Germany

Miss Kiss Kiss Bang Alex Swings Oscar Sings!

"Extra-ordinary and oh so cool..."

The "if at first you don't succeed" maxim with Eurovision seems to go "try again, and again, and again, and if that doesn't work, try again, but reverting to an earlier try... and then try again". Countries often fall into the trap of repeating themselves when they are desperate to return to the upper reaches of the scoreboard, but generally without success, since nine times out of ten the copy is a pale imitation of the original. Some countries can get away with pulling the same song apart and putting it back together slightly differently each year, but that's because they have a sound that appeals to a broad cross-section of the audience, and some success to go on in doing so. Germany doesn't, and hasn't, and as a result is likely to find that the only title Miss Kiss Kiss Bang is in contention for in Moscow is that of least successful automatic finalist.

The thinking behind NDR's choice of Alex Swings Oscar Sings! is a little hard to fathom. The release of the combined televoting and jury results from Helsinki, which showed that Roger Cicero's Frauen Regier'n Die Welt would have fared immeasurably better under such a system, may have encouraged the broadcaster to try the same formula again; it's hard to account for their faith in Miss Kiss Kiss Bang otherwise, since it has only a fraction of the quality of their 2007 entry. A brass track alone does not a swing number make, especially when the rest of it is so blatantly programmed. It leaves the song feeling cold and soulless; more like something discarded from Madonna's I'm Breathless (the Dick Tracy soundtrack) than a true representative of the genre. Which was fine in 1990, and in context, but not when it's abandoned to a Eurovision fate without any of the cartoon appeal.

None of this is a reflection on the song's performer, Oscar Loya, who has a decent voice, although he too feels out of place singing Miss Kiss Kiss Bang, for any number of reasons. People have suggested he and his entry will pose the only threat to Greece's Sakis Rouvas in the final, drawn as they are at the three-quarter mark, but nothing about the German entry suggests to me that it will challenge anything much, let alone something as 'properly' calculated as This Is Our Night. Audiences impressed by the level of songs and singers employed on shows like Strictly Come Dancing might enjoy Miss Kiss Kiss Bang, but that doesn't alter the fact that it is Germany doing what they've done before with far less panache. As such, I can't see it finishing in Moscow anywhere other than at the lower end of the scoreboard, and a record three-from-five last place is well within the realms of possibility.