You can tell when Spain are sending something decent to the Eurovision Song Contest because our #esc chatroom invariably sees an influx of new chatters from the Iberian nation, all eager to find out what we think about their entry. Although this year is no “Rosamania” – the 2002 on-season will remain legendary to all who witnessed it – there certainly seems to be a big domestic fan buzz around the Spanish entry. And who can blame them? Winless since 1969, the top ten finish achieved by Pastora Soler is the sole bright spot on the country’s underwhelming Eurovision record card recently, and last year it took the votes of the entertainingly unpredictable Albanian jury to save ESDM from finishing right at the bottom of the scoreboard.

The lady tasked with improving Spain’s batting average at the contest is Ruth Lorenzo, a singer I previously last encountered on the big screen at a London gay bar when she was taking part in the British edition of The X Factor. One of the people who finished ahead of her on that show was Eoghan Quigg, who lost out in this year’s Irish final – but Ruth went one better and won the Spanish preselection, albeit after great confusion at the end of the voting, and duly grabbed the ticket to Copenhagen.

The title of her bilingual song, Dancing In The Rain, should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers her from The X Factor, where her performance of Prince’s Purple Rain was easily her strongest. They’ve gone for a “rain” theme here too, and I assume the visual staging will also involve water. (And dancing.) The song may seem like a classy ballad on the surface, but underneath there’s a pneumatic drill trying to bore a hole in your brain with an insistent and repetitive melody line and lyric. Then again, the addition of subtlety would have deprived us of one of the most enjoyable memes of the ESC year (there must be a limit to the number of funny variations on a theme of “THE RAIN! THE RAIN! DANCING!”, but if there is, we’ve yet to reach it).

My verdict is a mixed one. Put simply, I really want to like the Spanish entry, but I can’t quite manage it. It’s loud and insistent where it should be anthemic and soaring, and Ruth’s powerful voice tips over into shoutiness too often for my liking. She can and should deliver a convincing and technically accurate vocal, and that might be enough to win over the jurors and propel this into the lower reaches of the top ten, but my hunch is that the aggressive tones of the performance will distract from the elegance of the overall package and leave Spain floundering in the lower mid-table. Whereupon our chatroom will be flooded with confused cries of “WHY EUROPE NO LIKE SPAIN???” all over again. Ah, nostalgia…

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