Eurovision 2016: Ireland

Ireland
Previous Entries: 49
Wins: 7 1970 Dana – All Kinds of Everything
             1980 Johnny Logan – What’s another year
             1987 Johnny Logan – Hold me now
             1991 Linda Martin – Why Me?
             1992 Niamh Kavanagh – In Your Eyes
             1993 Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan – Rock n Roll Kids
             1995 Eimear Quinn – The Voice
First Entry: 1965 Butch Moore - Walking the Streets in the Rain
Most Recent entry: 2015 Molly Sterling - Playing with Numbers
National Anthem: Amhrán na bhFiann

2016

Nicky Byrne – Sunlight

This year marks two decades since Ireland one its last Eurovision. This isn’t a long time compared with other countries, some waited over 40 years for a win, But Irelands next longest drought was the 9 years between 1970 and 1980. As a result it appears Ireland is taking the contest seriously this year and they are sending some guy formerly from some boyband called Westlife.What a silly name for a boyband. West High would be a better name.

Boybands have ben to Eurovision before (Blue) but it is a smart move sending one former boyband member rather than a whole boyband. Generally boybands can’t sing and seeing no vocals are allowed on the backing track, you have to rely on the backing singers to hold up the song when the boyband can’t. If you have a 4 or 5 member boyband on the stage, you have used too many of your maximum 6 people on the Eurovision stage to really carry the song. The good news for Nicky Byrne is he can have 5 people who can actually sing on stage to carry the song for him at Eurovision.

This is almost perfect Eurovision pop, but this year there is lot of strong pop songs so this will need an excellent performance. The bookies don’t rate it but this song is hard to completely hate. Good luck to Ireland.

If Ireland could choose again, they may go for something that leans more towards being a ballad, like in 1967