NEWMAN’S NEW VISION
After years of disappointment, Yorkshire’s James Newman was billed as the UK’s great hope at the Eurovision Song Contest – only for the event to be cancelled. Alex Green reports.
I feel like I need to finish what I started. I have learnt so much through the Eurovision community, and it’s such an amazing world. I want to carry on what I have started.
James Newman, the UK’s 2020 Eurovision entrant.
JAMES NEWMAN was driving to the supermarket when he heard the news. For the first time in its six decade history, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled – another casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.
Back in February, the 34-year-old from Settle in North Yorkshire was revealed as the UK’s latest entry, after Michael Rice placed last in 2019 with Bigger Than Us.
He was tasked with turning around the UK’s fortunes at the event.
But it seemed, just two months before he was due to travel to Rotterdam, to compete at the city’s Ahoy Arena, that his journey was being cut short.
“It was literally a few hours before they released their official statement,” he recalls from the kitchen-turnedoffice of his London home.
“I was driving to the shops to get some food and I had to pull over because I was like, ‘Oh my God’.
“It was a big moment to hear it had been cancelled and I had to take a minute to reset myself.”
The songwriter and brother of the hit singer John Newman was due to perform My Last Breath.
And unlike many recent UK entries, he was a proven hit-maker.
Newman helped write the Brit Award-winning Waiting All Night, performed by Rudimental and Ella Eyre.
He also wrote Lay It All On Me, performed by Rudimental featuring Ed Sheeran, and Blame, performed by Calvin Harris featuring his brother John.
“I definitely knew it was coming,” he sighs, sounding more than a little deflated.
“At first there were people saying that maybe Eurovision could be in a closed studio, or in the arena with noone there.
“But the more and more time went on, you realise that nothing like that would be possible.
“Everyone just had to hunker down. We were waiting for them to say it really.
“It’s so important for people’s health to not have gatherings, so a massive gathering, with 20,000 people and all the other people in the city... it wouldn’t be the greatest idea,” he laughs.
Newman says he’s “pretty sure” he had the virus, which was a concern as an asthmatic. “I had loads of symptoms and it made me a bit worried because I’ve got asthma, which is a worry with a respiratory disease which affects your lungs.
“I lost my sense of taste and smell and then I got a really tight chest and couldn’t breathe, so I went to my doctor and he said, ‘Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got it’.
“I was isolated anyway but it took me about a month to start feeling better. There were two weeks where I was absolutely knackered. I stayed in bed with chills, not a fever, luckily. I think I had like medium symptoms. I kept thinking about people that get it worse, thinking, ‘oh God, people must be going through hell with it, it’s that bad’.
“The scary thing was it kept coming and going, and coming and going, and you don’t know whether it’s gone or not. One day you can feel great and the next day you wake up and you can’t breathe again, or you can have two hours where you can’t breathe again. It’s so crazy.”
From a personal point of view, he says it “really solidified” the reasons for cancelling this year’s contest. “A hundred per cent. I was being so careful, I don’t know how I picked it up. It just shows how easy it is to get it. You can’t have 20,000 people in an arena. It’s the right thing to do, everyone’s got to stay healthy.”
There was a palpable sense that the UK might improve its standing at Eurovision this year.
Entrants have largely failed to finish in a high-ranking position in recent years, and a number of times have come in last place.
The last time the UK won Eurovision was in 1997, with Katrina and The Waves’ Love Shine A Light, and the UK has not finished in the top 10 since 2009, with Jade Ewen’s It’s My Time.
This year, BBC bosses scrapped the public vote and teamed up with the record label BMG to choose the singer and the song instead.
And Newman, who is signed to BMG, came out top.
“You see the previous years and the vibe in the arena and the energy – you want the audience there to play off it.
“It would have felt weird singing to an empty room,” he adds. At Eurovision, staging is everything. A good song can flounder on an underwhelming light show or clunky dance routine, while a mediocre entry can soar with just the right amount of strobe lighting.
Newman had already committed to an impressive stage production based on the music video for My Last Breath.
Inspired by Wim Hof, aka The Iceman, a Dutch extreme athlete known for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures, he wanted the stage lit up like “an icy tundra”.
“We were going to have a big cube of water and all the water was going to disappear on to the screens,” he explains excitedly.
“It was going to be a big tidal wave. It was going to be epic.
“You get the plans and you think ‘I can’t believe they’re going to actually make that’, so I was very excited to see it all come together.
“But obviously, that’s not going to happen now.”
The question on everybody’s lips is, of course, will he compete again?
So far, the contest’s producer, the European Broadcasting Union, has confirmed that Eurovision will return to Rotterdam in 2021.
On top of that, this year’s song entries will not be eligible next year, but artists may re-enter with a new song.
Newman is keen to have another stab at success, but must await the BBC, who hold the final decision, along with BMG.
“I feel like I need to finish what I started,” Newman asserts.
“I have learnt so much through the Eurovision community, and it’s such an amazing world.
“I want to carry on what I have started. But it’s up to the BBC and what they want to do.”
Despite the contest being absent from our lives, Newman is riding high off the back of the promotional campaign for the Eurovision that never was.
He has a new single out, the soaring ballad Enough, and an album in the works, which he is working on over Zoom. “I’m literally so busy without even having to leave the kitchen,” he laughs, sounding genuinely surprised.
Newman may be disappointed, but he’s philosophical about the realities of his situation.
“I might not be in Rotterdam but I’m still so busy. It’s a really nice feeling because it almost like… all is not lost.” ■ James Newman’s new single Enough is out now.