01 Israel
B: Putting the lines together thus – “Veyesh li achshav chaver chadash miDamesek / Ani rotsa la’asot et ze ito kol hayom / Im lo egmor, ze yigamer mamash bebum / Ani rotsa melafefon” – you get some of the filthiest lyrics ever to grace a Eurovision entry.
A: I love the way this manages to be so vibrant and so monotone at the same time: it seems to fit the song perfectly. As does how repetitive it is, while still managing to surprise you every now and then for the neat little things it does musically.
V: About the only Israeli entry which awful [backing] vocals can’t ruin. Come the two-minute mark it’s completely lost what limited energy it had to begin with.
02 The Netherlands
B: That entire second verse – capped off by “It’s time for us to sing a different song” – is so much more relevant now than it ever could have been coming straight after the relatively dizzy heights of Hemel en aarde and One Good Reason.
A: While the synths are irritating, the Spanishesque guitar is great. But this just doesn’t hold my interest in the way the Israeli entry does.
V: Surely dubbing this a ‘mini-musical’ was the height of conceited self-delusion given it’s little more than a big dress, excessive make-up and two and a half minutes of people running around on stage clapping and looking daft in a way that only Dutch supporting artists at Eurovision seem able to. Linda is positively Maltese in how small, round and silver she is.
03 United Kingdom
B: I’m glad crying in vain was never for Nikki French, given the drubbing this would come in for.
A: Marvellous uptempo start to the contest, but there’s little indication of variety or inspiration. Not that you can lay the blame at the UK’s door – this is more than Nikki’s bread and butter: it’s French toast. As in, tempting in its way but a little hard to digest, and it never seems as good an idea after the fact as it did before.
V: They look like the cast of some BBC hospital drama doing a bad cabaret act for charity. The choreography is appalling, but the vocals are uniformly good, and the stage looks fantastic.
04 Estonia
B: “If you give me wings and reason why / Then I’ll be an angel in your sky” is pretty decent by Jana Hallas’ standards. As usual, a few nonsensical bits threaten to derail the whole thing, but never in a way that significantly detracts from the pop-my-cherry coquettishness of it all.
A: The most seamless faux-Swedish cut-and-paste job Eurovision has ever produced. Surprisingly attractive, even today.
V: With the best will in the world, this sounds horribly ragged. Ines is the epitome of a performer’s nerves infiltrating their vocals. Terry Wogan’s remark that she was wearing trousers so tight you could see what she’d had for breakfast is one of my favourite Eurovision one-liners.
05 France
B: “Un goût d’orange, cannelle, on s’envole toi et moi” underscores how sensual and exotic these lyrics are. The way they slip and slide is so appropriate.
A: This is an acoustic and percussive masterpiece from the off, so the fact it then adds strings and a piano only makes me love it more. Sofia’s rich voice is the perfect match for a song of its nature, musically and lyrically.
V: Sofia makes the song sound gorgeous, as you might expect, but unlike Ines she betrays her nerves through her inability to connect in any shape or form with the camera and, by extension, the audience. So you can understand why it failed to score more than a handful of points: televoters are bad enough at times at rewarding true quality without it being presented to them at such a distance.
06 Romania
B: Not quite as evocative as On aura le ciel, but certainly as romantic. The words speak a little more simply, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
A: The first minute and a half is unadulterated aural ecstasy. They earn bonus points for the aptly sweeping, echoey production. The electric-guitar solo fits the exuberance of the story that’s being told as it reaches its culmination but, as ever, I’d rather it wasn’t there.
V: Dan Teodorescu looks a little bit like Yoko Ono doing an impersonation of John Lennon.
07 Malta
B: A bit corny in places, these lyrics, but they work. The “Dejjem ridtek / Dejjem xtaqtek / Lilek ћabbejt” interlude shows how you can inject a bit of national flavour into an otherwise all-English song and make it work.
A: ‘Vivacious’ is the first word that springs to mind whenever I hear this. I think it’s Philip Vella’s best composition at Eurovision, or at least his cleverest, since every aspect of it captures the colour and mood of the lyrics and performer.
V: I love Claudette. 2000 was the last bastion of the middle-aged at Eurovision, wasn’t it? The vocal touches they add to this live are brilliant, and outsourcing the backing to the hosts here was a greater stroke of genius for Malta than in perhaps any other year.
08 Norway
B: There are some great lines in amongst this lot, including “…suddenly I saw you there / A stunning sight from God knows where / …looking quite impossible”. Having said that, there’s more than enough pop elsewhere for me that they really could ‘lose the popsicle’.
A: Sleigh bells ring... are you listening? The tone for the entire song is set within its opening bars: you just know it’s going to be utterly vapid in a fabulous kind of way. Not that the composer was slacking off; Poland clearly thought bits of the tune were worth pinching for their next entry. Simple but very effective key change.
V: There’s something peculiarly Norwegian about this performance that I can’t put my finger on. Good though, despite the dodgy vocals here and there. The messed-up harmonies in the bridge (‘something blue in perfect tune’) are one of the most sublime moments of backfiring vocals at Eurovision, like, ever. And the visual effects are great.
09 Russia
B: There’s something about these lyrics that makes me suspect Andrew Lane and Brandon Barnes are pseudonyms for a couple of Russians whose English is not perfect.
A: It doesn’t really matter whether this is any good, because it’s the only song so far to actually sound like something you might have heard on a radio station or chart show at the time. And it’s certainly competent. I’m not sure it’s aged very well, but it has its charms.
V: An early indication of Russia’s knack for knocking out proper-soundings songs in the contest in the new era. Alsou doesn’t sound much better than Ines in places, but the routine’s spot-on, and at least she’s confident staring down the barrel of Camera 1.
10 Belgium
B: Despite the gospel aspirations and lines like “Suivent la seule étoile à la gloire du Dieu vivant”, it took me forever to realise this was a lobby song. Probably because I thought they were singing “Come on! Vivre sans amour!” and that seemed to take the emphasis away from good Christian values. Unless they were preaching abstinence.
A: If we have to have new-millennium praise-Jeebuz in Eurovision, it might as well be like this. However incongruous my affection for it is, it remains as strong as ever.
V: Why do I get the impression none of them have ever had to perform anything this upbeat before? The vocals are generally good (and the second backing vocalist from the right can preach to me any time he likes), but as a performance it just doesn’t work.
11 Cyprus
B: I’ve always liked the mix of Greek and Italian here.
A: After Sti fotia, Alex was never going to return to the contest with anything less atmospheric – which probably explains why he didn’t seek on-screen credits for My Number One or This Is Our Night – and this only cranks it up a notch. His vocals blend with Christina’s in a way that adds to both and without detracting from either. As you might expect, it’s all rather melodramatic, but so what.
V: Vocal powerhouse, the pair of them. Not sure the colour scheme works.
12 Iceland
B: I love the way these lyrics capture the sense of that point in a relationship where absolutely anything seems possible.
A: 10 years after Eit lag enn, this is just as retro (and just as much fun) but feels completely different: sort of effortless, and much more authentic, with an easy appeal and some great hooks. I’m still surprised it didn’t do better, to be honest.
V: There were lots of skirts on men in 2000, weren’t there. More power to them! Telma’s inexperience is obvious but doesn’t get in the way of a fun performance.
13 Spain
B: Do you think that in lines like “Aquí no hay límites a mis deseos / … / Aquí hay espacio para mis anhelos / Todo se puede cumplir” Serafín’s saying “being blind’s not all bad”?*
A: Everything about this is perfect except the chorus, which is pedestrian and boring and displays none of the ingenuity of arrangement that the verses and bridges boast.
V: *If so, I’d tend to agree, since at least he can’t see how they’ve dressed him and made him up to look like a spray-tanned priest with a Lisa Stansfield kiss-curl. He sounds good, as do his backing vocalists, but the only thing I ever remember about this performance is that the video screens fail to form a single line at the end. And that says it all.
14 Denmark
B: A set of lyrics that prove you can get a message across just as effectively by keeping it to the point. That said, the “There’s just one more thing I’d like to add” bit is cute.
A: The first time I heard Fly on the Wings of Love, I was surprised at how consistently good it was: it made me want to listen to it again and again. And indeed I did. Even now, it still wins me over. This and Belgium were my unassailable pre-contest favourites.
V: Oh so personable. The audience love it from the off, and so do I.
15 Germany
B: Actually quite clever, these lyrics. They’re made much more palatable by the self-deprecating introduction.
A: This is too together to go to the bother of criticising it. And given it is what it is, doing so would seem churlish.
V: It’s easy to see why this did as well as it did. All it’s missing are gold chains.
16 Switzerland
B: It’s normally only French that manages to take a set of fairly banal lyrics and turn them into something that looks and sounds poetic, but the Italian pulls it off here. Reading the English translation makes it seem very ho-hum, but the actual words have something about them that suits the song perfectly.
A: Pretty much the same could be said of the music. It’s indicative of Switzerland still not really having a clue when it comes to Eurovision, but it’s a thing of beauty in its own way.
V: Jane and her mauve frock are like a premonition of the Bulgarian entry in Athens, right down to her coming across as slightly uncomfortable with the vocals until she gets the green light to let rip with them. The backing vocals are altogether too heavy-handed for my liking, but the whole thing comes together nicely for the final note, which is beguiling.
17 Croatia
B: “Sve svijeće svijeta nek se za nas upale” is an unexpected alliterative highlight in an otherwise typically economical set of Balkan lyrics.
A: Croatian entries clearly have a more distinctive sound than most people realise: this couldn’t come from anywhere else. It’s lovely.
V: Goran Karan looks almost Native American here. Beautiful vocals from one and all, but the performance as a whole is a bit lacklustre.
18 Sweden
B: For an entry imbued with so much meaning in its music and performance, its lyrics don’t actually mean all that much when you think about them. They probably think they do, but they don’t. It’s not a dealbreaker, but still.
A: The way they approach this as a composition has never sat very comfortably with me. It’s like the obvious idea of how something like this should sound, but in reality it ought to sound completely different. More like the bridge and less like... well, all the other bits. The synthesised brass certainly doesn’t make me want to try and like it more.
V: Utterly mad and awfully directed (did they all get a bit overexcited in the gallery at this point?), but it sounds enormous. Perhaps that explains why it did so well. I’m not sure anything else does.
19 FYR Macedonia
B: Vlado Janevski penned these lyrics?! I suppose that lends them a modicum of weight. The Macedonian bits paint the girls as the over-pampered, under-talented wannabes they are well enough, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. (“I nemoj da zaboraviš večerva da me sonuvaš” is particularly conceited and therefore perfect for a posse of spoilt teens.) The English ones turn the concept on its head, but I suppose all they were going for was fit.
A: When they’re just doing the chorus, in studio, with lots of tweaking and the memory of the twangly Macedonian bits offsetting the poptart whole, this sounds great.
V: LOL, it’s like an audition for Junior Eurovision, with some of the flattest harmonies (and vocals) Eurovision has ever heard.
20 Finland
B: “Dull monotone”.
A: I hadn’t realised what an international pile of poo this is: at least four nationalities and they still can’t make it sound any less like a Sunday-school campfire number.
V: Where in The Bible does it sanction perms that hideous? It’s alarmingly easy to distinguish the Finns from the Dutch vocalists on stage. Lovely backdrop.
21 Latvia
B: Typically Latvian lyrics in terms of how all over the shop they are, but dodgy grammar can’t hide how good lines like “Pretend there are things you just don’t know in spite someone’s told you are so cute” are.
A: Gorgeous, and in ways you never expect it to be.
V: Puts Germany in the shade. I love the organic feel of the lighting and visuals. The lads certainly know how to sell the song.
22 Turkey
B: The rhythm and delivery of “Duyuyor musun kırgın sessizliğimi, sustuğum anda?” are perfect for what it’s saying. Lovely lyrics generally.
A: Perfect choice of instruments here, personifying and punctuating (and thus elevating) the lyrics. It’s just so right.
V: This is utterly Turkish and not Turkish at all. It sounds fantastic, but more importantly feels great. Selim Öncel can squeeze my bellows any time he likes.
23 Ireland
B: My eyes are rolling before I’ve reached the end of the first line.
A: Whether or not this came 6th, it’s still Ireland showing it’s slipped further out of touch with the contest. The sentiment is more vomit-inducing than Belgium’s happy-clappy Godathon.
V: The Swedish girls I got chatting to in Globen did a comedy double-take when Eamonn Toal started singing this. “My God! Is he for real?” one of them turned to me and exclaimed in horror. At least the vocals do them justice.
24 Austria
B: This is a great set of lyrics which earns bonus points for not being lazy (i.e. adding a couple of new lines to the final chorus).
A: Just as authentic a retro number as Tell Me! (if not more so), largely thanks to the vocals. Composer Dave Moskin was hard done by with the result this and Reflection got, really. As indeed was Austria.
V: All they needed was Whoopi Goldberg and the Sister Act would have been complete! In fact they could have done with some backing, just to take the full weight of the vocals off their shoulders. That said, I still love their performance, bum first note or no: they look great, they sound right and they really look like they’re enjoying themselves. Wins me over every time.
And so to the points...
1 point goes to Estonia
2 points go to Cyprus
3 points go to Croatia
4 points go to Malta
5 points go to Romania
6 points go to Austria
7 points go to France
8 points go to Latvia
10 points go to Denmark
and finally...
12 points go to...
Turkey!
The wooden spoon is awarded, somewhat unexpectedly, to the Netherlands.
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