Every year when Eurovision comes around, Australia goes through the same old dance.
A heap of attention is heaped on the chosen singer to represent our country at the singing competition, questions are thrown up about what exactly is Australia’s place in modern Europe, and we’re patriotically obliged to care about the competition right up until our selected singer gets booted.
Since that formula hasn’t quite reaped the expected rewards over the past three years, Australia is changing things up for next year’s competition in an attempt to secure that elusive victory.
Who will represent Australia at @Eurovision in 2019? #Eurovision #AusDecides pic.twitter.com/WmvOfjjlyh
— SBS Australia (@SBS) October 13, 2018
In order to choose who will represent us at the 64th Annual Eurovision Song Contest in Israel in 2019, SBS will be hosting a national contest in which the Australian people will choose the lucky artist.
Titled Eurovision – Australia Decides, this competition will take place on the Gold Coast in February 2019 in a series of live shows (not unlike Australian Idol), during which the public can vote on their favourite artist.
But the bigger twist for next year is the song choice.
Rather than call on some old Aussie classics like ‘Horses’ or ‘You’re The Voice’, SBS is calling upon songwriters across the country to submit their very own written tunes to be sung as Australia’s Eurovision 2019 entry. The rules are pretty lax (it’s just gotta be an original song featuring vocals that’s between 2-3 minutes long and isn’t publicly available) meaning they’re either desperate for tunes or they have great faith in Australia’s many budding songwriters to really come through for their country next year.
Let’s keep things in a glass half-full mood and go with the latter option.
Got a song in your heart? Think the world needs to hear it? Find out how to submit your song to be Australia's favourite for Eurovision in 2019: https://t.co/lMWzCjBuJa
— SBS Eurovision (@SBSEurovision) October 14, 2018
So if you’ve got some old tune that you wrote after a break-up at 17, you might as well send it through because there’s every chance that some famous Aussie singer like Guy Sebastian or Delta Goodrem could be belting it out to millions of Europeans next year.
Besides, you got nothing to lose and all those songs you wrote are just sitting there gathering dust so you might as well send them through right here.