812/917 Charlotte Nilsson: Take me to your heaven (Sweden 1999)

Each decade has one or two Eurovision winner that I don't get. The winner of the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest is one of the songs that I could not have predicted as a winner even in my wildest dreams and I am still puzzled how this particular song managed to please that many telephone voters to win the hela sjuttaballongen.

There is nothing particularly wrong in the Swedish entry in 1999. The melody of Take me to your heaven is catchy and Charlotte Nilsson (later to change her name to Charlotte Perelli) captures the attention of the viewers with ease.

The song was, already in 1999, violently out of date. This style was popular in Eurovision in the early 1980's, but among the neon tubes and laser lights of the Jerusalem Eurovision stage the song does not work at all. Originally titled Tusen och en natt the song loses it's particular charm when translated to the lingua franca.

But I was in the minority. The Swedish entry won the contest with convincing margin before Iceland and Germany. If the song was old fashioned, the 2000 contest arranged by the Swedish Television started the new and considerable more modern era of the contest. So one could deem Sweden the right winner of the last Euroision Song Contest of the second millenium after all.

My points 2/5.

200/917 Lenny Kuhr: De troubadour (Netherlands 1969)

After 40 songs presented in this blog it is now the first time for me to come across a winning song in the Eurovision Song Contest. The victory of the 200th eurosong is overshadowed by the fact that it was one of the four songs to win in 1969. Still in my book it is one of the best winners and best Dutch songs in the Eurovision history ever.

Lenny Kuhr was only 19 years of age and in the beginning of her career when she represented the Netherlands in the contest held in Madrid. With her strong and appealing voice she managed to capture the moment and be one of the four winners that year.

De troubadour is not a typical pop tune of the late 1960's. It is more of a folk song with story of the past. The song tells a very simple story of man who sang his songs to all the people, to the knights, to commoners, to drunks and to priests, to people who missed him when his songs and his life ended. Not more complicated than that, but not more was needed as most of the viewers didn't understand the lyrics anyway.

To me, who have always loved the sound of the dutch language, De troubadour is a beautiful combination of lovely melody, strong arrangement (the live version has much more effective orchestra than the recorded version) and the dutch lyrics sung eloquently by the young singer. This song would have been worth more than just a shared first place.

My points 5/5.

p.s. I've tried to find the real songwriting credits to this song, but the information I've found has been contradicting. According to some sources De troubadour was composed by Kuhr herself and lyrics were written by David Hartsema, but in many places the credits are reversed. Can anyone confirm what were the real credits to this wonderful song?