01 Luxembourg
B: I love the lines “Mais je sens la brûlure d’une douleur qui m’étreint / Comme une ancienne blessure dès que le printemps revient”. Ouch.
A: Fancy Luxembourg doing something you wouldn’t pick as hailing from their neck of the woods. The little interlude in this is much-needed; the song remains a bit unadorned otherwise. Still pretty, but it doesn’t go very far.
V: The backing vocals are appropriately laid back. You can see them all perched on the rickety verandah of a saloon, its doors creaking in the wind, somewhere near the Mexican border as the tumbleweeds, er, tumble by. That said, I would love to actually see what they made of it.
02 The Netherlands
B: Anneke deserves a slap on the wrist for “Ik weet dat je liegt / En dat je mij bedriegt / Maar ik aanvaard ’t”. Sign of the times, though, I suppose. (Or not.)
A: Sounds like an unintentionally upbeat Bond theme. It is surprisingly upbeat for such a frank account of a lover’s – and one’s own – failings. I’m more than happy to go along with it, even if it could do with being a bit shorter, since it absolutely screams the 1960s to me. Ms Grönloh has such a good voice for it.
V: Singer and orchestra putting in equally good turns here. The ending is great, and there’s no faulting the rest of it.
03 Norway
B: “...jeg føler meg sveisen og fjong / ... / Under en rosa ballong.” OK, Arne, whatever you say.
A: I love the way the double bass dictates matters here. The arrangement’s smashing. They don’t write songs like this any more, do they?
V: There’s not a great deal of depth to the vocals here, but the consistency of Mr Bendiksen’s vocal technique is impressive. The meandering strings steal your attention away from everything else the orchestra is doing.
04 Denmark
B: “Mennesker skuffe mig bitterligt” sounds just right for what it’s saying.
A: Norway and this could be off the soundtrack to a Technicolor matinee: they sound like they’re from another era altogether when you listen to them after the Dutch entry. Wonderful arrangement again. You can almost picture the choreography.
V: Which is of course as close as you’re ever going to get to any. It’s an odd experience listening to rather than watching these performances, what with them being so disembodied. As charming and competent as they sound, they really need some personification to bring out the best in them. Mr Tidmand sounds like he did the hosts proud enough though.
05 Finland
B: Bits like “omia teitä, keventyneitä, pidentyneitä” and “juttua monta, uskomatonta, tuntematonta” here show the rhythm of Finnish at its best.
A: I thought for a second we weren’t going to get music and delivery in tune with the laziness at the heart of the lyrics, but it’s suitably loungey. It’s a pretty complete package, albeit one that doesn’t do all that much for me.
V: Still suitably loungey. Still doesn’t do much for me. But I like Lasse’s ‘hup hup!’ ad lib.
06 Austria
B: “Oh.... wenn sie schon bald verblühen und vergehen?” Someone forgot to take his happy pills this morning!
A: Our future winner, with piano and strings: gets my vote. This sounds thoroughly modern after the Scandinavian entries. The German doesn’t sound overbearingly German either. I really like it. Very well produced. Glad to hear it was an international success.
V: Udo’s vocals in the quieter moments of the verses are brilliant, but I have to be honest and say that the lyrics get a bit repetitive with nothing to look at. If that’s the reason.
07 France
B: I like the ambiguity of “je ne sais plus très bien pourquoi nous avons fermé les yeux” in a song already tinged with mixed feelings.
A: There’s a real story behind this, and since it tells it, the music takes a back seat. The double bass again is great, but I’d prefer a little more to it. Still, it’s a tremendous ballad; just one which seems, strangely, not particularly or even remotely French. Not that that’s a bad thing.
V: The lightness of touch this exhibits in the studio version is difficult to reproduce live, and Rachel looking (from the pictures) like a stereotypical school ma’am doesn’t help matters. Still lovely though, needless to say.
08 United Kingdom
B: Quintessential pop.
A: Unusually, the UK has already been outdone by the Netherlands in providing the year’s contest with something fresh-sounding. In fact this feels surprisingly old-fashioned by the UK’s standards, despite the touches to the (excellent) production which hint at the contemporary.
V: Lots of men behind the mikes in Copenhagen. Matt Monro was a pretty big name, wasn’t he? Looks like he should have gone on to host a game show. The arrangement here is the best of the night so far (in terms of reproducing the studio version – although who’s to say which came first), and the vocals are effortless.
09 Germany
B: “Liebe, Liebe, welch schönes Spiel / Niemals, niemals wirds dir zuviel” and “Treue, Treue, welch grosses Wort / Tränen, Tränen, er lief mir fort” make great bridges rhythm-wise. The latter are also my favourite lines.
A: Predictable structure to this: I knew we were in for a massive increase in tempo come the first chorus. There’s precious little time to get used to anything thereafter, the rate it hurtles along. It’s too frenetic in places for me, although that does suit it.
V: Nora Nova sounds like a ’60s porn name. Not that this would ever have been on the soundtrack. There’s little wrong with it, but I can understand it not winning anyone over.
10 Monaco
B: I quite like the knowing nostalgia of this.
A: Romuald was a trooper, wasn’t he? And this his first posting. It’s another strongly ballad-type ballad, as it were, and it’s not really doing it for me. Not sure why. Has nothing on Celui qui reste et celui qui s’en va if you ask me. The arrangement is nice but a bit pedestrian.
V: The strings are demonstrative here in a musical cinema kind of way, and enliven an otherwise rather mute composition. That said, it’s easy to see why the jurors of the day went for it ahead of, say, the German entry.
11 Portugal
B: He’s really baring his soul, albeit in a boring religious way, with lines like “Senhor, se o amor é castigo, perdão, meu Senhor”.
A: António Calvário has a great voice for fado. The Portuguese here sounds truly beautiful. The minimalist production (compared to most this year) suits it down to the ground, but is arguably a tad uninvolving.
V: Hardly worthy of a big fat 0 on their debut, but again, you can understand why it failed to excite the juries.
12 Italy
B: So much maturity for one so young. Love it.
A: Makes me think of both Twin Peaks and ABBA, this song. How odd. The production is exquisite, and so perfectly pitched. I’d like to think it’s the kind of thing that could still triumph.
V: The snippets of grainy footage that survive of this performance reveal it to be as wonderful as I hoped it would be. Gigliola gets it absolutely right in how she approaches it: the audience in Tivoli go absolutely bonkers.
13 Yugoslavia
B: Bosnian philosophy! As usual it’s eaten up all its lyrics by the halfway mark.
A: Interesting touches to the composition and vocal arrangement in the second half of the second verse. Nice ponderous interlude. Bit blah overall.
V: Given the lion’s share Italy hoovered up, it’s probably not surprising that with so few points left to go round, the songs that I can understand not getting any points didn’t get any. Which is not to say they deserved to, and under any other system they probably wouldn’t have. But like the German and Portuguese entries (and indeed the Swiss entry that follows it), there’s just something about this that makes it not stand out, without being unattractive or poorly performed at all.
14 Switzerland
B: Some very romantic ideas floating about here, in every sense of the word.
A: Sounds like that coffee ad, or whatever it’s for; in fact like many a Swiss entry, this sounds like a million other things. Here that’s not such a problem, because it’s delightful. Rather modest all told, but lovely, and perfectly attuned to the lyrics.
V: Nicely judged and perfectly controlled vocals from Ms Traversi.
15 Belgium
B: I love the image that the lines “...nous, on s’aimait tant / Dans l’herbe légère...” capture.
A: We’re in the slow part of the show here clearly.* I thought it was Non ho l’età again for a second. This has more of the chanson quality I would have expected from France. Great chorus (if that’s what “Là, le monde était si loin / Là, il n’y avait plus rien / Rien que mes yeux dans tes yeux / Rien, rien que nous deux” represents – the more insistent bits).
V: Didn’t yield a whole lot of points, this part of the show. And you can see why. I can only say of this what I said of Yugoslavia & co. above, while adding that it doesn’t have the finesse of the Swiss entry.
16 Spain
B: I love the lyrics here as a whole: the extended version tells an entire story that very cleverly comes full circle.
A: *And there I was assuming Spain would change that. Well, they do eventually, but it sounds like an Iberian take on Unchained Melody for the most part.
V: Steal or not, the melody’s great, and the performance is suitably impassioned. But the wonderfully named lead singer Argentina Croatto has the kind of voice that makes me understand why she didn’t gain a whole lot of support.
And so to the points…
1 point goes to Germany
2 points go to Norway
3 points go to Switzerland
4 points go to France
5 points go to Denmark
6 points go to Spain
7 points go to Austria
8 points go to the United Kingdom
10 points go to the Netherlands
and finally…
12 points go to…
Italy!
The wooden spoon goes to Yugoslavia.
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