Denmark

All Night Long Simon Mathew

There are many reasons why people love and loathe Eurovision in equal measure. A lot of them are shared: for every person who despises the contest for being camp and contrived there will be someone who likes it for that very reason; for every detractor who sees it as the embodiment of everything that is banal about pop music and popular culture there will be somebody who celebrates it. And for every country who responds to the criticism and attempts to push the envelope there will be one who ignores the call, choosing to take the contest for what it is and continue in the same easy-listening, uncomplicated vein it always has. The country in question, needless to say, being Denmark.

Ever since they returned to the contest in the late '70s after an eleven-year absence the Danes have presented a largely uninterrupted run of entries that are as laid back as they are. With the exception of their 2007 entry Drama Queen, which by its very nature could be seen to be championing a cause, you have to go back as far as 1981's Krøller Eller Ej for anything even resembling an agenda. Their entries tend to plough a straightforward course and are often labelled 'very Danish', although the epithet is generally used less in a derogatory sense than it is as a synonym for three minutes of unexceptional and almost always agreeable music. Which is what they have delivered yet again in 2008 with Simon Mathew and All Night Long.

Immediate, uplifting and virtually the only song in this year's field of 43 to invoke the audience, the Danish entry stands out not only in its semi-final but in the 2008 contest as a whole. It is easy to disregard it for its simplicity, but this would be overlooking the fact that simple songs which are performed well and engage the viewers often do very well. The best example is the 2001 winner, Everybody, which took almost everyone by surprise: an entry with a similar feel in a year where there were no absolute favourites and in which the overall quality of the songs was considered to be lower than in other years. The parallels are evident, particularly in the context of the second semi-final.

Not that I'm suggesting All Night Long will win the whole shebang, but it has the right mix of qualities to see it qualify for the final with room to spare if Mr Mathew & co give a good account of themselves and connect with the audience in the same way that, say, fellow countryman Jakob Sveistrup did in 2005. Apart from anything else it has a cleverly structured arrangement that pulls all of the focus onto the chorus, with the percussion and acoustics having drawn you into it in what must be the nearest musical equivalent to toe-tapping. By the time the song launches itself from the key change into its final minute it's become a quintessential clapalongathon I defy anyone to resist.

The Danish entry never professes to being terribly impressive or even progressive: it's just three minutes of musical entertainment for the masses. Though it has a very Nordic sensibility, it speaks a completely different language to the Icelandic and Swedish entries it is competing against in the second semi-final - one which I feel will be more widely understood and appreciated. Eurovision might not be everyone's idea of a good time, but for those who do watch it I suspect the ostentation-free charm of All Night Long may be very easy to succumb to.