Songwriter says parody Eurovision song was a ‘hair-raising challenge’

The songwriter behind TV channel Dave’s new unofficial entry for the Eurovision Song Contest said it was a “hair-raising challenge”.

Inspired by the first time the UK has staged the competition since 1998, singer and comedian Jazz Emu worked with Dave to create a tune called We Also Wrote A Song to parody the UK’s Eurovision contestant Mae Muller’s I Wrote A Song.

The song also features vocals from Rachel Parris, who is known for hosting BBC’s satirical new show The Mash Report.

Jazz Emu, whose real name is Archie Henderson, told the PA news agency that creating the song was a “hair-raising challenge” after shooting the video just two weeks after his first meeting with Dave.

“It was a super rapid turnaround – we were shooting the video two weeks after my first meeting with them – so it was a somewhat hair-raising challenge to get down lyrics and fully produced track in time for the shoot,” the 29-year-old from London said.

“I was extremely attracted by the specificity of the project and excited that Dave were entrusting into my songwriting hand something on such a scale.

“It was great fun working with them to carve out the vision, and getting to see so many talented people bringing life to the notes under my lyrics was a real treat for me.”

Henderson said he took inspiration from listening to “classic Eurovision bangers” to get himself into the “musical headspace” needed to create the track, and found that there is “a lot of power in traditional panpipes over a fat-stinking sub bass”.

He said he was “all for” the idea after Dave approached him to create an unofficial Eurovision song.

“Dave came to me a few weeks ago with the idea to, in their words, ‘jump on the bandwagon’, and, as an aficionado of Eurovision and Dave and most kinds of wagon, I was all for it,” he said.

“I joined forces with the good people at Dave to bring life to their vision: a genuine unofficial entry to the Eurovision competition.”

He also joked: “We liked the idea of Dave spending all of its hard-earned revenue on committing to this frankly insane idea full-throttle, so I kind of just ran with that and pulled in as many Eurovision-specific references as I could.”

I think it’s been amazing to see our occasionally volatile nation suddenly genuinely excited about Eurovision

Comedian Jazz Emu, real name Archie Henderson

Speaking ahead of this year’s Eurovision event in Liverpool, Henderson said he has enjoyed seeing the nation “genuinely excited” about the song contest and joked that he should represent the UK next year.

“I think it’s been amazing to see our occasionally volatile nation suddenly genuinely excited about Eurovision.

“Yes, it may only be because we‘ve realised that, for the first in our history, we are actually not completely terrible at it. But who cares? We are committing, nationally.

“More than anything I would like the board to respond to my several dozen email applications to represent the UK in 2024.”

Henderson and Parris were joined by fellow comedians Abi Clarke, Darren Harriott, Helen Bauer and Josh Jones to create the music video.

In the song, the TV channel said it wanted to become the new unofficial entry for Eurovision because “we wanna be a part of the Euro Crew”.

The song reads: “If Australia can take to the stage at Eurovision, does that mean anyone’s welcome too?

“Cause at Dave we are tired of facing our televisions, we wanna be a part of the Euro Crew.

“We have spent over 95% of Dave’s annual budget on legally becoming a nation.

“So, we can enter Eurovision we’ve spent, er, several million on legal fees, and smoke machines and pantsuits made of mirrors.”

The song ends by saying: “We don’t know which country’s going to give us the points when we climb up on that stage.

“So, we’re hedging our bets by including a phrase in every single EU language.”