Ireland has tried to change up its Eurovision process, opting for the internal selection of "Sunlight" by former boybander Nicky Byrne. This may serve to shed light on Ireland's current Contest woes.<!--more-->
Oh, Ireland. Sit down -- we need to chat. You might want to close the door.
Let us recap Ireland's recent struggles at the Eurovision Song Contest. They finished in last place in the 2013 final with "Only Love Survives" by Ryan Dolan. The song wasn't bad, necessarily, but it was an amalgamation of the rest of the field that year and ended up getting lost in the shuffle. 2014's entry "Heartbeat" by Can-Linn and 2015's song "Playing with Numbers" by Molly Sterling both failed to make much of an impression, each finishing in 12th place in their respective semi-finals. It is understandable why Ireland wanted to change up their selection process by going internal this year.
Unfortunately, Ireland seems to have gone the route of picking a former pop star -- in this case, Nicky Byrne from the boyband Westlife -- as well as attempting to clone the previous year's entry. Have we learned nothing from Cascada? Here's the video for "Sunlight":
I'm just going to lay this out here now: a lyric video is a terrible idea for any Eurovision entry((If you don't believe me, listen to the Game Time in the most recent (as of this writing) episode of Extra Hot Great.)), particularly if the country represented has English as its first language. The blandness of the track and uninspiring lyrics are not doing anyone any favors. Coupled with the fact that this is the second entry to have been selected in what will be an extremely crowded field, Ireland may not have solved any of the problems it currently faces at Eurovision.
My recommendation: take advantage of the time you have, Ireland, and revamp or replace this entry.