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What The Hell Just Happened? by Remember Monday
And so to 2025’s final countdown review and my home country. After hugely disappointing results for Mae Muller and Olly Alexander, Sam Ryder’s second place is beginning to look like a blip rather than a return to form. What the hell does the BBC do now?
Although the internet is awash with British fans who Think They Know Best I’d have hated to be the one trying to make this decision. We may have a thriving international music market but so many factors limit the potential pool of British artists willing to step up to the plate. Olly’s placing last year will do nothing to boost this, and perhaps 2025 is universally suffering from fewer artists willing to take part after so much negativity surrounded Eurovision 2024.
I’ve always maintained though that you don’t need a widely known artist. Even though an act may have a standing nationally, on the international stage it’s more likely they’ll be largely unknown. If an established artist feels Eurovision to be too much of a risk, what about an act with very little to lose?
Step forward Remember Monday, who have been reported to be on a last gasp attempt to get their 12-year-old band to success. If you feel this is a last push anyway why not play the biggest gig of your life and see what happens? The band members have already had other success to fall back on, including in musical theatre.
What The Hell Just Happened? is a romp of a song, reflecting on a drunken party on the morning after as the girls try to piece together what happened the night before. It’s got twisting time signatures and changing styles throughout, to me quite a clever musical motif that reflects the gradual recall of events and the lurch of potential horror at what you might have done. To others though this could quite easily bang on your last nerve. At the heart of it all are the trio’s vocals, and these are really the strength of the entry; they harmonise so well together.
This song – and to some extent the act itself – is a risk, but they know it, as does the BBC team who I chatted about it with at the recent London Eurovision Party. But it’s this risk that appeals to me most, and above anything else I’m glad we’re taking it. You can’t accuse this song of being ‘safe’.
It’s an acquired taste, and to be brutally frank it feels like few have acquired it. I’m definitely in the minority liking it. It’s not featuring prominently in the odds or the fan polls, although it did come third in the Brewrovision event I ran in London last week (with an audience of – mostly – British viewers). Despite an early 7 points from Latvia, the first country to declare in the OGAE International fan club poll, this early showing did not sustain, and we finished the poll after 43 sets of votes with precisely zero additional points.
Like many entries this year I feel the UK is going to live or die on the staging; nail this and we have a chance to get to mid-table, as nothing else is like this, but if we stage a duffer, it’s likely this could be languishing at the bottom of the table once again. And what the hell will the BBC do after that?
My marks: 8 points
Photo: Rob Parfitt/BBC Studios/EBU