[LMBTO] FINALLY! How The UK Will Decide For Eurovision 2017...

There were hints from Helen Riddell, one of the UK NF's producers, back in May at a press conference in Stockholm that there was a strong likelihood that the selection process for Sweden would be repeated.  I looked back at my article about the selection process announcement for Stockholm a year ago to the week and it looks very, very similar:
There is, to be honest, very little difference between the rules last year and this, although the opening quotes by Hugh and Guy would suggest that both are hoping for better entries than last year, maybe some 'big hitters' from the music industry?  We can dream, can't we guys!  To be fair, all of the six National Finalists were good but it is arguable that any would have troubled the best that the rest of Eurovision had to offer in Stockholm.  The other difference that I spotted is in the wording of the first paragraph under "How will the Eurovision 2017 application process work?" It is a subtle difference but potentially important:

This sentence was in last year's T&C's but it had ELEVEN MORE WORDS after the word 'live'.  Those were:


To me, the removal of those words allow BBC Eurovision some wiggle room in who goes to represent the UK in Kyiv.  That omission of the need for the actual singer to be already selected and linked to the song submitted means that if a real corker of lyrics and music come along from a songwriter who isn't a performer and doesn't already have a singer (or has a poor one), that entry could be given to a superb vocalist previously unattached to the songwriter.  Personally I cannot see a problem with that and it means that songwriters can just concentrate on writing the best song they can and if its good enough, the potential will be seen by the selection panel, allowing it to be fitted to the right singer.  The BBC have said as much this time with the statement:


Shades of 2009, anyone?  Remember how Jade was suddenly magicked up to enter the final stage of "Eurovision : Your Country Needs You" when it was obvious that none of the other artists were up to much:



It will be interesting to see what happens with the selection process - the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) have been invited again to stage a songwriting competition and OGAE UK has again been asked to assist in shortlisting the open entries that will now be (hopefully) flooding in up until 1st November (a shorter submission process than last year).  The use of panels amongst the membership as in 2016 has yet to be confirmed but the club have already asked for names of those who would be interested in being on any 2017 panel.  It appears that much the same criteria will be used as last year - a ballot involving those grouped together by sex, age, location and (possibly the most important factor for those like myself who missed out on the 2016 selections):


That still means that I'm up against 1200+ other OGAE UK members!  Fingers crossed though...


There have already been some interesting stuff posted online concerning the UK selection process, even though the original announcement was only a week ago.  Eurovision Apocalypse spotted Twisted Rio and his well produced entry "Back To That" - as I said in the Comments section of Roy's article, I liked this a lot but it wasn't the most memorable of entries.  One for chilling to and having playing in the background rather than being up against 40 other songs to get as many votes from millions of televoters as possible:



The other news of note concerned songwriting and it came from an unlikely source, at least as far as providing an entry for us Brits is concerned:
Four days ago, via the power of Snap (Snapchat to you, grandad), the 2013 Eurovision winner Emmelie De Forest  provided this picture and a brief video snippet of her working on Eurovision material at a 'writing camp'.  More surprisingly for me was that, although it was in Copenhagen at Medley Studios, this session was to produce a song for the UK.  Signing up to Emmelie's Snap account meant I could confirm this news with my own eyes - I have to say that if she can produce anything like the entry below for us in the UK this year, we could be seeing the beginnings of a new dawn for our chances in Kyiv:



I still have no idea how the Danes could send Lighthouse X instead of this potentially Eurovision-winning performance - Emmelie was possibly robbed of joining Johnny Logan in the "Winner as a Singer and Songwriter" club by the televoters of Denmark last year.


I am greatly encouraged that BBC Eurovision are persisting with the formula of last year, in as far as the general public will get to vote for our entry to go to Kyiv (that bit has not been totally confirmed yet) and there will be a multi-pronged attack as far as short listing the submitted entries are concerned.  I am hopeful that, as this is the second year of this process, there might be those 'great' and 'perfect' entries that Hugh Goldsmith is after out there and that there is a bit more rawness, some more alternative entries and songs that are really cutting edge to give variety to that National Final.  The one big bonus is that we haven't panicked and flip-flopped to an internal selection process as I suspect that a lot of fans might have dreaded happening.

So we have a few weeks until the end of the submission process - 1st November 2017...