Phil: Oh deary me Olivia, you’ve borrowed the ‘How to cock up a decent song‘ book from the Dutch delegation, haven’t ya?
The song – Vertigo – itself is ace – and she deserves to get here, and without the stage performance, it would be brilliant.
However, the team has employed people banging a gong and fans and flags and all sorts of things for dramatic effect, and it really doesn’t need it. I don’t know what they needed to do, but it certainly was not that performance.
Vocally she was perfect as you would have expected – but they have over-egged the pudding somewhat. Back to the drawing board for this one. I further suspect that this could go horribly wrong and not be to the qualifying, but will need further thought on that one.
Nick: Having had a sneaky read of the lyrics, I expected this to be a bit ludicrous.
In actual fact it’s a tremendously dramatic piece which is … umm … a bit ludicrous.
They’ve bought some fans and a gong, presumably on the assumption that they’d not be able to pick either up when they got here. They’ve got two guys who’ve lost their shirts… presumably betting on this winning.
It’s the lost Andorran entry – all it needs is an Anabel Conde and it’s ‘Mirada Interior’ all over again. Olivia Lewis does belt it out though and makes a reasonable fist of taking it seriously, and she could carry Europe along with her.
Possibly. I think the floating stage in Sliema Harbour might need to wait another year though.