145/917 Berta Ambroz: Brez besed (Jugoslavia 1966)

For over 30 years Yugoslavia was the only nation from behind the iron curtain to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Althought the success came never close until the late 1980's, Yugoslavia still gave the contest plenty of quality entries that had something not heard of other entries. The eurosong 145 represented the balkan ballad genre, which would come popular and successful in the beginning of the new millenium.

In 1966 the Slovenian branch of the Yugoslav broadcaster won the national selection and chose Berta Ambroz to sing song Brez Besed, written by Mojmir Sepe. The beautiful song has a appealing melody and nicely growing arrangement. Berta Ambroz gives a passionate, if somewhat shy performance also managing beautifully to use different nyances in her singing from delicate verse to a rousing refrain with a trembling vibrato in her voice. Song was definately one of the higlights of the 1966 contest.

The song fared rather well in the international final reaching the 7th place among 18 acts being one of the absolute best results for Yugoslavia until the victory 23 years later.

The 1966 Eurovision entry for Yugoslavia has a similar melody line than one of the most succesful entries, the famous Eres tu from Spain seven years later. For some reason this remained very much unnoticed at the time.

I could not find much information on the singer other than that she was only 21 years old when representing her country. Her entry is available in Spotify on a compilation album of her other hits (listen f.eg. her version of the James Bond tune Goldfinger) which gives an impression that she had before her death in 2003 some place in the Yugoslavian show business.

The composer-conductor Mojmir Sepe would, on the other hand, conduct the Eurovision orchestra four times in total, last time being as late as in 1998.

My points 4/5.

144/917 Michèle Torr: Ce soir je t'attendais (Luxembourg 1966)

During the first decades of the Eurovision Song Contest the French artists had more exposure to the European audiences than others. Apart from the French television, the French artists were usually asked to represent also Monaco and Luxembourg, and sometimes even Switzerland and Belgium. Several upcoming and already established French stars tried to enhance their careers or prepare themselves for the forthcoming stardom by taking part. One of these artists was  Michèle Torr, who took part in the Eurovision Song Contes twice representing both Monaco and Luxembourg.

Torr was part of the Yé-yé generation, a singer under 20 years of age singing mostly uptempo songs. Other famous yé-yé singers were France Gall, Françoise Hardy and Sylvie Vartan. A 19 year old Torr gave a confident performance in the 1966 edition of Eurovision Song Contest representing the host country Luxembourg.

I find her performance and the song one of the best in the 1966 contest, which was not of the highest quality contests in the 1960's. The result, 10th place among 18 participant was surprising and disappointing. I still like the song even though it hasn't aged as well as some other entries from the 1960's.

Michèle Torr was already a star and she returned to the Eurovision Stage in 1977 representing Monaco with a song Une petite française, which she preferred to her 1966 entry and which improved her result finishing fourth. She is still continuing her career performing regularly and releasing new material occasionally.

My points 3/5.