The chief culprit, if I’m honest, was the song.
A manic mish-mash of musical styles, it sped up in the verses, and slowed down for the choruses, with all the consistency of a jelly in a heatwave.
That’s not to say it’s a bad piece of writing. Indeed, all of the UK’s 88 points came from professional juries of songwriters, whose job it is to recognise compositional craft.
They’ll have recognised all the clever British touches the band crammed in – Elton John-style piano crescendos, a Beatles-esque mellotron riff, and a vocal callback to George Michael’s Freedom ’90.
The lyrics were clever and witty, too. Reminiscent of Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night (TGIF), or If I Were a Bell from Guys and Dolls, it was all about the drunken mistakes you make while trying to get over an ex.
“Broke a heel, lost my keys, scraped my knee / When I fell from the chandelier.“
In three short minutes, the trio rattled off half a dozen memorable hooks, endowed with the unbreakable bond of their friendship.
But as seasoned Eurovision watcher Jonathan Vautrey noted in a review last month, the song was simply too busy.
“It’s hard to latch on to exactly what they’re selling when you’re too busy reeling from the constant whiplash of hearing an almost brand new song every 30 seconds,” he wrote on the Wiwibloggs fansite, external.
“Although I’ve been able to settle into the entry overtime, and now appreciate the theatricality of it all, first impressions matter at Eurovision.”
That’s an opinion I heard more than once. But still, I had hope.
