Based on Moldova 2018

All your secrets have been sold
Your life story is pure gold
We stole your information
See, here’s your inventory
Of personality for online exploitation

Your social media settings grew confusing
Who knew their consent was implied?
That Facebook survey you thought looked amusing
It blew your defence open wide!

Now we’re here controlling all you read
We’re trolling what you see and what you do
Cognitive assessment made to look innocent
Datasets defining you

So long as we’re earning, we ain’t that discerning
Tyrants, cheats, please form a queue
Tell use your endeavour, why, what, whomsoever…
We will make your dream come true

**********

We’ll manipulate your views
Through a drip-feed of fake news
Designed to look sporadic
Think you’ll look the other way?
You’re too smart? Hmm… yeah, okay
Then *POWW!* an infographic…

If something sells you bet that we’ll misuse it
Our clientele stretches worldwide
We’re science geeks? Or an audacious con-trick?
You’ll never quite make up your mind

Number-crunching, polling
Auto-diagnosing how you’ll feel before you do
Rich man waved his plastic: Demagogue?
Fantastic! We can help you stage a coup!

All the time we’re learning
Swing states overturning from Wisconsin to Baku
Propaganda’s better when it’s made-to-measure
Your worst nightmares have come true

**********

[PRIVACY STATEMENT]
Rummaging around here… in your data
Any dirt we found we… saved for later
Loaded up into our… simulator
Not your data…

It’s OUR data

Based on Ireland 1971

You asked for a date
And I said “Listen, mate,
On the chart of sweethearts
I’m afraid you don’t rate.

You may laugh, here’s a graph,
Shows the best men of all
It’s a fact, true enough
You don’t feature at all.”

“Yes, I’m short and I’m grey
And I know I look weak
But I’m begging you, please,
will you give me a week?

I’ll be tough, mark my words
I’ll be brave without fear
Every day I will show
I’m the toughest round here.”

Monday, you went to the dentist
Wouldn’t be anaesthetised
Tuesday, the bees were all stinging you
You pushed your face in their hive

Wednesday, you bought red-hot chillies
Rubbed all the juice in your eyes
Thursday, a fight in the street late at night
And you finished up with two black eyes

You’d been brave, it was true
I was almost impressed
But suggested to you
That you give it a rest

But you felt on a roll
And you said you preferred
Being so tough, rough and tough
How very absurd

Friday, the weather was freezing
You ran outside in the buff
Saturday, spent the day screaming,
Grunting, and macho-like stuff

Sunday you swam in the ocean
Challenged a shark to a race
You didn’t laugh when it bit you in half
And devoured the smile off your face

How you tried, now you’ve died,
And you proved you had balls
But the tough guy lifestyle
Didn’t suit you at all

So a word for the wise
My advice to all men:
Don’t try to prove that you’re tough –
Pretend.

Based on Israel 2013

Life in an orphanage is less fun than it sounds
Dumped by one’s parents in a glorified dog pound
They feed us once a day a lukewarm bowl of slop
Made with hair clippings from the local barbershop

I need a home
My room’s so filthy a rat ate my toe
A crisp pack stuffed with a brick is my pillow
All night I’m kept awake by ghosts
Munchkin poltergeists lift my bed afloat

Please take me home
At my bat mitzvah the bats ate my scroll
The toilet’s teetering over a sinkhole
Last birthday I just got a box
And for Hanukkah eight new strains of pox

Some couples come here now and then to take my friends
There are some weeks where I’m the only foundling left
They say my sad-sack vibes are why I’ll never move
Whilst Pollyanna-types sell through the leaking roof

I need a home
My only toy was a stick till it broke
I had to share it with all the urchinfolk
My cane that time I had a stroke
I have never known hugs, just Sticky’s poke

Please take me home
My rags are horrid and torn, long passed on
More people died in my pants than at the Somme
At least in tears they’ve been well-washed
But their cloth makes me cough – it’s asbestos

“We’ll take the dumpy wailing whaleface over there”
Are words I dream I might still hear before I’m dead

I need to know
If there are shoes without newspaper soles
And taste milk not from the teats of roadkilled voles
I wash my face in a dog bowl
And spend all of my weekends mining coal

Please take me home
If I go on for too long still unsold
Someone might notice I’m 33 years old
So please take home this tragic tot
Or I’ll die in my nettle-fibre cot

Based on Spain 1986

Senit hid, feels unwell
Siegel’s gone, no more tunes to sell
Serhat’s now too well-known
Miodio won’t pick up the phone

San Marino
No-one’s left to sing our songs
Asked around the country
didn’t take too long

It’s hard now to believe we’ll be in Tel Aviv
And the population doesn’t give a toss
We could stay at home and it would be their loss

San Marino, San Marino

Thus ignored
Searched abroad
Carola? Too hard to control

San Marino needs someone to sing for free
Public television can’t afford your fee
Can there be an artist Europe might adore?
Best if you don’t dwell on what we’ve sent before

I know we’ve done some wrong
The Social Network Song
But our horrid past can always be set right
And we’ll contribute a little to your flight

San Marino, San Marino

Valenti…?

NO.

Based on Austria 2003

In a petting zoo in Tarrenz no one could quite explain
Why the cows would bleat like sheep and all the rabbits oinked and neighed (for shame)

The lambs all looked like turtles, the llamas were quite scaly
All the kangaroos had feathers and the goats – well, they mooed gaily

Although it seemed so odd, it happened for a reason
Every animal there shared the same sexy secret:

With the crowds gone they got their groove on
’Cause all the fondling just left them frothing
And all the petting just got them wet and
Soon after dark, orgies would start

Ooh!

All this inter-species cross-breeding, all this fauna-neutral lovin’
’Twas the whole pet zoo laughing in the face of evolution (and Darwin)

There’s no way it should work, you’d surely think, with biology and things
And yet, somehow, rules > window > fly when zoo friends choose to swing

With a little cock-a-doodlin’, a lot of shells a-rockin’
Fur and feathers flyin’ and all sorts of horns a-lockin’

Hours of cuddles and tickled arseholes
The endless clutching, intimate touching
It gets them horny. ‘Animal Pornfeed’
Is what to type for an insight

Pigs that fly and donkeys with duck down
Hee-hawing camels and mystery mammals
They all await you at Tarrenz Pet Zoo
In deepest, darkest Austria

Based on Ireland 2000

Endless smiles, lay’n beside, my well hung counterpart
A low brow start to our love story
He’d undress, so firm and hunky. I’d wear a blindfold
It’s time to play then

I’d been manhandled with the force of a cowherd
Bitter taste and moistness of his penis
Broken arse, on all fours, with truth and honesty
Bought ice cream in the park that night

Where he said that we should just be friends, I’m done
And he shook me with his heartless cruel demeanour
While my heart’s still burning, he hands back my underwear
Out of love, now a lonely dancer

The Cloud has me in tailspin
And Myspace can’t hide the pain
Search until I find the answer
[**anguished cry on sight of new Instagram post featuring ex flirting with an 8/10 on holidays **]
There is no reason
Who can understand man’s inhumanity to man?

I proclaim, well you can go to hell, have fun
May your shin splints form an abscess in your tibia
Though I’m not done yearning, my heart ain’t in disrepair
Now I see (Now I see), I am free, I am free of you

[**sashays forward with the confidence of a middle aged woman finally getting her moment on the big stage**]
Celebrate the end of the summer of love
Travel solo to the sunny shores of Syden
Somewhere on that journey, I recalled his thinning hair
Now I see, he was not the answer
Short, balding, narcissistic banker

Based on Finland 1965

Yeah, I’m the guy on the penny
Being on you would be swell
I’ve got a seven inch stove pipe
My hat is quite big as well

So how about fuckin’ Lincoln?
My Johnson’s one massive cock
How about fuckin’ Lincoln?
Come play with my Lincoln log

I’ve a libido that won’t stop
Drove my wife quite insane
So… fancy a piece of Lincoln?
I’m also turned on by pain

My south parts shall rise again
Four score sounds like an average weekend
So come get it on with Lincoln

[Bill Clinton sax solo]

I’ll give you head on a mountain
Mountin’ with me’s always ace
Now whip out your Mary todger
And shoot a load in my face

See my Gettysburg undressed
Contact my member of sex congress
I call him my Davy Crockett

Is that a gun in your pocket? 😉

Based on Slovakia 1994

Thirteen months ago when damn,
The chance to dominate
Has somehow not gone Elán’s way
Put, a gospel group from Split
Instead went to Millstreet
But there’s no shred of grudge we hold
When Tony and his queens
Are the best Ex-Yugo act since when?
Aska?

Not certified musicians
So just vote as we say
For Nek’ Ti Bude Ljubav Sva, Sva, Sva
No other entry comes this far

Them incredible Maltese
Have sent a gorgeous hit
Accomplished by a true star team
Just superb poetic wit
The greatest since Tolstoy
Presented in a neat routine
Yet unsatisfied with them?
As duos go, the others are quite weak
(CatCat…)

Have an unbiased listen
And then please give your ten
To the girl with the face of star, star, star
And to the dude with the guitar

Oh:

If asked by Mr. Clausen
About our voting ways
Deny you’ve ever seen this draft, draft, draft
Not that there’s any wrong with that

* * *

Few points and dreadful placing
Maybe we were rubbish live
Ah well, Croatia’s promised
Twelve back in ninety-five

Based on Slovenia 1998

Been in love, for many years
She knew my hopes, knew my fears
But the power deep inside
was something that I could not confide

Then she used her female charm (such female charm)
Ignored my inner alarm (mind the alarm)
Did not know how to resist
Now I’m locked in a cell, what a twist

Please, I beg, don’t cut my hair
All my power’s there
You betrayed me
I thought we would get hitched
Delilah, you’re a bitch

Sold me to the Philistines
They’re coming for my head, I’m in tears

Please, I beg, don’t cut my hair
All my power’s there
You betrayed me
Oh, I don’t get the switch…

Oh… (For God’s sake, don’t cut his hair)
Why ay ay ay ay ay ay
(All his power’s there) My power’s there
You betrayed me
Turned out to be a snitch
Delilah, you’re a bitch

Delilah, you’re a bitch

Based on Luxembourg 1956 (1)

Here at BBC headquarters ESC’s not our forte
Our last 12 points came from Prussia, our last win was in Pompeii
No-one wants to be our singer, Vera Lynn said no thank you
Right Said Fred said, “Sure, we’re keen… but we must wash our hair till June”

Oh we asked all the stars, Peter Andre’s behind bars
The ugly one from S Club got a new job at a pub

Then we thought we’d found a Nolan – was the one who doesn’t sing
Called Martine McCutcheon’s granny but she let her phone just ring
Then Adele gave us a yes and in our knickers we all pissed
“Adele Scunt, I work at Boots” – we moved her to the maybe list

Oh we asked all the stars, Mr Blobby was aghast
We even asked every class at St Winifred’s, all passed

So we went back, asked the Allisons nicely if they’d died yet
Sadly one had and, “Over my *#&©%#@ corpse!” live one said
Asked, “Are you sure?” – he hung up, my thought bulb though was now lit
Would it be so wrong if we dug dead one up for a bit?

So we traipsed down to the churchyard and we took apart his grave
Took the corpse back up to Salford, Pollyfilla’d the decay
Gave him lovely brand new eyeballs – ping pong balls on which we drew
We don’t have Moldova’s budget but he looks as good as new

Prop him up, prop him up, folk in Spain’ll never know
Just prop him up, prop him up, hope the rotting doesn’t show

Necropop, necropop, necropop

It’s the BBC’s last hope