Wednesday, February 17, 2010

1980

What an absolutely cracking year! Under other circumstances virtually any of my top 12 could have taken the douze. Ranking them is a nightmare when the quality is pretty much wall to wall.

01 Austria
B: Eurovision’s ultimate list song?
A: Musically this all builds very satisfactorily to the end of each chorus, and from the halfway mark to the end it’s very easy to sing along to. Sounds great actually, which is not something you
ll often hear me say about Austrian entries. (Of which this is quite possibly my favourite.)
V: I admire Blue Danube for remembering all the names. They sound good together, but individually their voices are a bit irritating. They all look a bit dorky on stage apart from the glamorous blonde one. Was the conductor kept on as long as he was just because his surname was Österreicher? He was a permanent fixture in the orchestra pit for about a hundred years.

02 Turkey
B: I’m glad to have made the acquaintance of the words güçmüş and düşmüş.
A: Fantastic structure to the chorus here, and I love the breathy ‘ahhhhh!’ leading into it each time. Turkey were really good at straddling the divide between Eastern folk and Western disco/pop in the ’70s and ’80s. The percussion is fabulous from the off.
V: Ajda Pekkan is such a Charlie’s Angels diva: totally stunning. You’re transplanted to another world within moments of her opening her mouth – such a wonderfully alien approach to the vocals, which are brilliant throughout. But as much as I adore this, you can’t really blame anyone for being put off by it. (Incidentally, the woman introducing it just has to be the mother of that blonde one who was always giving their points!)

03 Greece
B: Vaguely approachable lyrics.
A: I keep wanting to throw in ‘I love you (I love you)’ during the verses, which owe a tad to Save Your Kisses for Me. Basically this is a sirtaki with some comedy sound effects. I won’t claim it’s not effective in its way, or that Greece weren’t aware of what your average Eurovision jury wanted, but there’s very little about it that’s inspired. Very well put together, and it doesn’t even feel like it labours the point when it clearly does: ‘autostop’ is repeated at least 37 times. Was this back in the day when hitch-hiking wasn’t a sure-fire way of getting yourself murdered, rolled up in a carpet and dumped in a ditch by a semi-trailer driver?
V: The pictures on Diggiloo do Anna Vissi no justice. She works the cameras like a total pro, and puts in a very watchable performance.

04 Luxembourg
B: Outdoing Greece, ‘Papa Pingouin’ is repeated 39 times (64 if you count ‘papa’ alone). The message at the heart of these lyrics is quite meaningful; it’s just a pity about the interpretation.*
A: The four-man composer and lyricist team were responsible for 45 entries for six countries between them and yet this is still all they could come up with. More than merely competent, of course, and the vocals sound good in studio, but the fact that it was a hit in France in 2006 when covered by a 10-year-old and set to a cheap animated video says all anyone needs to know about it. It might raise a smile if it were a Junior entry.
V: *And outfits. Sophie and Magaly aren’t the world’s best singers: without the backing vocalists bolstering their performance (including Mr Penguin himself) they’d be very exposed.

05 Morocco
B: Composer ’Abd Al-’Atī Amyna wins the award for having the most punctuation marks in one name.
A: Morocco steps into the breach left by Israel and delivers an anthem that could easily have come from the Promised Land if it weren’t for the mention of colour. I suppose if Turkey were doing it we shouldn’t be surprised that Morocco would go for disco as well, but it still comes as a surprise, especially when it owes even less to its land of origin than Petr’oil (apart, needless to say, from the vocals). Where it does stick out like a sore thumb is in its meandering structure, which generally is a feature of Turkish entries. Doesn’t do it many favours, it has to be said, but the ending sounds great. Kudos to them for sticking to Arabic when they could just as well have sung in French.
V: Nyssa of Traken sings for Morocco! She looks a bit like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands, so gestures vaguely every other bar.

06 Italy
B: “Poi le stelle e la luna spariranno e tu / Con le ali di cigno volerai laggiù” is nice – it’s not often you get swans in these songs – but overall it’s a bit bland.
A: Lucky it has a great arrangement then, albeit one that couldn’t exactly be described as adventurous, and Alan Sorrenti’s voice is not one I appreciate particularly (for the same reason I’ve never taken to the likes of the Bee Gees). Very ’80s sound to this for something barely out of the ’70s.
V: Live it hangs together neither visually nor vocally very successfully if you ask me. The verses are promising, but the chorus sounds like it’s been put through a Mouli whirl.

07 Denmark
B: Wonderful honesty in “Det er svært at lave om på mig / Ka’ det trøste lidt, at jeg / Altid tænker på dig?”
A: There’s something so unaffected about this, and so very Danish, that I can’t help but love it. I can understand why it was overlooked, but I personally find an awful lot to admire in it.
V: Unless you knew that the group’s name meant “teddy’s friends” you’d be forever wondering why they were all dressed in romper suits.

08 Sweden
B: Tomas wanted Paris and got... The Hague. I like the way almost the entire second half of the song is given over to repeating ‘just nu!’, as if in verbal defiance of “Veckan kryper fram, helgen springer förbi”. It works here so much better than in the Greek or Luxembourgish entries.
A: This is a markedly more successful one-man effort than Italy’s entry. It
’s quite progressive in its way, while still bearing many of the hallmarks that have made Swedish music so successful since the 1970s.
V: Not sure the whole rock thing works on the Eurovision stage in 1980, at least not when the piccolo’s so close to the microphone down among the orchestra. Mr Ledin has the right kind of ‘are you looking at me’ look about him though, and I love it when he kicks his leg out. I wonder if he realised how camp it was.**

09 Switzerland
B: Peter Reber kept himself busy when he wasn’t on stage as part of Peter, Sue & Marc, didn’t he. I concur with “L’univers de mon enfance ne me quittera jamais”, but this is just super twee. It’s an indictment of sorts that this, the UK and Germany all earned more than 100 points.
A: If there was a bit more emphasis on the piano, this could well be mistaken for a Swedish entry (in the chorus). I can’t really say anything different about it than I said for Luxembourg: you can’t fault the way it’s put together, but that’s not necessarily something to be proud of.
V: **Almost as camp as Paola’s outfit. She’s back again after Bonjour, bonjour in 1969, with lovely bouncy hair; she and Ajda Pekkan should have done a Pantene commercial together. Good if rather twitchy performance.

10 Finland
B: There’s poetry in these lyrics: “On siinä päiväperhon leikkivä liito / Sammuvan tähden öinen viime kiito / ... / On siinä tuiskuvan talven hyytävä halla / Ihmisen pienuus kaikkeuden alla / On syksyn kuolevaa ruskaa, on elämä tuskaa / Sen huiluni soi”. Truly lovely.
A: This is a lot better than anyone might claim it to be. There are some very neat touches to the arrangement, as you would expect from the same composer as Lapponia, and I really like the unapologetic Finnishness of Vesa-Matti’s vocals (and vocalisation: I bet he was a real goer). The backing on the studio version is dreadful.
V: But I would have said it worked better live in any case. The ‘oops, a bit off there!’ moment towards the end is great, although you’ve got to wonder how many people realised it was intentional.

11 Norway
B: This only got 15 points in total and none of them came from Sweden or Finland, where you might reasonably expect them to.
A: If I’d been around in 1980 and discovered that the composer here hadn’t worked on any musicals I would have suggested he did so at once: there’s something very grand and theatrical about the way this is structured. It’s completely unorthodox and must have come across as quite mad. The way it undergoes such a sudden sea change mid-song is fabulous. You just have to go with it.
V: Mattis seems a very odd shape in that national costume, and makes yoiking look quite painful.

12 Germany
B: I like the metaphor of stage fright here, and the metaphor generally I suppose, but when you can’t appreciate the lyrics it’s just more nonsense from Siegel & Meinunger.
A: Credit where it’s due though: it’s really rather good. I wouldn’t have begrudged it victory. Very slick production, with a hundred times more oomph than the similarly styled Swiss effort.
V: And so the theatre continues, though catering much more to mainstream tastes. Goes down very well with the audience. Someone with red hair should never wear that much rouge. Did Katja borrow the bow tie from Luxembourg, do you think?

13 United Kingdom
B: “If there’s a place in your heart for me / There’s a room in my place for you” makes a nice play on words, but it sounds like he’s going to stuff her in an airing cupboard or bury her under the floorboards. “I’ve got love enough for two” sounds like he’s promoting bigamy as well.
A: This is a highly listenable piece of pop with a great hook in the chorus, but beyond that there’s not a lot to recommend it above many of the other songs this year. Having said that, the vocal arrangement stands out. The key change is unnecessarily clunky when half a bar earlier is a much more obvious place to introduce it more discreetly, but the ding-dong bell bits work well.
V: Atrocious outfits. Does it really need six people to sing a song called Love Enough for Two? At least the vocals are good.

14 Portugal
B: I’m not sure about the mechanics of “Este amor… / …é uma fonte / Que nasce dentro di mim”, but I’ll take his word for it.
A: Slightly muted, this. It seems to have said all it has to say before it’s even reached the minute mark. Yet another very solid arrangement, which kind of feels like it’s working backwards after starting with a (long) chorus.
V: Is José Cid Portugal’s answer to Elton John? Another one that has so much more energy live than in studio. The performance has me grinning like an idiot, even if it’s a bit of a cacophony and the pink outfits are a mistake.

15 The Netherlands
B: “Amsterdam... / De stad waar alles kan / ... / Iedereen die weet ervan / ... / Vind je dat wat je zoekt / Overal in overvloed” is as true today as it ever was, clearly. 
What’s so unworkable about Sjoukje Smit-van ’t Spijker as a stage name?
A: The best ever home entry for a country not actually defending the title? The Dutch take on what is normally the preserve of the Portuguese is a piano-led tour de force, musically no more original perhaps than Germany, but just as successful when coupled with Maggie MacNeal’s wonderful vocals.
V: She gives an engrossing performance I wish went on and on. She looks a little bit like a 30-something Maarja-Liis Ilus here.

16 France
B: “Chacun se dévoile, ce soir c’est le bal” along with most of the rest of the lyrics (and the sequins-and-glitter rainbow flag look) makes this a very Mardi Gras kind of song.
A: Did France ever offer us anything quite like this before, and has it done since? It’s so unashamedly upbeat and frivolous, and underpinned by a piece of music that
’s both super catchy and accomplished, to my ears at least. By the standards of the day, a trashy treat of the highest order.
V: Hilarious! There really need to be floats dedicated to this song and performance.

17 Ireland
B: Johnny Logan really cornered the tortured divorcee market, didn’t he.
A: This is another classy entry, deserving of its success and standing out from the rest of the field, although the difference between 1980 and 1987 is that this year the calibre of that field is a great deal higher. Still, I can’t imagine it will finish outside of my own top 10 whatever happens.
V: I’d almost say he overplays the furrowed brow look early on if I didn’t know he was actually going through a shitty time in his life.

18 Spain
B: 
Trigo Limpio as a name invites a certain derision. Im not sure what their lyrics are saying with two men and one woman singing them.
A: Ditto what I said about France, basically. There are parallels with Portugal in the approach they take to the structure of the song, too: it’s rather brave to anchor so much of it in long sections of almost no music. It works though, as you keep listening to it just to see what happens next. It’s like the musical equivalent of being peppered with cliffhangers.
V: The staging is slightly awkward, but it sounds huge. The three of them look a bit like a posh comedy club act into which
 Alan Sorrenti has wandered after a hair cut and a change of outfit. Iñaki de Pablo looks a bit like Hugh Grant as well.

19 Belgium
B: “Que le meilleur gagne!”
A: Electronica! The UK should have had this as their entry, performed as a duo between The Goodies and Metal Mickey (ft Gran). Puts me in mind immediately of Refrain refrain, and also of Minn hinsti dans for providing such an unlikely closing number. Whichever way you look at it, it’s absolute nonsense. I love it to pieces.
V: I love the irony of a song poking fun at the triviality of Eurovision actually taking part, then bombing.


And so to the points...

1 point goes to the United Kingdom

2 points go to Spain

3 points go to Finland

4 points go to Germany

5 points go to Portugal

6 points go to Denmark

7 points go to Ireland

8 points go to Turkey

10 points go to Norway

and finally...

12 points go to...


The Netherlands (again)!


The wooden spoon is awarded to Luxembourg.

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