5 April 2003
Wow! You people of Ireland 2003 must have really loved your Eurovision, to say that the runner-up of the national final got to number one! Well, context: 2003 was the year Eurosong became You’re A Star, an Irish solution to the Irish problem of how to domesticate the new TV reality talent show format sweeping the world – combine it with Eurovision! (I pause to note that You’re A Star is a pun on Eurostar, which is not a Eurovision thing but the Channel Tunnel train service between London and Paris. No, it no longer stops at Waterloo.)
The final of You’re A Star 2003 comprised two singers, each given a would-be song for Europe, and the lead-up to the final involved scenes reminiscent of a 1970s Fianna Fáil general election campaign, where campaign buses pulled up to stage-managed campaign rallies on the back of campaign-festooned lorries in every town, village and sráidbhaile of the land, and promises of support were back-slapped out of the locals. Both finalists duly got the bonus prize of a chart number one; we’ll see the actual winner and Ireland’s 2003 Eurovision act in due course, but first it’s the runner-up.
Simon Casey, presumably after losing a coin toss, gets a ballad written by Westlifer and soon-to-be solo troubadour Brian McFadden. In keeping with the election campaign theme, ‘A Better Plan’ has a manifesto-style title and delivers underwhelmingly. A cliched inspirational anthem on how we’re all the same and why can’t we live together, it betrays its callow provenance by being greviously overwritten and overblown: “Our beliefs and our decisions / Replace our thoughts for all those millions / Who died on Earth not even knowing why” should have stayed in the teen journal. Brian’s uplifting message in the chorus is that nouveau riche boyband stars will pass safely through the eye of the needle: “Whether you’re made or poor / I know for sure / that we all hold the cure”. Simon seemed a likeable sort but in the race to Europe he was always starting at a disadvantage being tethered to this yoke. It’s as if not only Eurovision but even the local qualifiers for Eurovision had higher songwriting standards than team Westlife.
