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.
