One of the trends of recent years has been to set up bootcamps for budding Eurovision songwriters, bringing together promising composers to pool their creative efforts. Many are international, resulting in Danish winner Emelie de Forest popping up as a composer of Lucie Jones’ UK entry in 2017. Germany initially selected six artists and songs from their version to line up in ‘Unser Song für Israel’, but two months later, slipped an extra song and act into the game.
Come the final – well, what do you know? The new kid on the block only goes and wins! And at the expense of several better entries. But we’re not done yet; it soon emerged that the winning song had originally been submitted to the Swiss selection from their bootcamp, but, unable to find performers, had been rejected. (The Swiss selection turned out to be an even more convoluted process, but more of that later.)
So, what of the song? It’s a tale of sibling rivalry, the futility of which is only realised at a later junction. It’s called ‘Sister’, and is performed by S!sters, neither of which turn out to be related to each other, rendering their rivalry even more pointless.
The lyrical quibbling may be over, but it doesn’t stop the pair yelling at one another for all they’re worth, as they rotate on a plinth and bore their audience to tears. Or bore them to twitters, as my gran used to (inexplicably) say, which turns out to be ironic as their preposterously contrived spelling of the non-sister S!sters won’t hashtag on the very platform that invented it. In today’s social media savvy world this could backfire, which to be frank would serve them right. There – now they’ve got something to get vexed about.
Monty’s score: nul points!