This week the United Kingdom chose SuRie with “Storm’ as their Eurovision representative after winning BBC’s ‘You Decide’ contest.
The song has had mixed reviews among fans, but the opinion that really counts is from Australia.
Why?
Well since 2015 the UK have received the most points in the contest from down under.
The 23 points received from Australia in those three years (including 12 points from our jury to Lucie last year) is ahead of traditional allies Malta on 18 and even Ireland who trail behind on 15.
So in reality if Aussies don’t like the song, then the Brits don’t have much chance in the competition.
To test out the views of Australians we got 10 Eurovision fans to rate ‘Storms’ out of 10 and then rank it among the seven songs released thus far for Eurovision.
So without further ado… ahem…
“Hello London, this is Australia calling and here is the vote of our fan jury.”
Average score: 6.1/10
Highest: 8/10
Lowest: 4/10
Average position: 5th out of 7
Highest: 2nd
Lowest: 7th
So it’s not a great result but not a terrible one either.
When pressed for comments, fans understandably had mixed reviews but many could see the potential.
Victorian fan Liv was impressed but thinks it needs to be improved,
“This song honestly grabbed me from the start and I liked it as it was. Live I was happy with the connect she could make down the lens and was very satisfied to see they embellished the recorded version as expected. However this needs a revamp ASAP. I would love to see it tightened up a little, give it a bit more of a meaty and fuller instrumental backing and make the vocals a *little* less downed than the original.”
Manoli from Sydney agreed,
“Storm could be such a better song. It builds to this anthemic chorus that has such a nice melody, but it just goes nowhere. It needs a revamp and some good staging to make it be more memorable.”
But Aaron from Brisbane, who gave this highest marks out of all fans, is impressed with it just the way it is,
“This song is a lovely song talking about how it's important to stay strong and overcome troubles by remembering what you believed and dreamed to be possible. I love that message. The quietness of the verses lends power to the chorus giving it an anthemic quality. SuRie can definitely sing this song well, the performance was better than the studio version led me to expect so I was very impressed.”
Despite this some others see no real hope for the song including Selim from Mildura,
“It is a drag to listen to. It’s very bland just feels like a bottom five song for the UK this year, very disappointing considering Lucie Jones was my winner during and after the show last year”.
Joshua from Sydney also thought bottom five was on the cards,
“It could finish Top 15 in the Grand Final, but my prediction is from 20th-24th. Not really sure if it will captivate voters.”
So it does appear without a significant revamp their could be dark clouds on the horizon for SuRie and the United Kingdom. However going by the staging and revamp of Lucie’s song last year, the British are more than capable of lifting the song for a solid performance and placing.