01 Norway
B: I see Mr Loveland the composer is back, with a set of lyrics by Hanne Krogh*. I love the sound and rhythm of ‘en stemme hvisker spent’, and the fact that it looks like it should have nothing to do with ‘a voice whispers anxiously’.
A: No surprise after Belgium’s win that the first entry is someone doing their best to sound like Sandra Kim, however misplaced the attempt. *Together you’d think they’d be able to come up with something that demonstrated more – or in fact any – potential. Instead we just get a plodding ’80s production.
V: And I thought 1986 was bad for big hair and shoulder pads! Neon blue wasn’t the best choice for her blouse given the prevailing colour scheme on stage. Big fat meh of a song. Next.
02 Israel
B: Great lyrics.
A: The music pretty much fits them, but seems a little hyperactive in places for something purportedly so laid back. I’d normally criticise the synthesisers, but here they fit perfectly. It’s like an act for a children’s party, and shares about the same degree of intellect musically.
V: This is the kind of thing that’s only ever really going to make sense in the context of a national final. Their ties look like two strips off a cat o’ nine tails.
03 Austria
B: Helpfully, this namechecks the following song (‘langsam und still’).
A: There are some decent things happening here in the vocal arrangement which give the whole thing a bit of a lift, but the saxophone middle-eight is its death knell, spelling the end of its usefulness.
V: Props for owning the receding hairline, Gary. He gives a generally reliable performance of a thoroughly unexciting song, although he looks like he’s about to dissect something, or someone. Where’s LaGaylia Frazier when you need her to sing Dr Frankenstein?
04 Iceland
B: Or as I prefer to call it: Slowly & Quietly (in Case the Children Hear). I like the line “Eftir standa... / ...sögð og ósögð orð”. The Icelandic itself looks barbed.
A: This pootles along in the manner its title suggests and almost feels out of date even by 1987 standards. Ms Margret sounds like she’s doing exercises to overcome a speech impediment and not making much headway.
V: The fact that the pianist has a textbook jawline and that the backing vocals are almost operatic are the most interesting things about this performance, which is lovely but unengaging.
05 Belgium
B: Was this set against the backdrop of some conflict? Or was it just a general appeal? Either way the title makes it sound like cheap porn. “We voelen ons schuldig / Maar drinken een slokje wijn” is a keen observation.
A: The chorus here comes perilously close to The Final Countdown. The song as a whole isn’t bad. Not great, but not bad.
V: It seems unfair that after delivering the country its only victory, Wallonia had to defer to Flanders to provide them with their defence of the title. (Maybe Liliane dropping Keuninckx as a surname in favour of Saint-Pierre was by way of tipping the hat to them?) I would have preferred to see them win with this rather than J’aime la vie, if I’m honest, but there was never any likelihood of that happening.
06 Sweden
B: Walkmans, Coke... it’s so late ’80s.
A: I suppose once the Coca-Cola references were removed this made more sense in a European/Jamaican crossover kind of way, although it must still have sounded like an ad for Coke anyway. As with most things Swedish, it’s well produced: nothing is there for no reason.
V: In an effort to continue the commercial references, Lotta appears to have strung the contents of a bag of peanut M&Ms around her neck. The energy that goes into sustaining this performance is inverse to the success it meets with.
07 Italy
B: “A noi che siamo gente di pianura / ... / Il mare ci fa sempre un po’ paura / Per quell’idea di troppa libertà” – terrific lyrics as ever from the Italians. I love “Inchiodati dalla realtà”, too.
A: This is about nine-and-a-half tenths of the way to being a great anthem, but there’s just something missing in the composition. They get very close in the chorus, but there’s still something... I’m not sure what. It’s very good though, despite the occasional Phil Collins moment.
V: Am I just not remembering the studio version having that odd timing, or is it the arrangement here that’s putting me off? Still head and shoulders above everything else so far.
08 Portugal
B: What are the odds of having People of the Sea followed by This Sailing Boat? Something tells me the whole boat/river/ocean thing might be a metaphor. The lines “No meu país a beleza invento-a na minha mão” and “O meu país é um sol de raiva e alecrim” are great.
A: It’s strange to find myself listening to something Portuguese and thinking Sweden in terms of the composition and arrangement, which is quite catchy. Mr Nevada doesn’t have quite the right voice for the song – it should have been a woman – but still.
V: I know the outfits are designed to underscore the theme, but they just make them look like the crew of a pleasure craft who have taken to entertaining their passengers with a few self-penned ditties along the way.
09 Spain
B: “Los amigos, ¿para qué están?” Fashion advice. They clearly didn’t give you any.
A: I thought we were heading for Chariots of Fire territory there for a moment. It’s odd how the second verse sounds like the chorus is still rambling on. [Shortly] Oh, that’s the second verse. So that was all the chorus then? This seems awfully overblown, and oddly out of place, when a box of chocolates would do just as well.
V: Rouge! Hideous.
10 Turkey
B: We need a huge gay club anthem called Söyle sevgi üstüne in Eurovision.
A: Spain segues seamlessly into Turkey. This is a bit Cyprus ’86 in some ways. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but at least they’re giving us an ’80s sound and making it vaguely palatable.
V: White’s not really their colour, is it.
11 Greece
B: LOL at the way “Kikloforas stis disco, ke milas yia cinema” is described as “Mia zoi me risko”!
A: A million songs start exactly the same way as this. It’s trying to be all sorts of things: Norway ’85, Sweden ’86 and a bit Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. You soon grow bored of it. The vocal arrangement in the chorus is all wrong and very off-putting.
V: Thanos sounds like Cliff Richard and looks a bit androgynous. His backing singers’ style certainly is not Garbo. Quite a good performance all told, by the evening’s standards.
12 The Netherlands
B: I like the idea that “de waarde van gelukkig zijn werd bijgesteld”.
A: Thank god for the almost-catchy chorus. There’s not a single bar in the entire song that’s inspired.
V: Krystle Carrington sings for the Netherlands! Does two songs constitute a run of consistency? White’s not really anyone’s colour in 1987.
13 Luxembourg
B: Hard to believe that one of the composers behind this also gave us Belgium ’05. (Not Monsieur Bertrand, obviously.)
A: Someone’s been listening to their early Pet Shop Boys LPs. I can see why this wouldn’t have gone down well with the juries, but it presses a fair few of my buttons. Quelle délivrance! And just as I was about to say “it really ought to fade out now”, that’s exactly what it did. Avoue c’est louche!
V: If nothing else, our Plastic shows an affinity for the stage that few of his peers have tonight. The song itself falls flat on its arse and goes nowhere.
14 United Kingdom
B: It’s only the light. I think.
A: So much of 1980s music sounded exactly the same, and not in a good way. That could explain why we can have studio versions of every song from 1959 but every other one here is a bad quality live version: perhaps they were considered so mediocre that no one bothered to record them. Was Rikki Peebles ever heard of again after ESC? I suspect not.
V: At least he’s fairly easy on the eye. And to be fair, this works a lot better than it has any right to.
15 France
B: I still think Magique musique du cœur pour le bonheur would have made a better title.
A: I suppose I shouldn’t complain that this has nothing to do with the ’80s given that it comes straight after the UK’s appalling effort, but the strings, the piano... it’s so ’70s, in a very much behind-the-times sort of way. It does have an easily accessible melody, of sorts.
V: Ms Minier looks pink and saucy, and the orchestra has a reason to exist, so I guess it’s not a total waste.
16 Germany
B: In other words: Don’t Worry, Be Happy. I love the fact that a Siegel song contains a line translatable as “Thousands of little reasons are making you dumb”!
A: Tragically, they win you over through sheer persistence. And half a dozen key changes.
V: Their yellow & white is even worse than everyone else’s white, but their vocals are just about better than everyone else’s combined so far.
17 Cyprus
B: “To prosopo su vlepo ston kathrefti / Kathos tis niktas en’ asteri pefti” forms a great couplet.
A: This is annoyingly familiar, but I can’t put my finger on what it resembles/plagiarises. I think there are two sources in any case. It’s nicely put together, and makes a good song for a wider audience [than Greece].
V: It’s like a who’s-who of Cyprus at Eurovision. Pity Alexia’s on lead vocals.
18 Finland
B: Thumbs up (for two quite different reasons) for the lines “Pelätään pelkomme pois” and the translation of “Kun rakkaus kiinni painautuu” as “When love sticks tightly to you”.
A: This chorus is a bit chirpy for a song that sets out to have a bit of an edge to it. Again though, I shouldn’t complain about approachable tunes amongst this lot. The arrangement seems absolutely Finnish for some reason, like an ’80s Pump Pump.
V: Vicky looks like she’s wearing a uniform from Star Trek: The Next Generation. For some reason I remembered this as doing pretty well by Finnish standards. (I suppose 15th was.) It deserved better in a field this weak, even though – yet again – the language sounds off-putting.
19 Denmark
B: Ligegyldigt must be worth a good triple-word score in Danish Scrabble. As for the rest, take your “Syng en sang om en bedre jord / Det hjælper mere, end du tror...” and fuck the fuck off.
A: There’s nothing original about this whatsoever. I would say “at least it’s melodious”, but the vocals, guitars and key changes all feel like they’re stolen from Ein bißchen Frieden.
V: So hollow, like they’re singing inside a plastic drum. Next.
20 Ireland
B: These lyrics have to be up there amongst the most honest and heartrending the contest has ever produced. The story they tell is intensely personal and yet they speak to everyone.
A: What do you say when words are not enough? This stands out so strikingly from everything else that it might as well be from another planet.
V: The slight injection of tempo here adds a sense of urgency to what the song’s saying, but I’m not sure it does it a lot of favours musically when the orchestra really don’t get to grips with it the way they should. Still, as winners go it’s as deserved as it is obvious.
21 Yugoslavia
B: The way the English is interwoven here is quite clever. It’s a surprise countries didn’t try and get away with more of it along the same lines, really.
A: I’ve little to say about this, coming straight after Ireland: they’re in completely different leagues. The scary thing is that Yugoslavia actually won with something this derivative two years later. I mean, it would be nice to think the Balkans were ahead of their time (and the West) in terms of the late ’80s/early ’90s 1950s rock’n’roll revival, but with them it was more a case of still being stuck there.
V: It feels like you’re trapped in some Welsh holiday camp in 1955, so they must be doing something right.
22 Switzerland
B: The metaphors here are neatly rendered, so it’s a pity it veers between anthem and straightforward ballad with such abandon before trowelling on the karma.
A: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a song that is so relentless and so economical at the same time: there must be a total of about eight different musical lines here, repeated over and over and over again. The upshot of this is that it’s over with before you know it.
V: What a bunch of dorks! It’s like the cast of a painfully unfunny American high-school sitcom have been rehearsing in their basement and the wise-cracking lead character’s mum is hogging the mike.
Voici les risultats...
1 point pour la Grèce
2 points pour le Portugal
3 points pour Chypre
4 points pour la Belgique
5 points pour le Luxembourg
6 points pour les Pays Bas
7 points pour la Finlande
8 points pour l’Allemagne
10 points pour l’Italie
et finalmente...
Les 12 points sont attribués à...
l’Irlande!
La Cuillère de Bois de 1987 – c’est médaillée à l’Espagne! Felicitations!
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