Ireland 2021 🇮🇪 “I am eager to finally sing in Eurovision,” says Lesley Roy

IRELAND – Eurovision hopeful Lesley Roy was heartbroken that she couldn’t represent her country in 2020 – but now she has another chance, and her attitude is, well, what’s another year! Last year’s contest was canceled, and Lesley has had to drop her 2020 song, Story Of My Life – but is ‘pumped’ for people to now hear her number for 2021.

But it will be next month before we get a chance to hear it for ourselves. The Dublin singer, 34, said: ‘I just really want to get there and finish out this project.’

There are three potential scenarios for the competition this year, depending on the COVID-19 restrictions. It will definitely happen in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, on May 18, 20, and 22, and organizers are planning for a socially distanced event with the artists performing in person.

They had hoped, as Plan A, to have all performers live before an audience, with tough restrictions. That now seems unrealistic, and the more likely Plan B scenario would see artists who can’t travel to the venue being allowed to provide a video.

There would be nine shows – including six dress rehearsals, two semi-finals and a final, which may have a reduced audience – and frequent COVID testing.

Another scenario would see all performances pre-recorded. Roy told Newstalk Breakfast she is hoping both herself and an audience will be there. She said: ‘It was great to hear that they’re going to try and push for Plan B, I think we all kind of knew that Plan A was out of the question of having a full audience.

‘So fingers crossed that we can have some people there in the Ahoy Theatre in Rotterdam. I worked for months on this, I am so, so pumped for everyone in Ireland to hear it.’

She added: ‘It was exciting last year to try and do it, but this year I think I just really want to get there and finish out this project that I started, and just really sing for Ireland.

‘It sounds cheesy, but I feel it so much more this year and I’m so excited to get there.’

Ireland has a record seven wins in the contest, and is the only country to have won three Eurovisions in a row.

Past Irish winners include Dana, Johnny Logan, Linda Martin, Niamh Kavanagh, Paul Harrington, and Charlie McGettigan, and Eimear Quinn.

Logan is the only performer to have won it twice – with What’s Another Year in 1980 and Hold Me Now in 1987 – and he also wrote Martin’s 1992 winning entry, Why Me?