Tim: Probably due to the abandoning of the old mentor system, Ireland had a surprisingly high number (well, three out of five) of actually good songs in their contest this year.
Tom: And no Jedward.
Tim: No, we seem to be well past them now. One of the three was chosen to represent them, one we’ll discuss later on, and one was this from Nikki, who in fact came a very close second to Jedward in 2011.
Tom: Oh. Oh dear.
Tim: The feedback from the judging panel here was that her voice was rather strained and couldn’t quite hit the notes, which to be honest I thought was a little unfair at the time; then I listen to it again and realised that actually there are a couple of moments in there that sound a bit off, so maybe it wasn’t so unfair.
Tom: Yep, I was going to point that out: at least she’s singing live, but if you can’t hit them on RTE, you’re sure as heck not going to hit them on the Eurovision stage. I’m not sure I can really give the song a fair hearing with this version.
Tim: As for the rest of it, though: it’s great, and I still don’t think it deserved to be knocked down to fourth place by that.
Tom: Possibly not, if we were getting the studio version.
Tim: Properly emotional, big and enthusiastic, get involved with it, be shouting along by the closing chorus, proper band and co-written by her for those that like to talk about proper authentic music – what’s not to like?
Tom: The performance, sadly — and that stands out in the middle eight, which is gorgeous in both writing and performance. Let’s not forget, Jemini’s “Cry Baby”, while it was never going to win, didn’t really deserve bottom of the table either.