Eurovision 2019 spotlight: The United Kingdom's Michael Rice with "Bigger Than Us"...

It's time for today's spotlight on the countries and singers participating in the Eurovision Song Contest being held next week in Tel Aviv, Israel. You can catch up on all my posts in this series so far by clicking here. Now that I've run down the second semi-finals competitors, all I have left to cover is the last three of the "Big Five" that get an automatic pass to the finals. First up, the country taking part just as its government is trying to leave the EU...

Last year the United Kingdom was notable at Eurovision not for the song, the mildly pleasant but forgettable "Storm", but for the stage invasion that came during her live performance at the finals. Surie, the singer who was bumrushed, was offered a chance to redo, but refused, and ended up in 24th place anyway (so much for sympathy votes). It's been a decade since the once-powerhouse of the contest has even reached the top ten. Can this year's prospect do the trick? Very doubtful.

United Kingdom - "Bigger Than Us" from Michael Rice

Michael Rice, from the northeastern English town of Hartlepool in County Durham, was selection on the country's national final contest Eurovision: You Decide. Their competition worked differently that any other country's, with three songs offered up by six different singers. The one they chose was one Swedish singer/songwriter John Ludvik had originally intended for his own national contest, but was (rightfully) rejected by the broadcaster contest Melodifestivalen. As he went on to bring a much better song, "Too Late For Love", for himself, he donated the rejected song, "Bigger Than Us" to Britain. Rice, a veteran of X Factor UK (where he didn't go too far) and winner of All Together Now (another singing competition show like America's "The 100"), has a very powerful voice, the unfortunate it's completely wasted on this dud of a song. I mean, let's just start off with the "biggers". Fifty freaking four of them (or "bigs"). The lyrical content here is about as thin as gas station toilet paper. And just as effective. And what and why is this love bigger? This is just overusing a word, in this case "big", to attempt to make this song more important than what it really is - a vapid over-aggrandizing slice of overwrought singing competition endgame fodder...

Oh lord. I wish they had a song that could justify this anti-homophobe PSA that it's claiming to advert. I feel almost like I'm marketed to as a gay man with this "hey look at this girl being put upon because she's got two dads". And I wish there would've been a song worthy enough for Rice's able pipes. But instead, we've got this. Worser that everything else. If there wasn't already disdain towards the UK because of its implosion of the Russian-abetted scam called Brexit, this doesn't help matters. We're gonna have to hear it in the final anyway, so let's just hope Michael can go on to have a better career. (Rating: 1/10)

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The United Kingdom has been taking part in Eurovision since its second year in 1957, missing out only a year in 1958 because of a labor dispute. The British have won the contest five times, and came in second fifteen times. The UK's first winner was in 1967, when Sandie Shaw, already an established star with two British #1's under her belt, got her third with this winner, "Puppet On A String"...

Two years later in 1969, another "ringer"-like star, Scottish singer Lulu, who had topped the American pop chart in 1967 with the classic "To Sir With Love", ended up in a four-way tie at first with the decidedly silly "Boom Bang-A-Bang". This was by far the worst of those four...

In 1976, the vocal group Brotherhood Of Man, who had a British top ten hit with "United We Stand" in 1970, took Britain's third win with "Save All Your Kisses For Me", which ended up a #1 UK hit that even reached the top-40 in America...

The group Bucks Fizz created a stir using one of the first physical tricks ever used in the contest when they did a costume "reveal" to go on to win Eurovision in 1981...

And Katrina & The Waves of "Walking On Sunshine" fame (Katrina is American, but her band is British) claimed the country's most recent win in 1997 (22 years ago) with "Love Shine A Light". Oddly enough, the song's writer, guitarist Kimberly Rew, refused to perform it at Eurovision and while the song was a huge international hit afterwards, making #3 in the UK and top ten in many countries in Europe, eventually helped to cause the band's implosion just two years later...

As for my personal favorite, I can't deny my love for Gina G's cheesy-but-good Eurodance classic "Ooh Ahh...Just A Little Bit", which came in at 8th place in 1996, the year before Katrina's win...

Since 2000 the country has sent through its share of clunkers, with three last-place finishes in the first decade of the new millennium. In that same decade, Daz Sampson excreted probably the country's worst with "Teenage Life" in 2003 looking like a 40 year old man, still coming in 19th..

As I mentioned before, the UK has sent its share of "ringers", already successful artists hoping to capitalize on name recognition. Singers like Bonnie Tyler, boy-band Blue, Cliff Richard (twice), and even Engelbert Humperdinck have been in Eurovision. But few remember that in 1974, in the year ABBA won, they beat the British entry in fourth place, a young lady by the name of Olivia Newton-John, who sung "Long Live Love"...