With crushing inevitability, the United Kingdom came last in the Eurovision Song Contest. Our entry – Eins, Zwei, Drei by Sam Battle, a 37-year-old YouTuber from Lincolnshire who performs under the name Look Mum No Computer – received the dreaded nul points from the audience vote.
From the international juries, it bagged a single point, courtesy of Ukraine, leaving it 515 points adrift of Bulgaria’s winning song Bangaranga and confirming it as the UK’s poorest performance since 2021, when James Newman received no points whatsoever. So how did it go so wrong – again? Let me count the ways.
1. The performance
On the big night, the performance fell as flat as a pancake in Vienna’s massive Wiener Stadthalle arena. Battle’s live vocals had no bite and the accompanying thumping bassline just echoed about inconsequentially. The song was a mash-up of styles: a bit synthpop with a shouty chorus that looked to pander to the European audience while remaining “wackily” British. “Eins, zwei, drei / Darlin’ I need something salty / Eins, zwei, drei / With a slice of pepperoni,” Battle sang, sporting a pink boiler suit, before going on to mention roly-poly with custard.
The staging saw Battle surrounded by dancers with fury boxes on their heads as he sat in a recreation of an office, pretending to be bored, then clowned around on rows of desks. While they were clearly aiming for a deliberately lo-fi aesthetic, the whole thing appeared pitifully underpowered: the poor guy looked lost. He did his best, but it felt excruciating at times.
Sam Battle’s performance received just a single point in the voting – UNIVERSAL NEWS AND SPORT (SCOTLAND)
2. Eurovision doesn’t do quirky
Eurovision is a broad church that embraces a lot of different styles: camp, bombastic, mawkish, outrageous, colourful and emotional. But the one thing it doesn’t seem to do anymore is “quirky”. The last time a larky comedy song won was in 2018 when Israel’s Netta won with Toy, a song in which the Björk-lookalike made chicken noises. All the winners since then have been either operatic ballads, operatic bangers, rock songs or – in the case of Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra in 2022 – folk-tinged paeans to their war-torn homeland. It seems that, in selecting the eccentric Battle, the BBC (which chooses the UK’s Eurovision entry with the help of music industry experts) misjudged the prevailing Eurovision mood.
Sam Battle’s performance of ‘Eins, zwei, drei’ fell as flat as a pancake – Getty
3. The timing
History has shown that acts who perform later in the Grand Final tend to do better. Performing early on hobbles your chances; in the past decade, no winner has performed in the first eight slots. Performing second is the worst — no one in the so-called “death slot” has ever won Eurovision. This year, the UK’s slot was bang in the middle: 14th out of 25. The last Eurovision winner to have performed in the 14th slot was Denmark in 2000, which didn’t exactly bode well. Having said that, Bucks Fizz performed 14th when they won in 1981 for Making Your Mind Up. Alas, such success was not to be repeated this year.
Bucks Fizz pictured in 1981 – HULTON ARCHIVE
4. Song choice
These days, most Eurovision acts wear their influences heavily. The show can seem like an episode of ITV’s Stars in Their Eyes. It’s a fun game to guess which best-selling act each performer is ripping off… sorry, paying homage to. Just look at this year’s contest. Tonight Matthew, we saw Bulgaria’s Dara channelling Brat superstar Charli XCX… and she won. Meanwhile Czechia’s Daniel Zizka brought to mind Scottish troubadour Jacob Alon, Germany’s Sarah Engels mimicked Dua Lipa and Norway’s Jonas Lovv effectively did a Harry Styles impression. You get the idea.
The problem with Eins, Zwei, Drei was that there was no clear single influence. It was a mixture of more obscure sources such as Kraftwerk, Kasabian and Klaxons (all the Ks) plus a dollop of Blur and a generous glug of 1980s synthpop composer Thomas Dolby. It was overthought.
Battle’s performance had ’no clear single influence’, says our writer – AFP
5. Everyone hates us (again)
I mean, let’s not get paranoid. But, when it comes to Eurovision, our cousins across the Channel clearly hate us. Battle tried to pander to the Europeans by singing in German and delivering lines like, “All my pounds, they feel counterfeit / I need some Euros to counter it.” It didn’t work. We’re clearly still being punished for Brexit although, to be honest, we rarely did very well before that either.
But, all hope is not lost
Did you notice the nationality of the aforementioned pop stars who influenced this year’s performers – Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and the like? They’re all British. And this is where the huge irony of the UK’s repeated Eurovision failure lies. As a country, we’re very good at producing the artists who provide the source material for the contest’s victors. We’re just not very good at ripping ourselves off. Maybe we think it’s beneath us to plunder what we’ve already exported around the world; to get high on our own supply, as it were. But perhaps we should start. We might actually win.