Switzerland

The Highest Heights Lovebugs

"May I have your attention, please?"

There are certain countries you expect certain things of at Eurovision. Whether it's Sweden doing schlager, Armenia doing ethnopop or Belgium doing bugger all, they fit neatly into the pigeonholes they create for themselves. Equally, there are countries we will champion at Eurovision if they think outside that box: Belgium is an example this year, and their rank is swelled by near neighbours and rival no-hopers Switzerland. While dissimilar in virtually every respect, their entries have one trait that will always stand them in good stead with me: authenticity. Like the Turkish and Bosnian entries in 2008, The Highest Heights compromises nothing in presenting itself to Europe, contrived only in the sense that it is a textbook example of what the group behind it, Lovebugs, do best.

Unlike Turkey and Bosnia, what Switzerland lacks at Eurovision is a ready-made audience to lap up (and more importantly vote for) whatever three minutes of music it offers up. This may prove to be the biggest stumbling block The Highest Heights has to overcome in the 1st semi: it might have an appeal reminiscent of Deli or Pokušaj, but without a Swiss vanguard from Reykjavik to Jerusalem to catapault it over the barricades, Lovebugs will have to try just that little bit harder to break through to the televoters. Any jury worth its salt (which is to say with any musical credentials beyond determining who is fabulous enough to warrant promotion to the final ahead of someone more qualified to be there) should save the song in the event that it falls victim to the shortcomings of the semi's voting, since it is a more solid and contemporary Eurovision entry than any the Swiss have entered from their own scene in a ridiculously long time.

That, though, is why we champion it. I think I would be speaking for most people if I said that there was no love lost with Switzerland at the contest; where they differ from Andorra, for example, who have been far more consistent at entering songs deserving of better results, is in the fact that the various Swiss broadcasters have made an unwanted name for themselves by seldom choosing anything for which a mediocre outcome wasn't completely justified. In that sense, The Highest Heights represents a watershed for the country that won the whole shebang on its very first outing but have since only made the top 5 four times in 25 years. Melodic, meaningful and sounding like something normal people would actually listen to and like, it is the kind of thing there simply has to be a place for in the final.

And barring the kind of performance I doubt a band of Lovebugs' standing would deliver, I suspect it will qualify. In an ideal world it would then go on and vie for victory, but this is Eurovision we're talking about, and indeed Switzerland. But The Highest Heights is the Swiss doing the unexpected, and doing it brilliantly, and for that they deserve to be championed as far as hopeless sentiment - and a televote or two - will carry them.