917 songs have been sung in the Eurovision Song Contest between 1956 and 2003. In this blog I go through these songs in a random order and tell you what I think of them. What song would you like me to review?
Yugoslavia provided soothing series of balkan ballads during the 1960's without notable success. The quality of these songs ranged from moving to pleasing but rather forgettable. The Eurosong number 119 falls in the latter category.
I cannot help but to feel warm when I hear this song chosen by the Bosnian branch of the Yugoslav television to represent the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest. The singer Sabahudin Kurt is on the top of his game, singing the entry with tender yet strong voice, and the arrangement makes the good use of the orchestra (the live version of the song is almost complete replica of the studio version).
The song falls down because of its melody and the lack of any real substance in it. For this blog entry I've listened to the song several times trying to get a hold of it, but without success. Very soon after listening to the song, it slipped from my memory.
The juries didn't catch the song either, it received the dreaded null points in the contest and shared the last place with three other countries.
Yugoslavia took part 27 times in the Eurovision Song Contest from 1961 on until its disintegration in the early 1990's. The later yugoslav entries are well known and appreciated among Eurovision community, but the country's first decade in Eurovision is almost completely ignored. This is unfortunate, because during those years Yugoslavia hardly ever presented a second rate entries to the contest. The 173th Eurosong is one of the forgotten pearls.
The Yugoslav entry for the 1967 contest held in Vienna was sung by 25 year old Slovenian singer and actor Lado Leskovar. This entry is one of those Yugoslav ballads that didn't make that much of an impact way back then, but which now sound appealing and poignant and bare similarities to the 21st centuries balkan ballads, that are so much appreciated today.
The melody, its structure and the performance of the singer remind me very much of the Yugoslav entry 1965 (which I gave 5 points couple of posts ago in this blog). The song starts with a simple instrumentation which is accompanied from the very start by the convincing vocals. Like Ceznja the song opens it's full bloom after the first verse. And, again, like Ceznja, the most magnificent part of the song is its instrumental break before the end. In this case the powerful yet thoughtful trumpet solo is the crown of this wonderful entry.
What is different in this song is the mood and lyrics. Whereas the 1965 entry is nostalgic song of longing and loving, the mood in Vze roze sveta is somber and in some places even sinister. This is apparent in both the string arrangement, the vocal interpretation and lyrics, which is like a Slovene version of Where have all the flowers gone. The song starts with a gunshot salute saying farewell to a hero to be buried. The protagonists wonders why the trumpet sound reminds him always of the soldiers that are buried under all the flowers in the field.
Unfortunately the audience, and more importantly the juries, did not understand the lyrics of this song for peace, and the spoken passage recited during the instrumental break sounds slightly out of place, even though it contributes to the sad overall feeling of the song.
Like the entry from 1965, I love the overall quality of this song and the gloomy mood it creates. The song gathered seven votes that resulted a respectable 8th place in the final results (out of 17 songs).
For a long time the only good recording available of the song was the live recording of the contest held in Vienna. I was, however, extremely happy when just couple of days ago I stumbled upon a crystal clear recording of the song included in a compilation album available in Spotify. Share and enjoy!
In the 21st century a balkan ballad has become a genre that collects easily points from all over Europe. During the first half of the Eurovision history the story was quite different. In the 1960's Jugoslavia provided the contest with great lovesongs from year to year, but they never fought over the highest positions in the final scoreboard and were soon forgotten. The 139th Eurovision entry is one of my biggest favourites ever in the Eurovision Song Contest, but I have hardly ever heard anyone else even remembering the song.
Croatian singer Vice Vukov had represented Yugoslavia already in 1963 with almost equally haunting ballad Brodovi (to which I promise to award high points as well should that song be drawn by the random number generator) reaching the 11th position (among 16 participants) in the final results. In 1965 the result was practically identical, as Ceznja received two points and came 12th (among 18 participants).
When I first heard the song from a bad quality tape, I was enchanted by the appealing melody which starts silently and opens into full bloom with no real distinction between the verse and the refrain. Vukov has bright and strong but also unpretentious voice which matches the melody and the arrangement to the full. My favourite part, however, is the instrumental break during the last third of the song with dreamy string and horn arrangement. After listening to the song I am mesmerized and want to listen to the song again.
It seems that after many years of winning ballads the Eurovision juries did prefer perky young female stars instead of serious male singer, so the song or the singer didn't get the recognition it deserved. Vice Vukov continued his career in Yugoslavia until he was forced to go exile for four years because of his political views. After returning to his home country he was blacklisted until the change of political climate in the end of 1980's when he became popular again. When Croatia became an independent democracy he served as a member of Croatian parlament for couple of years.
For a long time Ceznja could only be heard from the live recording of the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest and bad quality copy of the recorded version. Luckily by the change of the millenium a compilation cd by Vice Vukov came up with a pristine original recording available of this magnificent song. The live version from 1965 Eurovision Song Contest is worth full five points, but the recorded version (available at least on YouTube) is even better.
The next Eurosong is chosen by a fellow eurovision lover Antti Salmela. The 327th song sung on the Eurovision stage is favourite among many Eurofans, but unfortunately I am not one of them.
The Yugoslavian entry in 1976 was chosen by the Bosnian television. The song was a folk orientated pop song by a Sarajevo group Ambasadori, member of which Slobodan Vujović also composed the song.
The song consists of two parts that to me are like day and night. The verse is promising and sung beautifully by the soloist Ismeta Dervoz but as she is joined in the chorus by the rest of the group the whole thing falls apart. Perhaps it is the arrangement (or is the group singing out of tune?) or the melody, but the chorus puts me off every time I hear it.
As many of my Eurovision friends have persistently told me how good this song actually is, I've tried to start liking it. But I'm sorry, I've failed.
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.
