The UK at Eurovision - Where is London Bridge?

Ever since the UK reintroduced a national final in 2016, their participation has been perceived as more serious than in the past. As I analyzed in my previous blog post, before 2016 the UK struggled with finding the right way to appeal not only to their own viewers, but to the international audience. The BBC previously sent Engelbert Humperdinck (Adams) and Bonnie Tyler (Aderemi), both artists with assumed large fan bases from their careers in the mid to late 20th century. When this failed to return a right-side-of-the-scoreboard result, the BBC sent a young Molly who, with public hope for success, did do better than the aforementioned acts, but still failed to reach the top half with a cluttered stage full of spiritual imagery from the East. Her successors again failed to do well as their obscure genre of electro-swing and poor message and intonation resulted in an almost last place finish. These days, the BBC has recruited singers from The Voice and X Factor as a way to choose not only capable live singers but also to select performers who have had experience receiving support from a diverse public in a song contest. However, while the musical quality of the UK's Eurovision entries has increased, they continue to lack the amount of nation branding that many other countries that also participate imbed in their acts. Like mentioned above, Molly’s performance focused on East and Southeast Asian philosophy on spirituality while representing the textbook-Western United Kingdom. In this way and many others, including but not limited to inaccurate representation of diversity among the delegation, the UK has shown that it is still struggling on how to present itself at Eurovision without stereotyping, essentializing, and generally misrepresenting the true nature of the British populace that I detailed in my first blog post. In this final entry, I will be analyzing what aspects of the British national identity have been presented at Eurovision, what aspects have not, and how these actions speak on the attitudes the UK has towards not only the contest but towards their own nation branding.

            To begin, the British national identity that I established in my first blog post was one that was formed over hundreds of years where English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish culture and social attitudes mixed together and resulted in the creation of a union where each nation foils each other on the political stage and in normal life. Some of the aspects of this national identity were well put by Nasar Meer in his article I referenced in my first blog post where he said, “One influential articulation in governmental policy and discourse, frequently discussed in the press, has sought to renew or reinvigorate British national identity through the promotion of common civic values, as well as English language competencies; a wider knowledge of – and self-identification with – cultural, historical and institutional heritages, in addition to approved kinds of political engagement and activity” (Meer 9). Inherently, these concepts are hard to put into song which makes it difficult for the acts chosen to represent the United Kingdom in Eurovision to do so. Of all the acts analyzed in the previous blog post, they all have been in English. However, this is not seen as much of a representation of linguistic culture as it is a necessity to reach a wider audience in Europe that learns English as a second language (Wolther 170). In addition, the acts presented by the UK have generally had a message of unity. While there has been the occasional love song, the performances in 2013, 2014, and 2016 all shared the message of bringing people together. The ambiguity of the message, however, makes attributing the theme of the songs to the national identity an unstable conclusion.

            Determining what the UK is lacking in nation branding in their Eurovision performances is a little more cut and dry. One example, as discussed in the previous blog post, is diversity. In the songs analyzed in that post, they all struggled with under and over representation of the diversity in the UK. The United Kingdom is 86% white (“Census”) where about 2% of nationals are LGBTQ+ (“Sexual identity”). However, the performances have not reflected these statistics well. They have either been completely Caucasian or have had minority representation at around 50%. The one song that accurately represented race statistics was Bonnie Tyler’s “Believe In Me” with a single black member out of a six member delegation. At the same time, while it is difficult to find the personal information of all members of the delegations each year, none of the main singer(s) have been any known sexuality except heterosexual. While this is statistically representative and therefore accurately representative of the British population as a whole, the lack of LGBTQ+ performers in an event like Eurovision where the audience consists of a majority of this community (Westcott) may speak towards the way the UK sees Eurovision in recent years as more of a song contests instead of a political and/or social platform.

            Speaking in general about how the entries reflect the social attitudes of the United Kingdom, it is surprising how with successful artists like Adele and Ed Sheeran being British, the BBC is not able to court them into performing at Eurovision. Other European countries that see Eurovision as extremely important in showcasing the abilities of a nation that has a stigma of backwardness and/or harsh conservatism by the West often send their most accomplished pop artists, examples in recent years being Sergey Lazarev from Russia and Ira Losco of Malta who both have large fan bases in their respective countries and throughout Europe. Also, as mentioned in the previous blog post and in the beginning of this one, in the past the UK has tried to appeal to an older audience by sending performers who were popular when that audience was younger. However, with the audience and performers in the contest becoming younger and more modern, the UK has begun shifting its targeted audience towards the youth. In this way, however, due to a growing British elderly population (Wescott) the UK is still struggling to represent its people accurately on the international stage.

            With all that in mind, it seems that the United Kingdom has not used the Eurovision stage as a platform (metaphorically) for political statements and in general for nation branding as other nations have done. There may be a myriad of reasons for this, but I have concluded the following: the UK does not actively participate in nation branding at Eurovision because their national identity is well established and well known throughout Europe to the point where there is no need to do so. Tourism to the UK from abroad has consistently been rising and out of the top ten nationalities of tourists, eight of them are European (“Travel trends”). With a total of around 25 million European visits to the United Kingdom in 2015, surpassing the population of several European countries themselves (“European Countries”), it is clear that the UK is often visited by Europeans and therefore much of Europe and in hand the Eurovision audience is well aware of British culture. At the same time, the UK does not participate in nation branding because of its diversity. As I mentioned before, the population of the UK is a white majority. So, with the case of essentialization by Molly in 2014 as an example, it is difficult for the BBC to choose a song and performance that can somehow represent every aspect of all people groups in Britain without appearing to prefer one or marginalize another. In countries where the population is more ethnically uniform and where free speech against a song that may oppress or fetishize a minority group is limited, this is not as much of a hurdle. In the UK, however, it is difficult for the broadcaster to present any sort of national identity without facing opposition by the groups not represented and their supporters.

            Acknowledging that the UK does not use Eurovision in the same way as other countries in Europe, I believe that they take Eurovision to be more of a music competition than a singing Olympics. While it can be argued that even the music has seemed halfhearted and jovial in the past decade, historically and recently the UK has tried to send credible, already successful acts to the contest. Like I analyzed in my previous blog post and earlier in this entry, the lyrics and overall message of many of the recent songs have been stock and/or ambiguous not only to avoid political statements but also to appeal to a larger consumer audience. In this way, it appears that the UK continues to see Eurovision as a way to launch the career of an artist, especially now that the upcoming artist is, like last year, a former contestant on a television show meant to discover potential talent (Newman).

            Altogether, the evidence gathered over these three blog posts culminates in my conclusion that the United Kingdom has an internal national identity of collaboration and unity through language and ideals while having an external national identity of tropes like Big Ben and fish and chips that is well known throughout Europe and the world. Therefore, the UK does not feel the need to continue to advertise itself to an international audience already aware and knowledgeable of whatever may be presented to them. At the same time, internally the UK wants to avoid misrepresentation and offending a very diverse British populace which then reduces incentive to take part in nation branding that may not be accurate. Because of this, the BBC and the selected acts over the years have been able to focus more on the music and a far-reaching message that does not necessarily represent the internationally perceived British national identity but does represent the social and cultural values of the British people.

Works Cited

Adams, William Lee. “Engelbert Humperdinck: The U.K. chooses elderly legend for Eurovision.” Wiwibloggs, 1 Mar 2012, http://wiwibloggs.com/2012/03/01/engelbert-humperdinck-the-u-k-chooses-elderly-legend-for-eurovision/14739/.

Aderemi, Deban. “United Kingdom: Bonnie Tyler to sing ‘Believe in Me’ at Eurovision.” Wiwibloggs, 7 Mar 2013, http://wiwibloggs.com/2013/03/07/united-kingdom-bonnie-tyler-to-sing-believe-in-me-at-eurovision/22960/.

Meer, Nasar et al. “Embodying Nationhood? Conceptions of British national identity, citizenship, and Gender in the ‘Veil Affair’.” Sociological Review, vol. 58, no. 1, Feb 2010, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.seattleu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=202da6ed-a67f-4024-b4c9-78d90026110b%40sessionmgr4008&vid=0&hid=4214&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=47601730&db=sih.

Newman, Vicki and Lara Martin. “Graham Norton doesn’t seem that optimistic that UK will win Eurovision 2017.” Mirror, 28 Feb 2017, http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/graham-norton-doesnt-seem-optimistic-9932178.

United Kingdom, Office for National Statistics. 2011 Census: Population Estimates for the United Kingdom, 27 March 2011. 27 Mar 2011, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_290685.pdf. 14 Mar 2017.

United Kingdom, Office for National Statistics. Overview of the UK population: February 2016. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/february2016. 14 Mar 2017,

United Kingdom, Office for National Statistics. Sexual identity, UK: 2015. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualidentityuk/2015. 14 Mar 2017.

United Kingdom, Office for National Statistics. Travel trends: 2015. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/articles/traveltrends/2015#overseas-residents-visits-to-the-uk. 14 Mar 2017.

“European Countries by population (2017).” worldometers, http://www.worldometers.info/population/countries-in-europe-by-population/. 14 Mar 2017.

Westcott, Lucy. “Your Guide to The Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest.” The Atlantic, 6 May 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/your-guide-to-the-politics-of-the-eurovision-song-contest/361707/.

Wolther, Irving. “More Than Just Music: The Seven Dimensions of the Eurovision Song Contest.” Popular Music, vol. 31, no. 1, Jan 2012, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.seattleu.edu/docview/919021411?accountid=28598&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo.

Word Count: 1649