Remember Monday are set for three minutes that will change their lives
It’s that time of year again: defrost Cheryl Baker, dust off Johnny Logan and direct your eyes to Basel for the Eurovision Song Contest, which is still, only just, about the ‘song’ part of the name.
For all the geopolitics and sloganeering, it’s a fluffy TV show watched by millions of disinterested folk and a few million passionate, zealous, face-painted people. When I sat at the back of the stadium in Duesseldorf in 2011 with Laura, one of those zealots, I was effectively in the studio audience for a TV show; after being in our seats for 45 minutes, host Stefan Raab came out before the cameras were live and told us to chant ‘I can’t go! I can’t go!’ during the opening number.
As one of the nations who funds the competition, the UK supports Eurovision with extensive coverage. On TV, Graham Norton has slid into the chair occupied for many years by Terry Wogan, while on Radio 2 Scott and Rylan are Eurovision husbands. On a recent episode of their Pop Top 10 podcast, the pair profiled ten modern icons including winners Conchita, Lordi, Loreen, and Måneskin as well as people’s champion Verka Serduchka, whose silver suit and gurning face captured the attention for three minutes. Also on that podcast was Duncan James whose band Blue, marking their comeback after seven years away, represented the UK in 2011 with I Can.
They did okay, finishing 11th out of 25 finalists, fifth in the public vote, and thus reaching the left side of the scoreboard; since then, incredibly, only the second-place finish of Space Man by Sam Ryder in 2022 has repeated the feat. In 2025, Holly, Charlotte and Lauren aka Remember Monday are set to yell ‘What. The. Hell. Just. HAPPENED?!’ for three minutes in what I imagine will be a theatrical performance, given that two of them have been West End stars (Six, Phantom, Matilda) and the other taught musical theatre for years. ‘We have not held back on the theatrics,’ they told Scott on a recent Radio 2 appearance.
In December 2023 I saw the trio in their country guise playing at Bush Hall; as well as making us aware that they had recorded something for US TV, which turned out to be a cover of Hand In My Pocket by Alanis Morrissette, they announced that they had quit their jobs to focus on the band full-time. This made sense: after main songwriter Lauren’s long run as Miss Honey in Matilda, she was finally free to devote time to the project, which seemed to be more pitched at teens and tweens than thirtysomething blokes like me.
They know how to entertain a small crowd, and there is a Little Mix-sized gap in the market for a girl group. They are already booked to support The Corrs next month at Blenheim Palace, as well as the Latitude and Isle of Wight festivals. Their setlist is impressive and they had pre-existing fans from their run on The Voice in 2019: all four judges turned their chairs when they auditioned with Kiss From A Rose by Seal, and they performed their original song Jailbreaker rather than a cover in the later rounds.
Six years on, they have a worldwide audience for three minutes with their song, which is really a series of musical sections glued together. It shows that they can harmonise and hit the high notes, and as with Space Man, their Eurovision entry is over the top, hugely catchy and will position them as popstars. Sam Ryder has only had one real follow-up hit, 2023’s You’re Christmas To Me, a tie-in with an Amazon movie, so are we to expect that the girls will do a Christmas song later in the year, as part of their label’s attempts to break them and, significantly, make money?
In the ten weeks after the song was unveiled, it had crept up to just under three million Spotify streams, which is far fewer than the 40m+ streams for the Contest favourite Bara Bada Bastu by KAJ, which is a bit like that Numa Numa song, probably on purpose. After Sweden made it through the first of two semi-finals – the second is on Thursday – the trio should, if the odds are to be believed, win it for them for a record-breaking eighth time.
It is doubtful that Remember Monday will follow Sandie Shaw, Lulu, Brotherhood of Man, Bucks Fizz and Katrina & the Waves to take it for a sixth time for the UK; in recent years, the goal has been to finish on the left side of that scoreboard. To that end, the trio have spent the last few weeks shlepping around Europe: they have sat on sofas, pressed the flesh, performed the song and uploaded dozens of social media videos.
As with sport, Eurovision is not just about the week but about a campaign, and the Eurovision social media and Youtube teams are very good at hyping the event. A slew of commentators, podcasters, writers and Eurovision fans including the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell pop up across the media landscape to give their view on costumes, songs and countries, while skirting the politics given that Eurovision is about peace, love and pop music.
This year, countries not taking part include Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia and Russia. Montenegro return with a song sung in their own language, while there will also be outings for the native tongues of Albania, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and Serbia. Spain, Germany and France have also chosen not to perform in English, which they have been able to do since 1999, while Estonia’s entry, a rap by Tommy Cash, will be a mix of Italian and English, given that it is called Espresso Macchiato. Lovers of language and European geography will be well served this year.
Across four long, tedious hours, the Song Contest will bring a mix of the ballad, the berserk and the banal, with far fewer key changes than in the Contests I watched in the 1990s and 2000s, although that KAJ track does have one. Ballads won in 2023 and 2024, so uptempo tunes may find favour with the judges and the public, whose votes are treated equally. Last year, 22 juries gave Switzerland the full douze points, while wartorn Israel, who are still at war today, got the maximum from 15, with only Ukraine giving the Swiss 12.
The TV audience gave the UK entry, Dizzy by Olly Alexander, nul points, as they had done Embers by James Newman in 2021. Will Remember Monday enjoy the success of Sam Ryder, who took 283 points from the jury, including eight maximums, and 183 from the public? Will the fact that Eurovision falls in the same month as the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War help the trio win votes, or are they doomed to make up the numbers?
They would not have accepted the offer to represent the UK if they did not think it would boost their career, but Mae Muller took on that mantle in 2023 and has more or less disappeared. As is so often the case for Eurovision in the 2020s, it’s about exposure, not the song.
The Eurovision Song Contest airs at 8pm this Saturday (May 17) from Basel, Switzerland