BBC Announces Remember Monday Trio as the U.K.'s Eurovision 2025 Entry

March winds and April showers bring forth Eurovision's flowers, or at least so I'm told. The international songwriting contest has grown from its initial seven countries participating in 1956 to 37 countries (give or take a couple) in what has become a pageant of acceptance mixed with a dance party that culminates in the acts in question standing in as proxies for public sentiment towards their country. The European Broadcasting Union, which has been presenting the spectacle for nearly 70 years, insisted then, and continues to do so to this day, that their event is free of politics or policy, just focused on peace and love and being "United By Music." However, even though the full lineup still is short a few acts, one has only to take one look at the U.K.'s entry for this year and know that's a load of bollocks.

To be fair, one has only to watch one Grand Final to see right through the sad protests that viewers only vote for songs. After Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it barely made the Grand Final; two years later in 2016, Ukraine's war protest song (technically about Russia attacking them in 1914 and World War I) won in a landslide. The year after Brexit, the U.K. garnered null points, after decades of its supercilious attitude towards the continent kept it mired among last place. 

And of course, after the current war in Ukraine started, Russia was kicked out. Excuse me, the country's political leaders made a decision to shut down the station associated with the EBU, left the union, and "therefore no longer qualified." That matters because 2024's contest turned into a referendum on the Israeli-Palestinian War when the former was not kicked out of Eurovision for starting a war. After all, "the EBU is not political and does not kick contestants out." 

However, a lot has happened in the last eight months, and European powers' realignment since mid-January has completely changed the equation. It's not just that Labour is quietly backchanneling its way out of Brexit since the summer, or that the Ukrainian War is going badly, it's all of it, combined with every TV rolling news playing that clip of a particular pair of world leaders acting like middle school bullies. 

Until now, the EBU has been flirting with trying to get America to onboard the technically Europe-only contest. (One they let Australia in, it was just a matter of logistics.) The contest has even started allowing American viewers to vote via the app, first in the Grand Final only, then also in the semi-finals in 2024. Those rules were not changed this year, so U.S. viewers can still vote for their favorite acts, even as all signs probably indicate the welcome wagon heading our way has now made a hard right and will probably invite Canada instead.

Instead, the U.K. is stepping up to fill the Yankee-inspired gap.

Yes, this is the U.K.'s idea of country music, which seems to combine antebellum inspired fashions, harmonies, and an oddly clean europop beat, as if "country music" twang is somehow a very posh form of pop. The title "What the Hell Just Happened?" obviously refers to *waves hands at everything* but with cheeky lyrics that act like this is a badly conceived version of Carrie Underwood's country-pop classic "Last Name." In short, it is godawful, as usual, and hopefully won't go anywhere.

For those unfamiliar, the band is called Remember Monday, and the trio was last seen on television competing on The Voice UK in 2019. (They were coached by Jennifer Hudson, who rotates in and out of the lineup as one of their token Americans.) Since then, they've kept themselves in the spotlight via TikTok, like most current aspiring musicians, and the place where the U.K. jury has been pulling from since 2022. That was the first year the U.K. abandoned the National Contest format to select their competitors and moved to a private jury selection made by professionals behind closed doors. (I mean they were terrible acts anyway, might as well.) As the first year, this worked out well for the U.K. with Sam Ryder landing first runner up, the U.K. has stuck with it.

The full line up of acts won't be completed until the end of March as one of the two countries is still wrapping up their national contests. We'll post it and the semi-final draw once it is filled out with acts. The 69th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest (nice), Eurovision 2025, runs from Tuesday, May 13, 2025 through Saturday, May 17, 2025. The Tuesday and Thursday semi-finals and the Saturday Grand Final will all stream live on the BBC in the U.K. and Peacock here in the states.