Just look at the absolute state of this Austrian entry from 2005. The country that brought us Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Falco decided to enter a six-piece folk group in tracksuits doing a Latin song about "a girl from Cuba" infused with yodelling.
The chorus "exhorts everyone to dance like the girl would", but the only dancing the sole woman in the group actually does is this bit where she rubs her backside up against a trombonist. Then after they failed to qualify with this aural abscess, their broadcaster pulled out in 2006 and had the brass neck to argue that "talent ... is no longer the determining factor in contest success".
You see, when it comes to Eurovision Austria are useless. Absolutely useless. But then came the Wurst.
Eurovision 2014 was like we'd fucking time travelled. We were in a weird and wonderful world where everything was different. I was in a disused ship yard thinking maybe outside the Polar icecaps had melted. Maybe there's fucking robots knocking about, and Davina McCall's the new pope. Maybe you can download rice.
The truth is that very few people foresaw Conchita Wurst’s "Rise Like a Phoenix" doing as well as it did in 2014 - not me, not the bookies, not even Dr Eurovision - and it wasn't even until mid way through Conchita's performance at the Thursday night semi that she rose (you know, like a Phoenix) from being a press-bait novelty act to a sure fire favourite.
But favourite and then winner she became, this generation's Dana International with a message of tolerance that even caused ultra-conservative Belarussian televoters to rank it 4th despite a petition arguing it would unleash a "hotbed of sodomy" on their children.
Since then we've been back to normal. 2017's entry was so bad that to cheer it up someone called "ESC Chloe" on youtube went to the trouble of editing the preview video so that every time their artist sung the word "hey", a foul mouthed Gordon Ramsey insult appeared - all under the subtitle of "You fucking Donkey".
In 2018 a forgettable man with a forgettable name sang a forgettable song in a forgettable way, and then in 2019 we got a forgettable woman singing a forgettable song in a forgettable way, although her name was less forgettable, and more unpronounceable.
I quite like this year's song - it might all be a bit showtune meets X-Factor era winner’s single, but it’s earwormy enough and with some sparkly staging may well do much much better than the fan community seems to think it will. It says here that Vincent is “excited” to showcase his “impressive vibrato and tenor vocal range”, but as you can see, he seems more excited to showcase the fact that he’s lost the buttons off his bin bag jacket.
If only they'd sent this nightcore version though. That would be amazing! He’d be flying round Rotterdam like Harrison Ford with a big whip in one hand and a skinny latte in the other, whipping six shades of shit out of the opposition to save the world.
It's all a far cry from the Trackshittaz. You heard me.
