What to do at Eurovision when you don’t want to risk a win – and inherit all the costly hosting responsibilities – but you still want to make it look like you’re trying?
The Greeks might have cracked it.
Enter a moderately popular pretty girl singer with a song from a team with a proven track record. Aim for the middle of the Eurovision road.
After the unmitigated disaster of 2016, where ERT might as well have admitted they were only making up numbers, Greek fans have rightly demanded better.
So, we get Demy. Pretty girl, popular with younger fans, no great shakes vocally but able to hold a tune, likely to be willing to show some flesh. ERT sign off a trimmed-down, low-budget ‘national final’ to pacify the bean counters, and give viewers some say in the 2017 Greek Eurovision song. It’s a recipe for treading water.
And fair enough, we’ve not yet heard any one of the three songs that ‘Eurovision heavyweight’ Dimitris Kontopoulos has written for the selection show. We also know nothing of how Fokas Evangelinos will stage things. Perhaps the one (small) flaw comes from how nobody can be certain that Demy will be able to handle any of the songs live – nor will we for a while as the national final is to feature pre-recorded performances.
It’s a step up from Argo and their appalling rag-bag of Greek cliché that insulted fans and viewers in equal measure. But it feels like ERT don’t yet have back their fire.
Demy to the wonning? I just don’t see it at this point.