play because of the voting system. You’ve got tiny places like San Marino, and they have the same amount of voting power as Germany,” he says, which means Muller’s focus has been on “galvanising voters” in smaller countries where it’s easier to build awareness. “At the last count, she had done 90 interviews.”
And what can we expect from the performance itself? Millett says it’s going to be major, and that the investment they’ve put into those three minutes is on a par with a Grammy performance, whereas in the past, “the attitude was to treat it like hopping over to Germany to do an evening talk show”. This means we can expect Grade A styling from Muller on show night. “Normally, at the stage she’s at, you’d want styling to reflect relatability – you don’t want to look like you just landed fully formed – but this is a completely different thing,” he says. Basically, expect a Dua Lipa-level look. Will this be the moment that solidifies a less-tragic fate for the UK in the competition for the next 20 years? We’ll find out tonight.
