Look Mum No Computer already had an established presence online as a youtuber and curator in addition to his music. He previously had performed at Glastonbury Festival in 2015 with his former band Zibra. He now owns ‘This Museum is (Not) Obsolete’ in Ramsgate featuring experimental machinery and technology that is both musical and scientific. He has also just announced a UK tour for November where he will be visiting Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol, and London.

The UK has not won Eurovision since 1997 when Katrina and the Waves took home the UK’s fifth title. Although the UK has had an unlucky run, fans are hopeful that Look Mum No Computer could take home the win as they approach this year’s contest with a new perspective. ‘Eins Zwei, Drei’ will be partially sung in German and come with a flashy performance, contrasting the 2025 entry ‘What the Hell Just Happened?”- a pop song by girl band Remember Monday.

The UK is one of five countries that automatically qualify for the grand final on the 16^th due to their financial contribution towards EBU- the organisation running Eurovision. The big four consists of the UK, France, Italy, and Germany (as well as Austria the 2025 winners). For this reason, although these countries will perform during the semi-finals, they are only appearing as live guests and will not compete until the grand final.

The first semi-final took place on the 12^th of May in which 10 countries qualified to the next stage. Tonight another 10 countries will qualify leaving us with 20 countries in addition to the already competing 5 core countries.

For the semi-finals, you can only vote if you are a participating country. This means that tonight UK viewers will be able to vote up to 10 times, however you will not be able to vote for your own country. This will be the same for the grand final to prevent home advantage. All final scores from public televoting and from the national juries will be calculated giving us our winner this Saturday.

The semi-finals and grand final will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer and BBC One at 8pm and viewers can vote via SMS or the Eurovision app.

Artist Sam Battle, whose musical vehicle Look Mum No Computer was selected by the BBC’s panel of judges, is an innovator and developer of curious objects, chief among them unique analogue synthesisers. He uses them to create his own brand of electronic pop, forgoing modern computerised effects which make up a vast majority of current chart music instrumentation. His single ‘Eins, Zwei, Drei’ made its debut on Scott Mills’ BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show last Friday, marking a real shift from the instantly-accessible theme of past Eurovision entries.

The song is a pulsating, energetic synth-pop banger, with vocals and lyrics in the style of 90s Britpop icons Blur. While the music has a eurobeat feel to it and the anthemic chorus refrain is in German, the vibe of the track is quintessentially British. The accompanying music video sells the story of escaping the 9-5 working existence and indulges in niche British cultural icons such as the humble “roly-poly” dessert, while showcasing Sam’s custom “Kosmo” synthesiser unit. Ending with him riding a modified Mini with a payload of speakers and synths into the sky, this is a very novel piece, even for the ESC’s threshold for weirdness. The full package is a far cry from 2025’s glamorous-but-safe entry ‘What The Hell Just Happened?’ performed by Remember Monday.

Battle explains the story behind the song in interviews with the BBC, with the origins being quite humorous. When talking to BBC Radio Kent, he explains that he’d initially approached the UK’s Eurovision committee to aid with writing an entry for another artist, but was shocked to find they wanted to write one in collaboration for him to perform – “somehow my manager managed to get in front of them and they said ‘oh you could try and write a song I suppose,’ so I tried to write a song and it was very conventional. But then I went to a writing session, and because I’m a songwriter for people, I was expecting I was going to write for people. And I was like ‘who are we writing for today? Which one of us are we writing for today?’ and they were like ‘we’re writing for you!’”

In another interview with BBC’s Mark Savage, he tells that the song’s name comes from a serendipitous incident during the writing session. “It’s ‘one, two, three’ in German. It’s completely wacky, the situation that happened. When I was coming up with the actual ‘Eins, Zwei, Drei,’ I was actually moving a sofa to get my synth set up and I was shouting ‘eins, zwei, drei’ and that’s when they were like ‘that’s the name of the song!’” With the ESC’s Grand Final taking place in Vienna, the German language chorus may be a hit with the local Austrian crowd. According to the BBC, the song has more German words than Germany’s own entry, ‘Fire’ performed by Sarah Engels.

The song was co-written by an all-star team of composers behind past Eurovision winners – Lasse Midtsian Nymann (NYLAN) who wrote on 2024 Swiss winner ‘The Code’ by Nemo; Julie ‘Kill J’ Aagaard, a multi-platinum singer-songwriter; and Thomas Stengaard, who contributed to 2013’s Danish champion ‘Only Teardrops’ by Emmelie De Forest. The live choreography for the performance is corralled by Fredrik ‘Benke’ Rydman, the visionary behind the spectacular staging of ‘The Code’, who has also dabbled in the bizarre with Käärijä’s hugely-memorable ‘Cha Cha Cha’ for Finland in 2023.

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Look Mum No Computer will bring his voice, his synthesisers, and no doubt his Mini to the Wiener Stadthalle for the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final on the 16th of May. Currently, speculation is very positive with this brave new approach from the UK, but we’ll have to wait and see how the European fans embrace it. You can follow Sam’s journey through his Youtube channel, his Instagram account, or his personal website, with the BBC also covering his course to May.

This year marks the 70th annual Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), held in Austria following singer JJ’s victory with song ‘Wasted Love’ in 2025. As a member of the “Big Four” of Eurovision, the UK’s entry receives an instant bye to the grand final. Last year’s British entrants Remember Monday were fairly well received by the internal Eurovision jury, circumventing our national tradition by receiving points and finishing 19th out of 26.

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The ESC is organised by a cohort of broadcasting companies around Europe, known as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and with the BBC as our primary public broadcaster it has always been a key part of the EBU. In the past, they ran live televised auditions and a public vote to choose our candidate for the song contest, but between 2011 and 2015, and currently since 2019 they instead elect them via an internal jury of music industry professionals.

This afternoon the BBC revealed their choice – Sam Battle, who goes under the alias Look Mum No Computer. He is as they describe him in the article “an inventor of unique musical machines”, an innovator who engineers novel instruments and synthesisers from retro toys and tech as a pastime. Among his many contraptions, highlights include a church organ made from Furbies, a bizarre children’s toy from the turn of the millennium, and the Sega MegaDrive synthesiser, created using a Sega MegaDrive games console. He owns a museum in Ramsdale in Kent called “This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete”, which houses and displays his many curios.

Formerly the frontman of an indie rock band called Zibra, performing a BBC Introducing set at Glastonbury Festival in 2015 with them, Battle opened his Youtube channel in 2013 to promote the group. After the band dissolved he then used it to post videos documenting his inventions before uploading his debut solo effort ‘Groundhog Day’ in 2019. Between all of his projects combined, he’s amassed 1.4 million followers on his online platforms, with his Youtube account alone having over 704,000 followers and nearly 85 million views.

His studio releases are a lively mix of electro-pop played on a full arsenal of analogue synthesisers, with his indie-style vocals laid over it. In recent years the UK Eurovision selections have made a reputation for playing it safe, opting for more generic pop with limited success other than Sam Ryder’s second place finish in 2022, but Look Mum No Computer seems to be a turning point to something more radical. After having heard the 2026 entry single, BBC Radio 2 DJ and Eurovision enthusiast Scott Mills said “The UK often gets criticised at Eurovision, or it has in some years. ‘We’re always really safe, we always keep it really middle of the road.’ So we are going to try something different this year. Why not? Let’s try something different, and it is different.” The BBC also quoted other opinions, including Oscar-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton, who said on social media site X he was “very excited we are going to have a truly unique eccentric oddball repping the UK (meant in the best way possible) at Eurovision”.

The grand final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will be held at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna on the 16th of May. Look Mum No Computer’s entry is due to be make its debut to the public on Scott Mills’ Radio 2 breakfast show at some point in the next few weeks. You can follow Sam’s journey on the BBC and on his Youtube channel, or find his music on streaming platforms.