We should have had vision to bow out years ago...
THE very best of luck to the Wild Youth lads, off to represent Ireland at the Eurovision - but you’d have to say, a return to the glory days looks highly unlikely.
The song We Are One is well put together in a sort of intro-versesoaring-chorus-emotional climax kinda way – but sounds weirdly like a Coldplay B-side from the early noughties. And that’s never a good thing.
Not that it makes much of a difference. Ireland’s incredible run in the Eurovision was doomed from the moment the former Soviet Union started to break up and the Iron Curtain began to rise.
Seriously, once all of those former Soviet empire countries across central and eastern Europe started to wake up and get involved – along with the former Yugoslavia and the likes of Azerbaijan and Georgia – the game was up for Johnny Logan.
Ireland spent a decade in the noughties sending nice little songs, with homely, instantly forgettable singers, and we got obliterated by Serbian
Death Metal Nutters and Tashkent Techno Babes who looked like they’d driven to the competition in a glitter and sequinned covered T-64 tank.
And then there was the voting. Historic enemies like Croatia and Serbia, or Russia and Everybody, were so busy back-stabbing each other that little old Ireland couldn’t get a look in.
Last year, we actually sent a pretty good song, but it was, of course, lost in the huge story about war in Eastern Europe and the emotional Ukrainian win. We might as well have sent your toothless uncle Jimmy, banging a pair of spoons to the tune of Follow Me Up To Carlow, for all of the impact we had.
No, we should have gracefully withdrawn from the Eurovision a few years ago, accepted that the good times were over and never to return, and just let the Latvian Disco Divas get on with it.
Time to face facts – sending a boy band to take on three female tank commanders who are taking a week away from the frontline somewhere to blast Europe with a techno power ballad is a mug’s game.
Our incredible run was over when Soviet Union started to bread up