Regular readers of this column will know that I’ve had some history with the Welsh so it was a surprise to find that Cardiff lad Jon was representing Cyprus this year. I saw him do his stuff in London early May and warmed to him. He’s obviously up for a larf from some of the tales I’ve heard.
And now for words I never thought I’d utter: I like the Cypriot entry 🙂 It’s a warm, cheerful song and endearing. Unfortunately I think Jon is going to suffer from being in the difficult semi final. He performs it well enough. No vocal problems and in spite of having apparently had no camera rehearsal, he’s starting to twig what that box with the light on it is for. He’s performing it the same way he did in London, like he’s in a gig not on a TV show of 150 million viewers. I fear if someone taps him on the shoulder and tells him how many people are watching that he’d crap his pants and he looks like he’s barely out of nappies being a wee bairn.
It’s lovely and one of my absolute top 5 favourites of this year but I think he’s going to get swamped by most of his competitors. He’ll get a few votes from the UK for being Welsh but he’s going to find it tough to get out of this semi alive. If he’d been in semi one instead of Tom from Belgium it would be another matter.
Good luck to him but I fear not 🙁
Nick: There’s an air of tension and anxiety and hunched shoulders in the OnEurope office for this rehearsal. We’ve kind of adopted Jon and the gang as our surrogate entry while we wait for the real UK entry to turn up, and there’s a lot of goodwill from us. It looks like there’s a steep learning curve going on up there; this isn’t a boy who’s done a lot of TV work so far, certainly not in this kind of massive multi-camera environment. We’ve been shouting at the screen basically saying “No, here – here – look at me! Yes. Hello!”. Increasingly he’s been getting there, but it’s been hard work, with opportunity after opportunity to bring me, the viewer, into the performance being missed.
Vocally it’s fine, relaxed, comfortable – but it’s got to connect with me, his loyal viewer. GOT to. And it’s not quite there yet.
Phil: I did have initial fears about this song when I saw it at the Cypriot and Greek finals earlier this year, and they were based on Jon’s lack of camera experience and the fact that he had only been doing gigs before he went to the final.
From the first couple of run-throughs, they were confirmed. The staging looked good and it did come across well on the TV monitors, although I was still worried that Jon was looking IN THE WRONG CAMERA more times than not, but with a little word in his ear from the stage manager, presumably “look at the one with the red light on, Jon” he seemed to be picking up what to do at a pace.
By the end of the performance he was mostly looking in the general direction of the cameras but still not engaging *me*, the person he’s supposed to be singing to, enough yet for me with conviction to say this is definitely qualifying.
It has potential, lots of potential and lots of good things – I still worry about the lack of engagement with the audience though. If he gets this right, there is in my mind do doubt this is going through, but he HAS to look at me.