01 Portugal
B: Hey!
A: Surely a contender for Portugal’s most brainlessly upbeat entry (and successfully so)?
V: I first came across this and a host of other Portuguese entries quite by accident one day when I found my way to the TVP site and discovered it had clips of every Portuguese entry from 1964 to the present. I was drawn to this of course by their outrageous – but somehow still rather glamorous and culturally appropriate – costumes. I fell in love with it immediately. Live it sounds very empty compared to the bass-driven studio version, despite the very obvious percussion. And the vocals are a bit rough in the verses. But what can you do. It’s still fab.
02 Luxembourg
B: “Il faut être fou / Pour vivre à genoux” – not sure everyone would agree with you there, dear! This is quite interesting when you consider just how materialistic the ’80s would prove to be. It’s the first example of a not-France French song from this year that looks like it was put together by a sixth-form student armed with a rhyming dictionary.
A: Svetlana’s delivery is right for the song but borderline irritating-as-fuck.
V: What I thought would be the weakest link here based on the studio version – Svetlana herself – turns out to be perfectly alright. At first I thought the fact that there were 500% more backing vocalists was designed to mask her shortcomings, but not so. That said, the song and performance are still pretty uninvolving.
03 Norway
B: “De vil aldri dø” indeed: you couldn’t weld the lid shut on the Eurovision coffin of these two underachievers, could you?
A: At least they kept them short. This is a decent enough attempt at a touching piano-led ballad, but it struggles to even locate the heartstrings, let alone tug at them.
V: Has Jahn Teigen just stopped in on his way to the pub? This sounds lovely, but then it has the kind of arrangement that was always going to benefit most from the set-up. The bits where Anita stops playing mid-way through the chorus look weird.
04 United Kingdom
B: I like how realistic “But I forgot all the things that I planned to say / I don’t know if I tried to” is, and I initially put lots of exclamation marks beside the lines “You could have turned around / And hit me and I wouldn’t have cared” because I assumed it would be a woman singing them. Dodgy either way, of course.
A: Again the UK pushes the envelope and tries to force something contemporary on doggedly intractable Eurovision. This stands the test of time remarkably well if you ask me. Pity they didn’t make more of the short-lived early fusion of synths and acoustics.
V: Stephen Fischer and Sally Ann Triplett are decent singers, but this fails to come together however much they throw at it. It doesn’t help that the entire chorus sounds like it was written for tambourine, the way the sound emerges from the orchestra.
05 Turkey
B: Such a fascinating language: even Finnish would be hard-pressed to sum up the ideas contained in lines like “Konuşulmuyor hiçkimseyle” so economically, and yet Turkish looks and sounds to me at times surprisingly similar to another Finno-Ugric language, Hungarian (“Kullanmazsan birkaç tatlı sözcük”, for example).
A: They like their extended introductions, don’t they? This sounds quite good; a bit repetitive, but this is offset by the variety of the arrangement, which features some great strings and never for a minute lets your attention slip. I’m glad to see it had at least one set of decent points thrown its way.
V: The first 20 or so Turkish national finals must have been sad and strange affairs. “Who shall we send to be unjustly ignored this time?” Mind you, they look like the cast of a cult sci-fi series, and the backing vocalists have no concept of the term ‘subtlety’. It all comes together quite well – if rather brassily – towards the end.
06 Finland
B: The first Eurovision entry to contain the word ‘poo’? You’ve got to praise this for having such a serious message at its heart. Needless to say the play on words in the title is fantastic, and I love virtually everything about the line “Jos et sä herää tällä erää, niin et herää ollenkaan”.
A: Musically it’s a bit of a disaster, despite the orchestral arrangement, because it seems so meandering and disjointed. But maybe that’s the whole point. Incidentally, when you go back and compare them, this and Hani? have uncannily similar beginnings.
V: Within seconds it’s obvious no one’s going to vote for this, but in its way it’s a work of genius by the Eurovision standards of the day. For much of it Kojo sounds like he’s left his vocal cords in Helsinki.
07 Switzerland
B: I identify with the lines “On peut quitter sa patrie... / Il nous faut l’amour d’abord / ...quand bien même tu nous enchaînes”.
A: However, this is another case of Switzerland going for the lowest common denominator. The composition sits together very comfortably, but therein lies the problem: the chorus in particular is predictable to the last. A safe but entirely unrewarding two-and-a-half minutes, with a naff title to boot.
V: Best orchestral arrangement so far, and it comes across all the more convincingly for following Finland. Still unexciting though. No wonder it came third.
08 Cyprus
B: ‘Only love’, Anna – we get it already.
A: The bridge is the musical highpoint of this song, promising to turn it into something completely different; the rest, I’m afraid, fails to win me over. And why am I not surprised by the instrument of choice?
V: It’s The Curious Case of Anna Vissi, in that she almost looks older here than she did in Athens. I blame the perm. (I inevitably do. Even the guy on backing vocals has one!) Rather like the Swiss entry, this is cleverly arranged to make the most of the orchestra, but it fails to do anything for me whatsoever.
09 Sweden
B: You look at some of the lyrics here (“Men nu var det nåt som sa mig”, “Sen den dag jag såg dig här...” et al.) and think: do they have some rule that word length must not exceed the number of fingers on one hand on which you can count their letters?
A: You can sing along to this even if you’ve never heard it before and still hit most of the right notes, but there’s something about Swedish schlager that makes that a good thing where in the case of Switzerland it just doesn’t. Perhaps because it doesn’t seem so contrived, although it clearly is. Double standards perhaps to reward it for doing what you expect of it, but that’s my prerogative.
V: Schlager this simplistic should at least be fun, and yet this must qualify as one of the most listless and perfunctory Swedish performances the contest has seen. I didn’t expect that from this pair at all.
10 Austria
B: Never have six less true words been spoken (or sung) than “Hat so etwas Schönes an sich”.
A: They chose to call themselves ‘Mess’? Why not call yourself ‘Our Song Is Shit’?
V: Kudos to them: they do a good job of filling up the stage when there’s only two of them, and of making it all seem like something verging on fun. Vocally they manage much the same feat. But there’s no disguising how empty the music sounds for a lot of the song, and the emphasis on the strings in the opening bars doesn’t work.
11 Belgium
B: “N’est-elle pas magnifique? / … / Fais qu’elle fasse vibrer!”
A: Fab early ’80s disco, but it’s saddled with a chorus from a much more irritating and run-of-the-mill song, and those incessant drums (snare?) really annoy me.
V: Of course the trump card was in getting a proper diva to do this: it’s the kind of thing that would be wrong in the hands of anyone else. (That said, she seems to have recycled her curtains, and delegated backing vocals to her secretary.) Needless to say this is as fabulous in closing as the pink music box is in opening it.
12 Spain
B: I love the line “Él es igual que un perro fiel”, and the lyrics generally. It all makes me think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for some reason. Veruca Salt?
A: This sort of sits you up and slaps you around the face, doesn’t it? Just in time for the orgasmic sighing. And key change. It’s more or less run its course before two minutes are up and after that very literally fades away to nothing, but it’s impressive while it lasts.
V: Wonderfully airheaded and full of character. I too would be prancing around on tiptoe most of the time if I had trousers as tight as Lucia’s mascara-clad male dancer.
13 Denmark
B: You’re really reminded of the era you’re stranded in when you’re given references to colour TV like it’s something magical. Some things never go out of fashion though: “...når jeg ska’ slappe af / Bar’ et tryk på knappen...” indeed; only the technology changes! I can see why such an obsession would have led to accusations along the lines of “Hun si’r jeg ikke er helt normal”.
A: This must have been very much of its time. They should have realised it would get them nowhere. Flawed, and slightly cringeworthy when you look back on it now (can you imagine an entry in the mid-’00s called iPod, iPod or something?), but get past that and you can see its worthy qualities. Such as they are.
V: Pretty much everything I said about Nuku pommiin also applies to this, apart from the bit about it possibly being a work of genius. Very early ’80s in a way that didn’t serve it terribly well then and still doesn’t now.
14 Yugoslavia
B: They’re leaving themselves open with admissions like “Priče sve, čudno je”.
A: I can appreciate why they might have thought they were onto a winner with this very ABBA-sounding number. Pity it’s already at least five years behind the times. I’m seeing Pac-Man, for some reason.
V: Until the key change, when they start sounding somewhat less like drag queens, this sounds unremittingly awful.
15 Israel
B: Love the imagery of “Ve’od nisa ha’arafel ba’emek / Bein hazricha vehatal”.
A: I like the instrument at the beginning. Is it a fiddle? This follows a well-worked formula, so I’m not surprised to see that it very nearly delivered them their third victory in only five years. The way it builds is very effective.
V: The staging and choreography are pretty standard in approach, too, but they work like a charm in a line-up which seems to have been deliberately designed to sap the fun out of everything. To this point it’s head and shoulders above everything else.
16 The Netherlands
B: The vowel-o-rama of “Daar waar de perenboom staat” is positively Estonian.
A: Ooh, what does this sound like? Morning Train springs to mind, but I’m not sure it’s that. Something famous and chart-topping from the period though. Good vocal arrangement: nothing overwhelming, but with some nice touches that unexpectedly lift it.
V: Bill van Dijk sounds like the most cliched Dutch name you could think of. Full marks for looking and sounding like something very much of its time.
17 Ireland
B: Terrible lyrics.
A: In the verses this sounds very early (and indeed some much later!) Bananarama, while at the same time showing all the signs of being complete early ’80s disco, no holds barred. The chorus is far too lacklustre for this kind of song, although I quite like the mechanical nature of it, which feels right. In fact by the end of it I’m quite disposed towards it.
V: The orchestra sheds most of the disco trappings here, but the Duskeys do their best to retain them in their awful outfits and choreography. Sounds alright though.
18 Germany
B: “Dass ich die Hoffnung nie mehr verlier!” Well, one win from 50+ attempts clearly sustained them until Lena came along.
A: I suppose Bernd & Ralph had to get it right at some point: this has WINNER stamped all over it in huge splotches of red ink. Touches of Elton John piano in evidence once again.
V: Very simple and effective; blue vein cheesy, but Nicole’s sincere and charming enough to pull it off. Plus it sounds like nothing else before it.
And so to the points…
1 point goes to the United Kingdom
2 points go to Sweden
3 points go to Norway
4 points go to Turkey
5 points go to Belgium
6 points go to the Netherlands
7 points go to Spain
8 points go to Portugal
10 points go to Israel
and finally...
12 points go to...
Germany!
The wooden spoon is awarded to Yugoslavia.
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