Linda Martin Interview Brendan Murray ireland Eurovision 2017

On Tuesday, a host of Eurovision fans descended on Maynooth University for the first ever Eurovision Conference. Amongst those in attendance was Ireland’s Eurovision 1992 winner Linda Martin.

We caught up with her for a wide-ranging chat, discussing the Irish plans for Kyiv and of course her own career.

Linda holds Brendan Murray — Ireland’s 2017 — representative in high esteem.

He’s got the voice. He’s got the look. People do like him, because he’s a lovely young fella. The song I do like very much.

And Louis Walsh isn’t the only one looking after the Irish entry. Linda reveals that she’s chosen five backing singers to support Brendan on stage. Excitingly, his stage show will be designed by none other than Nicoline Refsing, who’s worked with the likes of the Common Linnets, Aminata and Dami Im in recent years.

I’ve got five backing singers going with Brendan because I was asked to pick them. I’ve got five big voices going with him. They provide a gospel type choir in the background. Staging is being done by Nicoline who staged Australia last year… That’s going to be quite spectacular. And RTÉ are actually spending money!

But will he be able to end Ireland’s three year non-qualification streak? Linda is hopeful.

If Brendan can sell his soul on that stage, I think he has a good chance of getting out of the semi.

As for where it’s gone wrong for Ireland since the 1990s glory days, the “Why Me” singer cites a number of reasons. There’s no variety or cabaret shows to nurture new talent, high calibre songwriters are unwilling to submit songs, and record labels don’t see the contest as financially viable.

But enough on Brendan and Ireland, what about Linda? The singer tells us how she started out gigging, before being inspired by Dana to enter Eurovision. With nine entries, she holds the record for the most participation in the Irish national selection. And she wasn’t going to stop until she made it to Europe.

All these years later she still loves Eurovision. And it’s been very good to her.

Watch the full interview below. What do you think of Ireland’s Eurovision 2017 plans? Let us know in the comments or react using the wiwibloggs app.

Linda Martin Interview Maynooth

Follow all our Ireland Eurovision 2017 news.

BUY THE Brendan Murray #CELEBRATEDIVERSITY T-SHIRT

BUY THE Brendan Murray #CELEBRATEDIVERSITY PHONE COVER

25 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Colm
Colm
6 years ago

Another disaster .. RTE, do you not watch the Eurovision?

Liame R
Liame R
6 years ago

that team also design for Italy Emma 2014,
Italy Francesca 2016. but,…..

Purple Mask
Purple Mask
6 years ago

Effectively this is a “marriage proposal” song, so let’s see how the designer tackles staging that idea. (It’s a bit slow to use the dancers from Krista Siegfrieds’ “Marry me,” ahaha!)

Justin K.
Justin K.
6 years ago

How they got that staging designer is beyond me, but it really shows (on the surface) that RTE is really making an effort to make it to the Final! If the staging designer gets their way, his styling and staging could really elevate the song into a solid place in the Final. But like I mentioned when we found out Louis Walsh was managing him, I’m kinda scared that we’ll get CGI people forming a chorus around the five people actually singing and get some faux X Factor winning moment that’ll instantly cheapen the song. The same goes for Denmark… Read more »

Alex
Alex
6 years ago

I love how Linda come up with all these reasons for why Ireland wasn’t doing well but let’s be honest in their national selection in 2015, they had Erika and Nikki who had fantastic songs, so it’s nothing about lack of interest really

Ron
Ron
6 years ago

Italy last year wasn’t ‘that’ bad in terms of staging. The camerawork was absolutely perfect : it seems though the bright and colourful ‘return to nature’ aspect didn’t appeal to fans but perhaps the Italian delegation felt dark and moody staging would be ill suited to Francesca or the message of the song.

Cf
Cf
6 years ago

Well, Italy 2016 is pretty “meh” when it comes to staging. I wonder if Australia chooses her to design the staging as well ‘cuz thet really need a stellar staging this year to get into top 10.

Leo M
Leo M
6 years ago

Brendan really needs great staging because the song is not the strongest. If they can pull off great staging and Brendan delivers a flawless vocal on the night, Ireland should have a good chance of going to the final. I hope so anyway.

M_K
M_K
6 years ago

The song is “cheesy” in a way, so I hope the staging will be kinda cool. Fingers crossed.

Cathal
Cathal
6 years ago

@Stephan He can sing live, people who say he can’t are people basing it on previous Irish entrants and aren’t doing even basic research on Brendan and most of these people want him to fail anyway so they believe what ever floats there boat.

Stephen Podesta
Stephen Podesta
6 years ago

No amount of backing singers or staging is going to matter if you cant sing Live.
The singing is #1

Cathal
Cathal
6 years ago

Brendan during the pre parties hadnt even begun his rehearsals for ESC and had only briefly met people in the team (he knew the staging concept but that’s about it). What we have seen during the pre events isn’t a real indication of what we will see in eurovision, he is just singing the song and gaining experiance (which is what these preview events should be all about first young artists). I’m not a fan of RTE and there efforts usually but this year it looks to be easily there best effort, sending Brendan to Amsterdam,Tel Aviv and yesterday he… Read more »

Rock Me
Rock Me
6 years ago

She looks like Caitlyn Jenner.

Liame Roy
Liame Roy
6 years ago

As i know that team also design For Conchita2014 ,Latvia2015,Demi im 2016 ,Francessca Italy 2016

beccaboo1212
6 years ago

Ok, so for those who hated Brendan’s voice at first, keep hoping that he sounds like a cross between Steve Perry and Jordan Fisher during the performance in Kiev. 😉

NN
NN
6 years ago

And EBU want also Ireland in final, we saw that in running order in semi.

Monique
Monique
6 years ago

It’s all in vain, he won’t even qualify… Nicky Byrne didn’t qualify list year with a pleasant song, it was ok-ish, not that bad. Brendan’s song isn’t bad, but his thin voice is dreadful

Jr esc nl
Jr esc nl
6 years ago

Semi final 2 is extremely open. The only place i can predict is bulgaria probably gonna get first place but who will place in the ranges from 2 to 17 is kinda like a mystery to me. I do expect belarus and the netherlands to do pretty well though.

mad-professor
mad-professor
6 years ago

@fikri
I don’t think so – Italy’s performance was by the team behind Conchita’s in 2014.

fikri
fikri
6 years ago

didn’t the designer responsible for italy’s performance last year too? it was a hot mess.

also clearly linda didn’t hear about RTE spending hundred of thousand euros for nicki last year.

azaad
azaad
6 years ago

Would love to hear more about what the conference covered. It sounded really interesting, tackling the political side of the contest.

Cathal
Cathal
6 years ago

When you consider Ireland where put as late as possible in the first half and put after Denmark (Vanilla) and before 2 potential car crashes in SM and Croatia maybe Ireland have something special planned, it’s a very wide open semi in my view if you don’t screw up your staging or performance than you got a shot (yes I include SM in that)

Cathal
Cathal
6 years ago

It was the little things that made it great, things like the the computer screen thing.

Cathal
Cathal
6 years ago

@Polegend Disagree, while the song was very good it was no more than a top 10 worthy song but the staging bumped it up to 2nd. It’s easy in hindsight to say the song was great.

Polegend Godgarina
Polegend Godgarina
6 years ago

Dami’s staging was pretty much non-existent because the song was great enough to stand out alone. No shade but this ain’t the case for Brendan…