Song of the Week: Amir – J’ai cherché

Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.

I’m off to Eurovision for the first time this week, which as a superfan of the Song Contest, is obviously hugely exciting. I’ve been preparing by listening to this playlist of the year’s entries (in roughly best-to-worst order) compiled by my poptastic pal Talia. There isn’t one immediately obvious winner a la Euphoria or Fairytale, but there are some really nice tunes in the mix. The track which stood out to me most on first listen was the joyous J’ai cherché from France’s smiley singer Amir, a finalist in The Voice in 2014. Unusually for the French, the track isn’t entirely in their native language – the extremely catchy chorus is in English (there’s a full English version too). It will be interesting to see if this improves their chances in the competition. In recent years they’ve contributed some of my favourite entries but haven’t performed much better than the UK’s embarrassing attempts. 2014’s brilliant Moustache by Twin Twin actually came last. The campaign for justice for France in Eurovision starts here!