Netherlands: Jeangu Macrooy

Hallo, Holland! It's our Dutch hosts. 

In 2019 Arcade got a whole bunch of points and won Eurovision for the orange clog-clad folks back in the Netherlands. So now we're off to their place to do it all again. Can they join the select group of countries to have won the contest on home soil?

The good news (as we will see shortly) is that they have a better chance this year than if 2020 had gone ahead as planned. Jeangu has a great, effortless voice and "Grow" is a solid "life-is-tough-but-I'm-a-man-in-touch-with-my-emotions-and-there's-still-hope" kind of ballad.

It builds nicely. Eventually. It just seems to take too long for me and it's only the last 30 seconds where the hope grabs us and lifts us up. It feels like they were making a 5-6 minute song but forgot to put more money in the Eurovision meter and the lights went out just as we were ready to get out of our seats with a loud "Amen".

Oh Jeangu, what are we going to do with you? You and your soulful voice and your positive message about overcoming oppression and being true and unashamed of who you are. You and your video chocked full of lyrics and outfits giving tribute to your Surinamese background.

I imagine conversations backstage.....

"So what's your song about?"
"It's about authenticity, about resilience and defeating suppression and exploitation. It's about being unbreakable and it weaves those themes together with the culture of my home country of Suriname. It's a song to lift our souls and unite us. What about you?"
"My song's about about a booty call and I kind of do a lot of thrusting."
"......."

While actual high ground is hard to come by in our super flat host country, Jeangu has found a bit of moral high ground. Amongst a plethora of tedious break up songs, "Birth of a new age" brings a bit of culture and lyrical depth that must be applauded.

This is one of those songs that forces me to accept that my criteria for a good Eurovision song (nonsense, danger, humour, special effects etc) are not perfect. This would score poorly in most of my categories but I love the message and enjoy the song it and it certainly deserves to be here more than a number of the songs I've had to trawl through so far!

I hope Jeangu does well. I doubt he will be challenging for the win (still looking at Malta, Lithuania and Belgium as my favourites) but he will do the Netherlands proud.