UNITED KINGDOM

The UK Final was held on February 8th at MediaCityUK Studios in Salford, hosted by Mel Giedroyc & Måns Zelmerlöw. In the final, each of the three songs were performed by two different artists and the expert jury decided which version would go to the public vote which would solely choose the winner. Going to Eurovision will be Michael Rice with “Bigger than us”

Michael starts off centre stage with a microphone stand. Behind him, initially in the shadows, are 4 backing singers 2 on either side. The background starts off quite starry but in the chorus the lights become bigger, more like stage lights and also has the effect of making the rectangles video screens look like skyscrapers. As the song goes on Michael moves around the front of the stage. His performance style is quite fidgety, which is not a problem, but he tends to move about the stage a little too much especially for a song of this tempo. Maybe with a bit more training and a larger selection of camera angles to choose from this might be solved.

This is a mid tempo ballad which really shows off Michael’s voice and personality. The song has a very long build up and takes a while to fully get into gear. He starts off very gently but during the chorus he uses a much bigger and louder voice. The verses use the lower part of his register and that allows him to use volume as well as pitch to differentiate the parts of the song. Cleverly the second verse is shorter than the first meaning that the second repetition of he chorus comes round quicker than you expect. The chorus is very repetitive and the fact that the title of the song is the primary lyric means it’s pretty unforgettable. After the second chorus  there is some call and response with the backing singers and his interaction with them seems genuine. After this the last minute is basically a slew of repeated choruses including key changes, hand clapping and gospel choirs. The ending, after all this, does come rather abruptly and might need a little bit of tweaking.

The national final was a bit of a mess to be honest and although the BBC had tried to make out that the format was hopefully going to shove some ‘diversity’ into the national final it actually did not thing of the sort. It was all kinds of bland. That said, Kerrie-Anne and Michael were head and shoulders above the rest of the bunch and it felt right that they won their respective duels. Michael’s performance was more powerful and his vocal prowess was much more on show which got him the win. Unfortunately it is also a very safe song and needs work to make it Eurovision ready. Hopefully they will stay away from the stereotypical makeovers the UK entries have had over the last few years.

Once again this is a very jury-friendly song and I suspect we might see him riding high, if not on the left hand side of the leader board, during the first half of the voting only to sink without a trace in the televote. If we get above 20^th this should be seen as an improvement.
Nowhere near a winner but at least this is a singer we can get behind and a song that hopefully should get some heat from the juries and from the Scandinavian countries - what on earth will happen in John Lundvik wins Melfest?!?!?!!?

ARTIST – Michael Rice

SONG – Bigger than us

MUSIC -  Laurell Barker, Anna-Klara Folin, John Lundvik and Jonas Thander

LYRICS -  Laurell Barker, Anna-Klara Folin, John Lundvik and Jonas Thander