The UK Entry 2024: Back On Track?

Lancing, 1st March 2024

The UK entry this year, as we’ve known for a while but only heard in full today, is Dizzy by Olly Alexander.

Olly is the Biggest Name we’ve had for quite some time and securing him shows the major steps forward that the UK has been making since 2022. Not quite a coup on the scale of New Seekers or Cliff, but certainly Michael Ball or Blue would be a fair comparison. The line-up of TV shows he’ll be performing on in the coming days is stellar, and one I can’t recall the like of before.

Olly is no Sam Ryder vocally, but he’s also experienced enough to not do a Mae or a Jemini on us. By now he should be well aware of his strengths and weaknesses as a singer and know how best to make the live environment work for him. Importantly, the song is very memorable – that chorus got stuck into my brain after one listen, which will be critical on the night.

I wish we hadn’t gone for the generic pop party banger though. Yes it’s Olly’s style, but the jury vote is pretty much an open goal with France looking like they will have the clearest path to it. It’s already obvious that the televote is going to be shared between countries that aren’t us. So as good as Dizzy is, I really can’t be all that hopeful about it’s placing. It may cut through the silliness, but it may also get completely ignored. We’ve hosted and presumably don’t want to do it again quite so soon, so this year (and last) could have been a great opportunity to take some risks.

That being said, if we were in the doldrums of early 2022 where I hadn’t yet heard of Sam Ryder, I would be pretty excited about this and it shows the BBC are still serious about Eurovision even after having hosted.

I really do hope this works out for Olly – he’s a great representative for the UK, and what happens here will have a big bearing on what Big Names come forward – or not – in future.