IRELAND 2022

The Irish Final was held on February 4th at the RTE TV Studios in Dublin during The Late Late Show, hosted by Ryan Tubridy. The winner was chosen by mix of televoting, professional jury and international with each part weighted equally. Going to Turin is Brooke with the song "That's Rich"

Brooke is from Derry, Northern Ireland, and studied Drama at Ulster University. Before her appearance on the Late Late Eurosong show, she had performed as support for Nathan Carter, been an extra in Game of Throne and Derry Girls but was also a contestant on The Voice UK in 2020. During that series she chose Meghan Trainor as her coach and eventually came 3rd in the competition. Most of her Instagram and TikTok videos are of her doing contemporary covers - pop with an r'n'b tint - but her Eurovision song is rather more in your face Gaga-ish dance pop.

The song begins with a infectious bassline which grab your attention straight away and relentlessly keeps the whole thing chugging along. The song has a pretty steady "verse into pre-chorus into chorus" setup which gets repeated twice. The chorus has the title repeated at the start of each line and gets in your head almost immediately. Just shy of the 2 minute mark the song takes a bit of a swerve with a spoken word/rap part which Brooke does in a OTT Valley Girl accent which then leads number of chorus repeats with a few slight tweaks to the tune.

Firstly I am going to address some of the visual aspects of the show and this entry. Yes, the staging limitations were many and the audio standard was not up to par. Although I appreciate the effort RTE have gone into making a national final, blowing any of these songs up to a Eurovision stage performance would require a lot of imagination. Brooke's show is youthful and has the right amount of attitude to come across well and not like a spoilt brat! I would love for her and her two dancers to take a leaf out of KaYra's book and do more together like they do in verse two. The outfits definitely need to go as it looks like the three of them have just got out of bed. That all said and done this was definitely the most individual and stand out song and performance on the night and will definitely get a lot of traction online. One a bigger staging this could looks small and lost so will need to think very carefully about the camera angles and any use of backdrop/props. Her voice can get a bit garbled, especially when she does the squeaky bits but hopefully she can rehearse this to keep the energy but keep it legible. I think she will be a great personality during the pre-party and media circles but will this song come across as characterful and youthful or will people think this is a bit cringey and rude? I feel like the whole thing has a lot of promise but the whole package needs rethinking. I suggest they had better start now.

ARTIST - Brooke

SONG - That's Rich

WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - Brooke Scullion, Izzy Warner, Karl Zine