France are struggling to make an impact in the Eurovision Song Contest of late. Since Patricia Kaas snuck into the top ten in 2009, they have entered a televoting favourite that was screwed over by the juries, a bookmakers’ favourite that was largely ignored, a televoting nul-pointer and, in the last two years, a pair of daring but difficult songs that feel like they could have found a wider audience but ultimately didn’t.

Sticking with its usual policy of internal selection, France has decided to play it ultra-safe this year by sending Lisa Angell to Vienna. Angell, 46, currently has three albums to her name, with the latest – Frou-Frou – being a tribute to female performers of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

Her song for ESC 2015, N’oubliez pas, is a calculated return to the kind of ballad that delivered France its last truly excellent results at the contest back in 2001 and 2002 – indeed, it even shares a songwriter with Natasha St-Pier’s Je n’ai que mon âme. With its 100th anniversary-inspired lyrics about a village destroyed in the First World War, N’oubliez pas could easily end up being as awkward as the Armenian denial, but its themes of destruction and remembrance are (to my mind, at least) more universally recognisable and relatable and less about making a clear political statement.

My verdict is that there’s some logic to what France is doing here. I believe that ESC viewers expect certain countries to deliver certain things – rock from Finland, melodramatic passion from Italy, and, indeed, big balladry from France. And there’s no harm in ticking those obvious boxes every once in a while. I’m just not sure N’oubliez pas is the right example of the genre. There’s nothing spectacular about the song as a composition, although its traditional virtues are undoubtedly pleasing to fanboys of a certain generation like me, and it seems to suffer from the three-minute rule, having to squeeze its crescendo into a short space of time before stopping just as it’s getting started.

Perhaps more worryingly, from what we’ve seen of Lisa Angell so far, she’s a very capable performer but not exactly one who exudes star quality or explodes from the TV screen. All of which leaves me concerned for France. It would be about time for one of the “classic” ESC countries to score a big result again, but the only way I can see that happening in 2015 is if the juries really go for this. Otherwise, Lisa’s pleas to be remembered risk falling on deaf ears.

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