John Lydon has taken a swipe at the Eurovision Song Contest, slamming the annual event as “disgusting” and “dreadfully phoney”, despite hoping that Public Image Ltd will be a part of the 2023 event. Lydon wants to represent Ireland (he holds an Irish passport and both his parents are Irish) with a song called Hawaii, written as a love letter to his wife Nora, who is living with Alzheimer’s.
“It [Eurovision] is absolutely awful, the songs – the whole thing of it is disgusting to me,” Lydon tells the Daily Mirror. “I’m a songwriter, I perform live, and these shows just come across as so dreadfully phoney. But we’re giving [the competition] a chance to break out of that mould.”