Brendan Murray sings traditional ballad for Ireland
Ireland is still the most successful country in the history of Eurovision if you count the victories. The country took home the trophy seven times, but the most recent one (1996) is already more than 20 years ago. In fact, in the past three years, Ireland failed to make it to the final of the contest all together. This year they selected former boyband singer Brendan Murray to make a change. With the traditional ballad ‘Dying To Try’ he will attempt to take Ireland back to their days of success in Eurovision.
Although ‘Dying To Try’ isn’t a bad song at all, I can’t help but feel that Ireland still hasn’t moved past their huge Eurovision successes from the 90s, as this song sounds like it belongs to that period of time as well. It is a big, dramatic ballad that could easily have been a Westlife single almost twenty years ago. He seems the kind of artist that gets advertised just before Mother’s Day if you get what I mean.
The build up is quite slow with a long first verse, but from then on we get the chorus repeated with some key changes to build to a climax. Brendan Murray has a unique, high pitched voice that probably won’t be for everyone, but he carries the tune very well and I have faith in him giving a flawless vocal performance in Kiev. It sure is not one of my personal favourites, but I believe he will manage to melt some hearts around Europe. There probably still is a market for this, but we will have to wait and see if that market is big enough to take Ireland past the semi finals, especially as he has some competition from other young, charming performers from Bulgaria and potentially Australia in the final, who have more contemporary entries.
UPDATE – Review on semi final performance:
Unfortunately no big air balloon, nor his incredibly high pitched vocals could take away from the fact that the song itself was too dated to make any impression in this contest. Especially with Bulgaria sending another young, handsome singer with a way stronger and more contemporary entry, Ireland was always going to have a hard time to qualify from this second semi final. Poor Brendan gave it his all, but it was not enough to get Ireland back on the Eurovision track. Come back with something a bit more modern next year guys!
UPDATE – Semi final results:
Ireland’s Brendan Murray finished in 13th position overall after both televoters and juries placed him 12th out of 18.
Check all Eurovision 2017 reviews: Albania – Armenia – Australia – Austria – Azerbaijan – Belarus – Belgium – Bulgaria – Croatia – Cyprus – Czech Republic – Denmark – Estonia – Finland – France – FYR Macedonia – Georgia – Germany – Greece – Hungary – Iceland – Ireland – Israel – Italy – Latvia – Lithuania – Malta – Moldova – Montenegro – The Netherlands – Norway – Poland – Portugal – Romania – San Marino – Serbia – Slovenia – Spain – Sweden – Switzerland – Ukraine – United Kingdom