James Newman: ‘I’d love to do next year’s Eurovision and finish what I started’

By rights, tomorrow evening James Newman should have been stepping out on stage at the Rotterdam Ahoy Arena in the Netherlands representing the United Kingdom in the 65th Eurovision Song Contest.
James Newman. Picture: Victor FrankowskiJames Newman. Picture: Victor Frankowski
James Newman. Picture: Victor Frankowski

Instead he will be at home in London after the Covid-19 crisis forced the cancellation of an event that was expected to be viewed on television by 200 million people.

The 34-year-old, from Settle in North Yorkshire, sounds philosophical. Having himself recently suffered what he believes was a bout of coronavirus, he says he fully understands the reasons for cancelling the contest and is instead looking forward to a noncompetitive ‘celebration’ that will be broadcast instead.

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He is also hopeful that the BBC will allow him to take part in 2021 with an alternative song to this year’s entry, My Last Breath.

“When they said it was cancelled, the horrible moment that they said we weren’t going, they then said ‘you can enter again next year but with a different song’,” Newman explains. “I’d love to do it and finish what I started. It’s just up to the BBC whether they want me to do it or whether they can make it work. I’m just waiting to find out what they want to do. Fingers crossed, I’ll be on that stage next year.”

He believes he could even win the contest for the UK for the first time since 1997. “I always think positive and visualise the win,” he says. “I’ve learnt so much, especially from my experience in Eurovision this time. I’ve got a full, new, in-depth knowledge of the Eurovision community and the show itself. I’ll just have another go and hopefully come up with something that will get us even higher on the scoreboard.”

Newman, whose younger brother John has scored four number one singles and a chart-topping album in the UK, has also developed a small community with some of his fellow contestants from other countries.

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“At first I thought, ‘Oh, I’m not doing it, I’m on my own’ but then they said ‘there’s other people’,” he says. “I started chatting to all the other artists and it was so nice hearing what their experience was and what they’ve been through.

“Obviously we’ve been through the exact same thing, so it’s kind of comforting in that sense, getting to know people and having a good chat. We’re in our own special Eurovision club, there’s 41 of us that are doing the exact same thing.”

Newman says he’s “pretty sure” he had the virus, which was a concern as an asthmatic. “I had loads of symptoms and it made me a bit worried because I’ve got asthma, which is a worry with a respiratory disease which affects your lungs.

“I lost my sense of taste and smell and then I got a really tight chest and couldn’t breathe, so I went to my doctor and he said, ‘Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got it’.

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“I was isolated anyway but it took me about a month to start feeling better. There were two weeks where I was absolutely knackered. I stayed in bed with chills, not a fever, luckily. I think I had like medium symptoms. I kept thinking about people that get it worse, thinking, ‘oh God, people must be going through hell with it, it’s that bad’.

“The scary thing was it kept coming and going, and coming and going, and you don’t know whether it’s gone or not. One day you can feel great and the next day you wake up and you can’t breathe again, or you can have two hours where you can’t breathe again. It’s so crazy.”

From a personal point of view, he says it “really solidified” the reasons for cancelling this year’s contest. “A hundred per cent. I was being so careful, I don’t know how I picked it up. It just shows how easy it is to get it. You can’t have 20,000 people in an arena. It’s the right thing to do, everyone’s got to stay healthy.”

In place of the contest, the BBC will screen Eurovision: Come Together at 6.30pm, featuring Graham Norton’s interview with Newman and a live UK vote to decide a ‘winning’ song. It will be followed at 8.30pm by Europe Shine a Light, honouring all 41 songs that would have competed in the 2020 contest but in a noncompetitive format, plus a virtual sing-along.

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“It’s videos, I’m not going to be performing live, but I’ll be chatting to Graham Norton, which is awesome,” Newman says. “I’m still going to get my 20 minutes with Graham. I was hoping it would be on his couch, but it’s better than nothing, and then there’s Eurovision: Shine A Light after, which is run by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union). It’ll feature all the acts and we’ll all sing Love Shine a Light, which was the last UK winning song [by Katrina and the Waves], which is exciting. We’ve all recorded that and they edited it so we’re all singing together.

“It’s going to be a fun night. It’s going to be a real full-on Eurovision evening without having to leave the front door.”

All the media exposure that Newman has gained in the past few months will, however, hopefully stand him in good stead for the launch of his singing career. Until now, he had been best known as a songwriter who has penned tracks for the likes of Ed Sheeran, Little Mix, Calvin Harris and his brother John.

His new single, Enough, is out today. “I wrote it last year, in November and the idea of it was when you’re in a relationship and in love with someone relationships need to be nurtured, with love you can’t just let it run out. When I was talking to my co-writers about it, one of them, she’s an amazing lyricist and she came up with the idea that a heart’s got a hole in the bottom so we went with that. When you’re in love with someone you have to keep topping it up.

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“Then when I was thinking about my single to put out now I thought the lyrics had taken on a whole new life because I was thinking about my mum [Jacquie], who’s isolated on her own, and how much she means to me. I need to nurture the relationship with my mum, I keep telling her that I love her and I’m in contact with her. Loads of people are having to do that, without their parents and grandparents, or just anyone that’s on their own, really, and especially what key workers and the NHS are doing, nurturing people and just being there for everyone. I really wanted to put that out at this time, thinking it’s a nice thing to say.”

He hopes his album will be out later this year on BMG. “There’s an EP, luckily I’d recorded all the songs before all this happened, so that’s all ready to go, and then my album I only need three or four songs to finish it off, which I’ve been thinking about whilst in lockdown, just chatting to other writers and producers and slowly thinking of ideas. I’d love to get it out this year and let people hear everything I’ve got.”

Ultimately he’s looking to draw the positives from his Eurovision experience. “I’ve made some interaction with Eurovision fans and made loads of videos and stuff like that, so it’s a good consolation prize, getting to still be involved in some sort of way.”

And fingers crossed, he may even be there flying the flag for the UK in Rotterdam next year. “Yeah, I could be on that stage,” he chuckles.

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