762/917 Celia Lawson: Antes do adeus (Portugal 1997)

Portugal has always been one of the most interesting countries and their entries are eagaerly awaited every year even though the points awarded to the Portuguese entries have seldom correlated with their quality. However, it is obvious that sometimes the bad placing in the score board is justified even for Portugal.

In my opinion, the 1990's was exceptionally strong for Portugal with interesting and appealing entries almost every year. The 1990's awarded Portugal also their so far best result when fresh and fun O meu coração não tem cor sung by Lúcia Moniz climbed to the 6th position in 1996. Two years later my personal favourite, group Alma Lusa got to the respectable (but in my opinion too low) 12th place.

But the song between these two is to me one of the most forgettable Portuguese entries ever. Unfortunately for Portugal the juries (and the televoters who took part in five of the 25 participating countries) were unanimous: No-one was interested and, accordingly, no points at all were given to poor Célia Lawson. It was no confort to her, that the Norwegian singer Tor Endresen suffered the same fate and the last place was shared between Portugal and Norway.

I cannot blame either Ms Lawson or the Juries. She sang well (and was supported by weird backing speaking choir hiding behind dark glasses) and tried to give her all to the song. Juries also did their job well: The song was utterly uninteresting and even though there were even worse songs taking part, I can imagine that at the time of voting not many members of the juries remembered what the song was like.

The blame goes, therefore, to the composer. German born Thilo Krassman was the conductor, who conducted with the smile the portuguese entries in seventies and then again in the nineties. 1997 was the last time that the amiable veteran conducter took part in the Eurovision Song Contest and Antes do adeus was his only composition that took part in the international final. It is sad that he could not end his Eurovision career with a better song and better result.

My points 1/5.

761/917 Alma Čardžić: Goodbye (Bosnia Herzegovina 1997)

The 761st song sung in the Eurovision Song Contest happens to be the first real stinker in this blog. The Bosnian entry used every cheap musical trick from finger snapping to repetitious singalong chorus (not to mention the oh-oh-ohs) to gain votes, but deservedly came 18th (out of 22) in the final results.

Song Goodbye was definately not one of Alma Čardžić's finest hours. She apparently is a big star in the Balkan area, and by watching her performance of the song in Dublin in 1997 you can see that she is not enjoying the moment one bit. As a watcher of the contest, I am not enjoying it either.

Luckily this dreadful song is not the only Eurovision memomory of Ms Čardžić. In 1994 she and Dejan Lazarevic represented the war torn Bosnia Herzegovina with a gloomy but effective ballad Ostani kraj mene, the song that got the biggest applause of the evening (but not the most votes, however).

My points 1/5.