Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Britain’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest is a terrible racket. It is SO MERCILESSLY LOUD, to an extent that can only truly be conveyed by WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS AT ALL TIMES. But I’ll try not to. The work of a synthesiser-wielding EDM scientist named LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (sorry), “Eins, Zwei, Drei” chucks together horny moans, plinky-plonky synths, thick stabs of bass, and a man who just won’t stop shouting. You’re desperate to give him the information he wants, but you just don’t have it. It’s giving “Parklife” gone wrong. It’s giving Guantanamo Bay.
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, a man in his late thirties named Sam Battle, whose bio is so sparse we don’t even know what UK city he’s from, attracted minor fame on the internet a few years ago for making instruments out of found objects – he once wired a Furby into a synthesiser (KOOKY!). With his mad professor hair, owlish features and penchant for big noises, LOOK MUM is all a bit “Blue Peter does Berghain”, and very, very English in a way that’s both horrendously embarrassing and oddly charming. He therefore makes sense for Eurovision, which has long existed on a separate plane of taste and respectability.
Sonically speaking, “Eins, Zwei, Drei” has the feel of the distant past, like a Kaiser Chiefs album track or something by The Ting Tings, or that moment in time when lairy football fans would chant “What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a monster?” while down the pub. Which is all to say that this is a very heterosexual Eurovision entry, devoid of camp or glitz or whatever Olly Alexander was doing a few years ago.
The track finds LOOK MUM bemoaning the nine-to-five life (“the office cubicle has trapped me again”), before concluding that the only way to rectify such malaise is by (checks notes) counting to three in German. “Eins, zwei, drei / Darlin’, I need something salty / Eins, zwei, drei / with a slice of pepperoni,” he yells. Is this all a bit of cynical Euro-baiting? Perhaps! Are the lyrics about being sick of eating jam roly-polys, pining for a European holiday and swapping “counterfeit” pounds for some Euros really evidence that LOOK MUM has smuggled communist-socialist, anti-Brexit propaganda into the primetime BBC One schedules? If only!
I’m unsure if this is the right track to win us Eurovision. But our continued presence at the contest has long felt akin to sending a Valentine’s card to a person who hates us, so chances are it doesn’t matter anyway. What is welcome is that LOOK MUM has delivered a bit of a moment, even if that moment will give you a headache. Our recent entries have consistently been different kinds of beige, whether they’re being sung by an am-dram trio with the worst band name in history (remember Remember Monday?), or that man who looked like white Jesus. “Eins, Zwei, Drei” may have made me feel like I never want to listen to music again, but at least it made me feel something.
