Did We Mention the Swedes Take it Seriously?

By Jamie McLoughlin on Jul 18, 08 10:42 AM in Eurovision 2008

A press release has reached Boom Bang a Blog Towers from the nice people at HMV.

It promoted their Single of the Week - a song Steve Wright has played on his Radio 2 show every day for a 30-day period (we're assuming that doesn't include weekends).

The song is Lay Your Love on Me performed by Swedish pop trio Bodies Without Organs (or BWO).

What's this got to do with Eurovision?

It's quite simple. BWO and Lay Your Love on Me finished third in this year's Swedish heat to find a potential Contest winner for Belgrade.

This is how it sounded on the night of the Melodifestivalen (the Swedish equivalent of A Song For Europe). The Shakespearean ruffs may have been a bit of a vote-killer, wethinks...

Now, around 9million people live in Sweden. On the night of Melodifestivalen, 320,741 of them rang in to vote for BWO. That's about four per cent of the population - but still only enough to put it in a distant third place.

Lay Your Love On me has since topped the Swedish charts and is getting a hefty amount of airplay in the UK. It just goes to show that you *can* put a decent, melodic pop song - which isn't pretending to be anything cleverer than it is - in to the Eurovision machine and it can come out the other end unharmed.

It may also be of interest that the number of televotes Lay Your Love on Me received (from a populous one sixth the size of the UK) is probably greater than the total number of votes cast in this year's BBC final.

We make such brilliant pop music in this country - so why does the UK get so sniffy about putting in a similar effort where this competition is concerned?