Mae Muller: I Wrote a Song review – UK Eurovision entry is far from douze points | Music
For a long time, Britain’s behaviour toward the Eurovision music contest adopted a reliably established pattern. 1st, it involved behaving as while the country was by some means previously mentioned the total detail, disdainfully coming into any outdated garbage: Television talent demonstrate runners-up, made pop bands years previous their offer-by date, tunes so unmemorable it appeared a wonder the benighted souls charged with singing them didn’t just forget about what they have been undertaking midway by the effectiveness and distractedly wander offstage. Then, when the other countries failed to behave accordingly – awarding us deux points or disregarding us altogether, as if they someway weren’t grateful for our weary magnanimity – we bought offended about it: muttering about conspiracies and block voting, digging up historic enmities as evidence favourable we weren’t being treated pretty.
Then past year, issues went significantly off-piste: we entered a first rate song. Whatsoever you made of Space Person and its ebullient vocalist Sam Ryder, its vaguely glam-motivated, Elton/Bowie-invoking balladry was evidently a vast enhancement on the things we’d earlier inflicted on our European neighbours. You could explain to by the point that the British public actually went out and bought it. Centered on buys relatively than streams, it was the 3rd-major solitary of 2022 – as opposed to, say, Joe and Jake’s 2016 entry You are Not By yourself, which acquired to No 81 in the charts.
Which leaves Britain in a problem: do we hassle making an attempt to follow it up with a thing capable of equivalent success, or revert back again to the attempted-and-examined disdain-followed-by-xenophobic-rage solution?
I Wrote a Tune by Mae Muller – beforehand the vocalist on Superior Times, a slight 2021 pop-dance hit by Swedish duo Neiked – suggests a sure hedging of bets. In contrast to House Man, which stood out precisely due to the fact it sounded a tiny distinctive from the relaxation of the British chart, it sticks quick to existing pop trends. I Wrote a Music is a little bit of Dua Lipa-esque electronic pop, underpinned by a rhythm track motivated by the audio of Robin S’s 90s property strike Display Me Enjoy, yet another common pop trope. The wordless chant in the chorus is a Eurovision staple developed to transcend any language barrier, and its uptempo waltzing rhythm is also a Europop trope, reminiscent of Mediterranean holiday getaway hits these kinds of as Mr Saxobeat.
In the meantime, its revenge-on-an-ex lyrics in shape with the vogue for tracks in which feminine vocalists heap scorn on a departed or errant boyfriend, a topic that accounts for the major 3 singles in this week’s chart: Miley Cyrus’s Flowers, PinkPantheress’s Boy’s a Liar and SZA’s Get rid of Bill.
The tune is not horrible, but nor, 1 suspects, would it attract the form of awareness it’s having were being it not our Eurovision entry. The corner of pop in which it plants its flag is a cutthroat organization in which hits are commonly made by having to pay wide sums of dollars to huge groups of songwriters-for-hire, there to assure absolutely nothing is left to possibility. If I Wrote a Music had been intended for Dua Lipa, 1 of stated team would have performed something about its faintly naff chorus extended prior to it was presented for her consideration. It is absolutely improved than most of our entries in new several years, but whether that would make it fantastic more than enough is an additional subject fully.
