OK, hands up, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't really say that - but he might as well have.
On Saturday, the BBC reported that US writer Diane Warren will pen the lyrics to an ostensibly UK song that will be competing in Eurovision - the cheesy, political, waste of money that even Wogan has turned his back on.
Warren who has written powerhouse hits for Toni Braxton and Cher, is to write the lyrics for Lloyd Webber's music - or is that the other way around? Tin Pan Alley style never did much for me.
Not that it matters.
The UK has a mass of talent and really, what the fuck is a yank (albeit it talented one) doing stealing our jobs? If I were a potential competitor in one of the other competing countries I'd be feeling a bit short-changed too and laughing at us for not being able to produce the lyrics in-house as it were.
I mean, this is a small island - there's only 50-odd million people here!
Surely, if we're daft enough to make a spectacle of a bunch of hopefuls by running a televised competition to find the artist, the same could be done for the words, couldn't it?
I'm sure you could line up some walking egos like Simon Cowell, Peter Hitchens and maybe even Bruno Tonioli to judge whatever our home-grown scribes can get onto paper. Then we could have a national phone-in vote to raise loads of money for the telly company while the result is decided long before the phone lines close.
That would be great!
Exile
5 years ago
Posts
American Idol had a songwriting competition running a couple of years back and although not eligible, I like thousands of others, went through the process of rewriting 'One moment in Time'.
ReplyDeleteThe whole genre has of course been lampooned by the Peter Kays "The Winners Song".
I have an extremely dear and talented LA composer friend who is into musical theatre but hasn't the slightest clue about anything to do with pop culture or such things as 'Idol'.
I can only imagine that Lloyd Webber comes from the same stable because the lyrics don't even have a stab at originality, they really are 'One Moment in Time' written backwards in the crudest of fashions.
To be that unaware says to me that Webber is surrounded by sychophants.
To put out a truly terrible song on Broadway doesn't much matter because Broadway doesn't much matter but to air all over European TV must be so embarrassing for him because somebody must have told him by now.
Undoubtedly this is to Webber what 'Give my regards to Broadstreet' was to McCartney.
If the lyrics had been voted for you could understand Webber being put in a such a position but to choose to go this route voluntarily is truly mind boggling.
My own attempt at the genre is positively subtle by comparison and subtelty is a quality I have seldom been accused of.
Colin O'Donoghue
cod@relgold.co.uk