IRELAND 2024

  


Friday night on the Late Late Show (for some reason), Ireland chose their entrant for 2024: it's Bambie Thug with "Doomsday Blue". Bambie won the televote and the domestic jury, and their 3rd place from the international jury was sufficient to clinch a ticket to Malmö. Let's watch their performance from the...talk show:


About the Artist

Bambie Thug grew up in Macroom, County Cork, and currently lives in London. They describe their music as "hyperpunk avant-electro-pop", which checks out, I suppose. I believe they're the first openly non-binary competitor at Eurovision, though others (Montaigne most notably) came out after competing.


Best Things We Lost Along the Way

This looked to be the strongest national final Ireland's had in ages, and despite some very shaky vocals and performances (perhaps attributable to the fact that it's on a LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW), I think that's true. Only one song I'll mention here, though:
  • Ailsha, "Go Tobann" [Suddenly] - 2nd. Many fans' favorite in the leadup (including me), it didn't quite work as well live, but still would've been a very interesting thing to send to Sweden. Ireland still hasn't sent anything in Irish since 1972!

Song Analysis

Unlike anything we've seen at Eurovision before. (Closest thing might be....Hatari?) A lot of it is pretty familiar, even ballad-y, but then there's the shouty bits that really make this stand out. I really quite like it, and I'm absolutely shocked that the Irish people agree. Like with Hatari, the staging really sells it - the "send the witch" chants in the studio don't happen if Bambie's dressed like an accountant.

Ireland's History



Bad! Real bad! Sure, Ireland is tied for the most Eurovision wins (seven), but the last one of those came in 1996. It's not quite as bad as it looks - Lesley Roy and Brooke were both surprise NQs that were much-loved by the fandom, but last year's utter disaster of boring nonsense left a bad taste in people's musical mouths.



Unsurprisingly, Ireland doesn't fare too well in my personal rankings, 40th of 48 countries. Of my top 5, only Ryan O'Shaughnessy actually made the grand final. Yikes!

Prognosis

Well, at least Ireland is trying something interesting. As mentioned before, this act depends so much on the staging, and Ireland has been staging things horribly for quite some time (Ryan O’Shaughnessy's brilliant staging excepted). We'll see, but I don't think this will do enough to bring Ireland back to the grand final.

Current Rankings





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

State Meet Deep Dive: D2 Boys

Image
     In lieu of a full state preview this year, I've chosen to focus on one section of the meet: the D2 boys' race, which looks to be the most competitive one of the day. I spoke with several of the title contenders' coaches and took a closer look at their teams. Season in Review     There were high hopes for FHE coming off a stellar track season, but a few questions remained headed into the season. Would 1600/3200 strength translate to the grass? How do you replace a low-stick like Aiden Sullivan? The Hawks answered both of those questions ("absolutely" and "shockingly easily", respectively) with their crushing win at South Christian's Under the Lights meet. FHE scored 22 points in the Twilight race, putting all scorers under 17:00. Brendan Hoving, Liam Hinman, and Henry Dixon showed the first iteration of their three-headed monster; Hoving was the top runner this time, but Dixon has emerged as the #1 for most of the season.          Shepherd brough
Read more

Two Peninsulas Are Better Than One? A Hypothetical Statewide XC Championship

Image
       With UP and LP soccer finally being merged after years of separation (this had to go to court for some reason), there have been slight rumblings about a similar change to XC and/or track. That seems unlikely at this point, considering UP soccer didn't even have a state tournament while XC and track very much do, but what this article supposes is: what if that happened? Let's take the 2022 XC season and see how the state meet would've looked if both peninsulas competed together. The Basics      Merging the two peninsulas messes with the division cutoffs quite a bit. Most UP schools are very small - Marquette is usually the only one with a LP D1 enrollment number, and just 4-5 more fit into D2 most years. This causes a massive shift of schools up the division hierarchy: UP teams are in bold here - you can see that most of the divisional changes end up being LP teams. The seasons are also somewhat different currently, with UP finals occurring in mid-October. In the int
Read more

Region 9 Boys: A Deep Dive

Image
Going through this year's regionals, a few stand out as particularly tough cases to prognosticate. Let's take a closer look at Region 9's boys' race: the most unusual, confusing, storyline-packed regional in the state. Note: if you gave me an answer for this piece, I almost certainly edited it for grammar and clarity. Another note: I am NOT doing this for every region. Probably just this one. Final note: I guess I have a blog now? This is going to be my primary thing now, stay tuned for more fun stuff. Region Overview the blue circle is where the course is! The basic structure of Region 9 has stayed pretty much the same for over a decade: an assortment of Macomb and Oakland County teams head up I-94 to join the Port Huron schools at some flat, fast course on the edge of the Thumb. This year, that'll be Goodells County Park (officially hosted by D2's Cros-Lex), and the regional roster is pretty familiar. It's one of the least-changed D1 regionals this year, b
Read more