01 Spain
B: “Que el fuego de tu amor sea como un volcán” – don’t we all wish that, love. Typically passionate Spanish lyrics.
A: Synthesisers ahoy! Trashtastic 1989 sound, like Bananarama trying to reinvent themselves but getting stuck on Black Box. Do they ever actually sing anything? Positively Turkish introduction in how long it is. [Eventually] Oh, there they go. They sound like Las Supremas de Móstoles. There’s an awful lot happening here, but none of it is doing anything for me.
V: The ultimate false start. How humiliating for the performers and the producers! Poor things. The two lasses make an impressive comeback, with faultless vocals. Turns a bit shouty at the end, but they otherwise hold it together.
02 Greece
B: Seemingly quite meaningful lyrics. Are they about someone who’s dying and leaving their loved ones in anguish and bereavement?
A: The interesting and not altogether successful vocal arrangement in the verses gives way to something much more accessible in the chorus. The late ’80s obsession with brass is there for all to see. It sounds like he falls off a cliff at the end.
V: That’s Lister out of Red Dwarf, isn’t it? Thumbs down to the backing vocals in the verses: it’s as though they’re chipping in for the hell of it. This takes two and a half minutes to do anything, so it’s ironically appropriate that ‘horis skopo’ should mean ‘serving no purpose’.
03 Belgium
B: Lovely lyrics in lines like “C’est un tournesol émigré dans la vigne”, and the whole thing is obviously very appropriate to the setting. Not that the Yugoslav jury rewarded him for it!
A: Yes, it sounds like a song someone might write for their wife. The hum-hum bits add a touch too much gravitas for my liking. The timing in the chorus catches you off guard, which is good, since the rest is enough to send you to sleep. It sounds like a work in progress.
V: If Philippe pulls his yellow (!) trousers up any higher he’ll be wearing them as an off-the-shoulder number. That said, I wouldn’t mind being his Macédomienne the way he stares down the barrel of that camera.
04 Turkey
B: ‘Seagulls inside of me’ would make an interesting twist on gerbilling.
A: This is rather solid, and presses a lot of Eurovision buttons. The accordion and percussion make it seem not very Turkish for some reason. I quite like it. It’s definitely the only thing with a decent tune so far.
V: Sounds a thousand times slower than it should and goes nowhere, but Kayahan is clearly a seasoned performer.
05 The Netherlands
B: I love the word doodloopt. These lyrics are an accurate account of going into a relationship with your eyes open. I especially like the lines “En als jij me wilt vertrouwen / Dan delen we de pijn” (and not for the fnaar-fnaar quality, for once).
A: I’m liking the chorus despite myself; the rest of the song feels a bit self-important. The words alone, if you understand them, should be enough to convey the point that the song’s saying something without having to contrive some pompous tune to do it for you. The verses are a bit of a drag, too. Listenable though, all told.
V: A straightforward performance from Alie and Doetie that is as professional as it is unexciting.
06 Luxembourg
B: Things I can think to say about these lyrics: N/A.
A: Where does one song end and the next begin? They’re already starting to sound as though most of them came from the same late-’80s production team. Like Greece and the Netherlands, this one is rescued by its chorus. It’s another one that gets better as it goes along, as they crank it up for the finale, but it never needed to be longer than three minutes. I’m not sure I understand what all that echo adds to it either. (Or to any song, for that matter.)
V: Was 1990 the European Year of Hair? And I’d forgotten long gloves were so popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The girls on the keyboards are completely of their time, too. Not the most convincing vocal performance from Ms Carzo, who looks slightly annoyed at even having to be there.
07 United Kingdom
B: No comment.
A: Not even the Junior entries along these lines are quite so torturous. ‘Woeful’ has a new definition.
V: Fittingly, everyone looks and sounds awful. The choreography serves as much point as that ear they once grafted onto a mouse’s back.
08 Iceland
B: Sigga! Nei eða já! Nætur! Lyrically though it’s a very aimed-at-Eurovision kind of song.
A: This is kind of Sweden-meets-Yugoslavia-at-ESC, isn’t it. Cheery enough, but pretty empty. And see what I mean about the ’80s brass thing? The electric guitar, too, which at least here is actually being played rather than programmed.
V: Great vocals from Grétar and Sigga, matched by the harmonies in the chorus. They fill the screen without any difficulty, and I’m not surprised the crowd in Zagreb lap it up, but it comes across as a bit desperate.
09 Norway
B: Overdoes it on the Brandenburger Tor bit, our Ketil. I bet this isn’t a patch on Romeo.
A: That goes without saying. There are occasionally admirable attempts to eschew an ordinary arrangement in the vocals, but the rest is average stuff at best. The song stretches itself to snapping point to get to the three-minute mark, and the little-drummer-boy interlude is more irritating than it needed to be.
V: Ketil wins the sartorial elegance award hands down to this point. The song has a lot more energy live than it does in studio, and said interlude works a lot better, too.
10 Israel
B: Very bittersweet number this. I love the lines “Laboker haze yesh ta’am shel khofesh zar / Kmo shel mavet o brakha, ki halakhti mimkha”.
A: Not before time, a composition that doesn’t sound like its only aim in life was to mimic everything else being made at the turn of the decade. The initial pull and mystery of it (sleigh bells?) is largely lost as soon as they introduce a beat, but it’s streaks ahead of pretty much everything else so far.
V: Hair aplenty on Rita’s bonce! She gives such an impassioned performance that she sounds about half a key for much of it. Very classy otherwise.
11 Denmark
B: This is a remarkably different take on the same kind of situation from the one Israel gave us.
A: Hang about, I thought, surely this is the Icelandic entry; and if not, Norway’s, since it sounds like a forerunner to My Heart Goes Boom. No surprise then to find it coming out of Denmark. They did a very dependable job of this kind of thing in the ’70s and ’80s: upbeat pop that gets you bobbing or tapping some part of your body in time to it without you even realising. In a contest like this, that’s pretty much all I need.
V: Are the lady dancers Greco-Roman wrestling there at the start? Slightly ‘oh my god, somebody stole my legs’ performance from Lonnie, who looks like she just got out of the shower and only had time to give her hair a quick frizz. Good backing vocals from the lads.
12 Switzerland
B: Run-of-the-mill ‘music is my life’ lyrics.
A: Switzerland years out of time yet again. For a song about someone saying how much music means to them, it lacks any kind of punch. He might as well be singing anything, as it comes across as one huge cliché anyway. Not even the strings impress me when they’re so crassly cut off by that key change.
V: “Must be Switzerland, I’ve seen a cheese,” says Terry Wogan, aptly enough. (I love the “we call him the singing duvet” quip, too: that all-white outfit really is terrible.) Despite the ‘look, I can sing and play an instrument at the same time’ set-up, the whole thing’s so lifeless that the words barely make it from Egon’s mouth to the microphone.
13 Germany
B: This is is a two-a-penny anthem, although at least they had a reason for it with the fall of the Berlin Wall (and it’s interesting to note that this fared marginally better than Austria singing about the same subject, albeit without name-checking it, and much better than Norway, which did). “Nehmen, geben – ist es so schwer?” is clearly a question someone asks when ‘versatile bottom’ turns out, yet again, to be a lie.
A: Yes, well, it’s two people singing a song. Not one of our Ralph’s more melodious efforts, but the chorus is enough to anchor the rest of the song around.
V: Isn’t that Sigourney Weaver and Alec Baldwin? Could be any German entry, like, ever. Everything on Chris Kempers looks like it’s been inflated, including her hair.
14 France
B: I like the potted history of this song on Diggiloo. It probably deserved to win for having Serge Gainsbourg behind it alone: there’s nothing “treize à la douze” about these lyrics. Coming straight after Germany, it shows what a true anthem should be like, on paper at least.
A: It’s astounding that it took 34 years for a Black woman to sing for France. All the better then that the song fits as well as it does: it’s fascinating, if not quiet as fantastic as it might be.
V: A performance you actually want to watch through to the end for a change. The instrumental break is brilliant and could come from any recent contest. Ms Ursull wins the Big Hair title hands down.
15 Yugoslavia
B: I like the lines “Ne moraš biti snažan i grub / Da budeš sav moj svijet”.
A: More Yugoslavian retro fare, and it’s better than the song they won with if you ask me. Up to 2005 at least Bosnia clearly always took their cue from this period in Yugoslavia’s Eurovision history. I’d even go so far as to say this one’s quite catchy and well composed. It’s basically what Roxette made their name with.
V: I take that back – it’s like Croatia’s answer to Sonia. The boppy routine is fun, but the live arrangement outdates the song more successfully than the studio version.
16 Portugal
B: It doesn’t bode well for Portugal that the lyrics paint this as such a bog-standard anthem; very rarely when they’re not singing about pine nuts and prairies do things work out for them.
A: Woo-hoo! This must be about as close as Portugal has ever come to giving us trash of its time. It will come as no surprise that I love it. The arrangement is pleasingly familiar without explicitly copying anything, although the bridge is a bit Eye of the Tiger.
V: Is Nucha letting out a scream at the state of her nails mid-song? Or perhaps she’s only just seen what she’s wearing. There’s some very Swedish clapping going on. I’m a bit underwhelmed by this, all told.
17 Ireland
B: It’s funny how European list songs always overlook the Nordic countries. The words ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘canal’ are a clunky fit for these lyrics.
A: This perhaps lacks a certain something, but the last 30 seconds or so are quite rousing, and it’s easy to see why it did so well for itself. I’m surprised the Irish onslaught didn’t begin a couple of years earlier, to be honest.
V: Apart from Liam looking a bit anaemic, this has pretty much all the elements of a winning Irish performance. The chorus works a treat.
18 Sweden
B: “Som en vind, sveper inom mig” – a couple of Espumisan should fix that.
A: This ticks a lot of the boxes you might expect of a Swedish winner, and is solidly put together, but it fails to convince me.
V: Awful outfits on everyone (see also: Italy, only doubly so), and the way they keep exchanging glances is way too cheesy. The music and vocals seem to be competing against each other rather than working together for most of the song.
19 Italy
B: As anthems for a European song contest go, they don’t really come any more thorough than this.
A: I see the appeal here, both as an anthem and as a piece of music written at the start of a new decade, and won’t argue that it doesn’t do exactly what it’s meant to. But it gets boring quickly, and doesn’t seem all that accomplished.
V: The Turkish guy’s just grown his hair out, hasn’t he? Rousing chorus that strikes just the right note live.
20 Austria
B: Probably unlucky coming straight after Italy, but just as well intended. I quite like the lines “Gegenwart kommt in Fahrt / Sie muß um jeden Preis”.
A: For something that only got through because the winner was disqualified, this isn’t at all bad. The string intro promises more than it will ever be able to deliver in a song produced in the shadow of the ’80s, and perhaps is just a concession to the orchestra that will be presenting it. Simone’s vocals are a bit ‘waaaaaagh’ at times, but all in all this is a decent effort from the Austrians. Nice ending, too.
V: Christina Applegate sings for Austria! I like the way the line-up disperses at the beginning. Simone overdoes it a bit with the eyes and what have you.
21 Cyprus
B: Rather barbed lyrics. I can’t speak for the Greek ones, but the English version conspicuously eschews any identification of gender in a way that has me going “aye aye!” for obvious reasons. The lines “Pou tha me vgali i istoria mou me sena / Oso s’ akolutho” ask a question that is probably pertinent to many a relationship.
A: Stockopolous, Aitkeniki and Watermanolou!!
V: Yay!!!
22 Finland
B: Interesting (or perhaps insensitive) message, given what many of the other songs have been banging on about. The only time there have been two songs in Swedish in one final isn’t much to write home about though, on the whole.
A: Flat vocals for much of the song, but it’s much more melodious and upbeat than I would have expected it to be. I’m glad to see the super-cheap programmed everything curtails itself after a mere two-and-a-third minutes.
V: That quasi-Caribbean thing the Finns love so much is there again. As suggested by the studio version, the vocals here are the weak link.
And so to the points...
1 point goes to Yugoslavia
2 points go to Austria
3 points go to Spain
4 points go to Ireland
5 points go to Italy
6 points go to Portugal
7 points go to Denmark
8 points go to France
10 points go to Israel
and finally...
12 points go to...
Cyprus!
What a tragic tart I am. And what a turnaround! The wooden spoon is split in half and shared by Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
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