01 Iceland
B: This is awful for its ‘list song’ qualities.
A: This is awful for the way it builds up to the chorus like it really believes it has something to say, too. I can’t believe it was entered or written in the 1980s, especially this close to the 1990s.
V: It’s fitting that this song should be the first to play against the backdrop of the Hooked On Classics set Irish TV put together for the occasion. Pity the neon trimmings couldn’t infuse it with any energy.
02 Sweden
B: It clearly wants to be poetic, and may well be in Swedish. But what’s he on about?
A: Unremittingly boring. Not even the strings save it for me, sacrosanct as they normally are. The ending does an alright impression of ‘stirring’.
V: As a performance this is better than Iceland before we’ve even reached the 30-second mark. If Tommy was struck down with streptococcus (or whatever the excuse was), I can only imagine how good he must have been at full throttle. The song still goes nowhere.
03 Finland
B: They’d clearly been on a daytrip to Tallinn before writing the first verse (“Ihmistenkuoria, tyhjiä... / Outoja ilmeitä, kylmiä katseita / Muutamat ilmeettä aivan”)!
A: Unashamedly synthesised. Hooray! You could say that about the ’80s generally I guess. Brave but rather odd move to pitch the chorus down; presumably it was to save their voices. You don’t hear it much in pop.
V: An unattractive prospect, in a very late ’80s kind of way, but vocally not bad. The chorus, sadly, is the weak link, and (since?) the sound mix isn’t great.
04 United Kingdom
B: There’s nothing particularly suggestive about the lines “One day you were in love with me / Then the next… he came along”, but the lack of any gender identification whatsoever elsewhere in the text leaves it open to interpretation.
A: Right at the start, this sounds like something you might still find in a Balkan final. By the end, it sounds like a Michael Bolton song without the Billboard polish. It’s not bad, but the chorus isn’t particularly strong, and the ending’s terrible.
V: When I first saw a picture of Scott Fitzgerald and then heard his voice, nothing matched with how I imagined it should be. Loose-fitting grey suits with enormous shoulder pads were one of the worst crimes of the 1980s in men’s fashion, so it goes without saying that they mar this performance. Which is in fact rather ragged.
05 Turkey
B: These lyrics are oddly euphemistic: “İnsan insanı sevmez mi Sufi?” Yeah, Sufi, there are gays in Turkey, too!
A: Sounds fab – synthesised and Turkish and with a tune to it. It’s like the music of my formative years given a Euro-makeover. It could almost be SAW trying something really far out (for them). It’s over and done with by 1.45, it seems, but then they go off on a tangent and I’m drawn in even more. Unfortunately awful ending again, although I choose to overlook it in a year where I’m more than likely to favour trash as treasure.
V: The orchestra sounds great, but I really don’t want to hear them quite that prominently. Fantastic harmonies, and if the vocals were slightly higher up in the mix this would be just about perfect.
06 Spain
B: Love the way it comes out as “made in e-Spain” but that they still come up with lines like “¿Qué tendrá, que lleva de cabeza al que la ve? / Cambiándole con su filosofía”.
A: Now this must have been produced by Spain’s version of Stock, Aitken and Waterman! So cheap. So fabulous. Drags a bit, though.
V: This is very of its time, musically and visually, right down to the bow-legged choreography. How the guy in the pea-green trousers managed not to sing like a eunuch is anyone’s guess.
07 The Netherlands
B: Is this set in some former Dutch colony in the Far East, with all the talk of rice paper and bizarre rhyming couplets like “Langs ieder flatgebouw / Zie ik een bamboetouw”? ‘Shangri-La’ hails from that part of the world, IIRC.
A: Decent enough – bar the ending, which I hate – but what’s the point if all it does is leave you wondering what to say about it?
V: This looks a bit half-arsed, like they changed their minds at the last minute and decided they couldn’t just stand there and sing the song. Gerard more or less does though, and pretty well. Pity he chickened out of the falsetto ending.
08 Israel
B: I love the resigned wisdom of “Ki adam hu adam hu adam”!
A: Didn’t they realise they’d score highly from France without having to go to all this trouble? At least it makes it stand out musically, I suppose, in which sense it’s quite competent, if rather derivative. [Shortly] Oh, hang on, is it French or Greek? Hoist with my own petard. I’m a bit over it by the end, which is too manic by half.
V: That said, it takes far too long to reach it live.
09 Switzerland
B: I quite like the lyrics here, even if nothing in particular stands out and almost half the lines begin in exactly the same way. I like to play with them to produce: “Vous qui volez vers l’an deux mille / ...vous allez peut-être / Trouver de nouvelles musiques”.
A: I quite like the song as a whole, in fact, without anything standing up and saying “this is why”: it just works (and has a good ending for a change). Not very exciting though.
V: The sound mix on the night was always going to favour a soloist who could project over the orchestra, so it’s no surprise Céline shines. Her theatrical delivery is a bit irritating.
10 Ireland
B: The only way I derive any titillation from this is to ignore half the lyrics and imagine the rest as a series of pick-up instructions. With the band’s name as euphemism.
A: Ireland proving they’ve been stupefying and nauseating audiences for a lot longer than people choose to recall. Jump The Gun seem to be going for an almost Queen sound on parts of this, musically and vocally.
V: I can see why this should have been an attractive proposition at the time, but it’s not now. The beginning sounds very odd, and the structure’s strange as well. However much I try, I just can’t get into it. And why should I need to try at all?
11 Germany
B: Songs with titles like this sound so much more cloying in German.
A: Someone’s been listening to their pre-sir Elton John records, but whether the song is indeed “Ehrlich und gradheraus, zärtlich und klug” I wouldn’t like to speculate. It sounds quite nice, and the sentiment is humble enough for me not to hate it entirely.
V: The penultimate line of the chorus is bugging me: it leads into... what? What is it? Damn. It’s in there, somewhere, he said, tapping his head. (See also: Norway.) Awful vocals. Why can’t we hear the mother? Then again, do we want to?
12 Austria
B: Mention of a ‘Glitzerstadt’ holds a camp promise you know they’re not going to deliver on.
A: Part of the reason for this scoring a big fat zero is surely because Wilfried sounds like a prat. By rights, this should only be about 1/20th as awful as Iceland, but it’s clearly a rival. “Irgendwo bin ich froh.” Next.
V: The little intros by the hosts are hilarious, but they don’t do Wilfried any favours by pointing out he’s basically everything but a singer. (Not that it would’ve taken much pointing out.) This must qualify as one of the worst songs and performances in the history of the contest.
13 Denmark
B: You’ve got to love a song title with six words, none of them longer than three letters, and four punctuation marks. There’s some dark lyrical content here in lines like “Og som godt ka’ li’ at trampe på dig / Når du ligger ned”.
A: It’s surprising how often Denmark came up with the goods when Sweden didn’t and still never got anywhere for their efforts. This is predictable to the last (and very much like La det swinge, yet again) and incredibly cheery for a song with lyrics like that. Works for me though, however wilfully non-contemporary.
V: I wouldn’t have been that woman in the tutu kicking her legs about for any money with that comedy yellow guitar pointing all over the place. Fun performance, in a crap kind of way. And what was Kirsten Siggaard thinking?!
14 Greece
B: “M’ oti kano yelun” – I’m not surprised.
A: Virtually everything I said about Iceland also applies to this song. I would just point out, however, that this is a hundred times worse: I challenge anyone to find a redeeming feature. Greece at Eurovision is sometimes very wrong.
V: Well, the vocals are OK. Apart than that, I hold this song and performance in total disdain.
15 Norway
B: What on (our) Earth does “Hennes skrik er uten hud” mean?
A: I’m sorry, but I just can’t abide songs with environmental messages, however neatly arranged they may be. There’s a hint of greater things around the two-minute mark, but it never manages anything much.
V: And what does this sound like? There, as it comes down to the end of the chorus... It’s in exactly the same key as Germany and everything. Bah. (See also: Yugoslavia.) The intro and outro are lovely.
16 Belgium
B: There haven’t been many lines like “tous ces mioches qu’on mutile” in Eurovision, have there? Bit of a running theme between this and Norway, it appears. Are all French-speaking Belgians this introspective?
A: There’s something oddly entrancing about the composition here – touches of PSB, with a pinch of Chris de Burgh.
V: Yep, it’s the late ’80s. This was never going to do very well: it just sounds too empty. But I applaud them for trying.
17 Luxembourg
B: And on a lighter note, after the ostracised environmentalists and menially repressed masses from Norway and Belgium…
A: Listen to that voice! Lara Fabian is so good. With a slightly less dull number to perform I’m sure she’d have gone all the way. Given the era, I’m surprised there haven’t been more songs along these lines. Ironically ahead of its time, perhaps.
V: Why this didn’t pose a greater threat to Switzerland I don’t know.
18 Italy
B: Far and away the best lyrics of any song this year – “Sarà per... / paura di sentire / Troppo chiaramente / Quello che ci fa soffrire” and “Per non correre il pericolo / Di sorprenderci feriti” – but then that can often be said of the Italian entry.
A: Musically this is unusually uninventive for the Italians, and that is undoubtedly its undoing. It’s very easy to listen to, as it captures some tender truths very lightly, but is a bit hollow-sounding in places (perhaps appropriately).
V: There’s nothing wrong with this – apart from the ending – but it just sort of happens, then stops. On the plus side, Luca's attractions are manifest.
Addendum: The lovely Michelle’s not going to be getting a job in Italian TV any time soon with an accent like that.
19 France
B: Brave of him to put the words ‘tender’ and ‘schoolboy’ in the opening line of the song.
A: This sounds very not-French to me, mainly because of its synthesised everywhereness, which here seems misplaced for some reason. Perhaps because it’s not as blitheringly pointless as the others.
V: Gérard doesn’t put a foot wrong, but there must have been a big French delegation in for the audience to get as excited about this as they do.
20 Portugal
B: Intriguing lyrics. I’m sure many people would recognise themselves in lines like “Mas fiquei sem ti por te amar assim”.
A: Yet another quality entry from Portugal, which sounds huge, although in the verses it’s as if she’s about to go off into “I love you (I love you) / I do” and give us a rendition of Save Your Kisses for Me.
V: This doesn’t sound huge, it sounds massive. The backing vocals are a little hard to take in places, particularly at the start, but there’s still lots to like.
21 Yugoslavia
B: I kept thinking the line in the chorus meant “unlike me, you don’t want to have a baby” until I read the Croatian. See what Eurovision language skills can do for you!
A: Very little here that can’t be programmed into a keyboard. In studio it doesn’t really hook you, so they must have done something right live.
V: Did Yugoslavia have some agreement around this time that they’d always go last? A tad shouty and tuneless, this. There’s a bit in the verses that’s mightily reminiscent of something. I Wanna Dance with Somebody?
And so to the points...
1 point goes to France
2 points go to Germany
3 points go to Sweden
4 points go to Denmark
5 points go to Italy
6 points go to Luxembourg
7 points go to Finland
8 points go to Portugal
10 points go to Switzerland
and finally...
12 points go to...
Turkey!!!
The wooden spoon goes to Austria, although Greece deserves one, too. And Iceland. In fact, bugger it: they can all have one!
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