I live in the UK; I am not British. I love Eurovision, but didn’t grow up with it. Rather, I came to it as an adult, when I fell for the contest as a whole spectacle.
The British public, on the other hand, have a more ambivalent relationship with the contest. Oh, there are the diehards – after Germany and Switzerland, UK fans bought the most tickets to Basel’s shows this year – but the public as a whole tends to focus more on the Saturday night final.
The problem is that the UK is used to channeling its nationalism into objective sporting competitions like the Commonwealth Games or football matches or the rugby, where the outcome is easy to recognize. Who jumped the highest? Who ran the fastest? Who scored the most goals?
But in an arts competition – in something like Eurovision – it’s difficult for the UK public as a whole to interpret why the UK may be doing bad. How do you explain subjective judgements about the arts that might elevate a heartfelt Serbian ballad while a campy song about travelling through Europe languishes near the bottom of the scoreboard? How can noted hitmakers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren lose to an ageless violin-playing Norweigian sprite? How can hyperpop producer Danny Harle fail to deliver with a Pet Shop Boys pastiche that loses to a rap-opera hybrid?
There’s a lot of nuance in the answers to these questions, but nuance isn’t exactly what Eurovision is known for. So instead of discussions about rankings, the British public blames politics, or regional voting blocs, or – worst of all – the acts.
Yes, the acts. Because the other major difference between Britain’s sporting competitions and Eurovision is that the UK tends to train its athletes. It doesn’t do that with its musicians. Instead, the Eurovision process takes talented people, makes them employees of the BBC (with the specific media restrictions this involves) and then lets them go after the competition. Michael Rice heads to American Idol. Surie builds a career of Patreon subscribers. And Mae Muller and Olly Alexander get a lot of therapy.
So all of this is a lead up to say that the British public tend to put a lot of pressure on their Eurovision acts, then discard them when they fail to perform. Even golden boy Sam Ryder, who shocked everyone when he came in second in 2022’s Eurovision, recently moved off his major label to pursue an independent career.
I hope this won’t happen to Remember Monday, who are a group selected internally by the BBC. Remember Monday met at school, appeared on The Voice, and have been releasing music for more than 6 years. Up until their announcement for Eurovision, they were primarily known for being more of a country-tinged light pop act, playing festivals like the country2country shows in the UK. (In addition to their work as a group, all three members have also appeared on the West End.)
Remember Monday was rumoured as the act long before the official announcement, and many of us expected the group to release a Eurovision song that sounded something like Prove Me Right, one of their most recent releases. (Fine. We all expected the song to be Prove Me Right):
It’s got gorgeous harmonies and a real Wilson-Phillips retro 90s vibe, and it was written by the band in conjunction with Nashville songwriter Tori Tullier. And it’s off a whole EP where Remember Monday wrote their songs in collaboration with a mix of American and British songwriters. (My favourite is the yee haw Who You Are)
So when Remember Monday came out with this as their track for Eurovision, I was slightly surprised:
First off, I do want to recognize that the vocals are there. Remember Monday have impeccable harmonies. But the song doesn’t sound quite like what they’ve put out before – which is fine! Bands can change their sound!
Whereas Remember Monday previously had a country girl group thing going on – a Systur meets OG3NE vibe, to put it in Eurovision terms – What the Hell Just Happened seems to be relying more heavily on Queen and West End musicals as inspirations, underpinned by a song with shifting tempos that don’t meet what the brain is expecting from a pop song structure. (Again – that’s not a bad thing!) It is something different from the BBC, and I want to celebrate the BBC taking chances and doing something new, but…
I think the change in sound of this particular song can be explained by the fact that while their previous songs were written largely by Remember Monday, or Remember Monday with British and American songwriters, What the Hell Just Happened? is a collaboration between Remember Monday and some Danish and British songwriters. The Danish songwriters – Thomas Stengaard and Julie Aagaard – have long been involved in Eurovision, writing things as disparate as Emma Muscat’s I Am What I Am to Kaleen’s We Will Rave to the 2013 winner Only Teardrops.
But this is what is giving me trouble. I like Remember Monday. I think they sound amazing, and I think they’re talented singer-songwriters. The BBC must have thought so as well to choose them for an internal selection. So why not then have faith in the sounds they’d been producing so far? Why feel the need to pair them with veteran Eurovision songwriters to produce a Eurovision-y song?
What we now have doesn’t feel like a song that Remember Monday wrote; it feels like a Eurovision song that Remember Monday will perform. And they’ll perform the heck out of it and do an amazing job – after all, these women are talented West End performers. They can sell the song. But it seems to be a waste of a nascent country-pop group with its own songs and songwriting capacity. It’s like the BBC had an interesting idea, but couldn’t quite trust itself to follow through.
I’d like What the Hell Just Happened to do well because I want all the songs to do well, and based on Remember Monday’s previous work, I think they can have an interesting post-Eurovision career in the Radio 2 market. But no matter what happens at Eurovision, Remember Monday are just the messenger – the public face of a broadcaster who can’t quite figure out what to do. The BBC now seems to be reinventing the wheel each year. And trying new things is good, but trying new things while undermining them with old tricks is not.
Let Remember Monday stand on their own as a band going to Eurovision with a song, not a band performing a Eurovision Song.
Also, before I end, I want to point you all to this excellent Bluesky thread from Julia Redhead which provides additional context around the selection of the act (and is not a criticism of the act) that I think only a British person could pick up on:
So, completely apart from their song I have a few thoughts about Remember Monday and the arts in the UK which I just can’t shake. Don’t know how well I’ll articulate them here but let’s try.— Julia Redhead (@messylines.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 5:03 PM
dudepoints.fun 