The Pop Corporation

This is some Eurovision news, but only the semi-final, so don’t get too worked up. You read Rita Ora in the headline and either got excited or irritated. Calm your boots, there’s plenty of time for pithiness yet.

Besides, there’s something quite fun to talk about, but we’ll get to that.

Rita Ora, again making a comeback of sorts despite us not being able to name a single song by her even though we love pop music, will be in the interval for one of the semis, where she’ll be doing a medley of her songs, plus a new one. It’s fine. It’s not earth shattering or anything, but y’know, she does have her fans and it’s only a semi. Of course, Ora auditioned to be on Eurovision, so it’s quite nice that there’s something of a full-circle for her there.

On the interval, there’ll also be a number from one of the hosts, Julia Sanina. They’ll be singing a track called ‘Mayak’, which is clearly a nod to the fact that Ukraine are the reigning champs. It might be this. It sounds like something you’d hear in the corporate section of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Brooding.

What we’re more interested in is the performance from Alyosha and Rebecca Ferguson. Alyosha has been in Eurovision and Ferguson is a Scouser, so a bit of Eurovision history plus someone on home turf – very nice indeed.

Together, they will sing a cover of Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’, which is a solid gold slow banger and, you’d assume, something of a message of peace what with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We’re not in the habit of belittling any lovely or powerful messages regarding a war and all that – solidarity – but we can’t pretend that we wouldn’t like Rebecca Ferguson to just come on stage and do her thunderous version of ‘Show Me Love’ by Robin S. Obviously, we’re sharing it below and quietly hoping no-one figures us out that this whole article may have been written explicitly to show it.