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?
Two good singers together make usually a great duet, but not always. Sometimes when a good singer (or singers) and a good song meet, the result is not as good as expected. Sometimes the pieces don't fit because they are from a different puzzle. That is very much what I think of the Romanian Eurovision entry from 2002.
The first bars of this song are just like written me in mind. A delicate piano intro leads to a magnificently arranged ballad (love that saxophone break) that has a message and feeling which with a tender and thoughtful interpretation could have resulted a perfect schlager.
But the Monica Anghel is neither tender or thoughful. She is a good singer, she has a great presence and a voice that can carry a long way even with a less sophisticated melody. But her voice is just what this song does not need. She blasts out all her passion and despair leaving the melody in ruins.
Marcel Pavel is slightly closer to what this song would have needed. With his dynamics he could have given this song the interpretation it needs, but when he had to compete of space and volume with the mighty diva the song is turned into a race track of two singers that try to outdo each other.
And in this contest of egos the poor song is shred to pieces. All one can think is which of them won, Monica or Pavel. What a waste.
The first years of Eurovision Song Contest is considered by many as an uninteresting cavalcade of dull French (or french sounding) ballads with really nothing else to remember them by than the winning entries. While I think this is partly true, I also once in a while try to highlight the great unsung and unremebered masterpieces from these early Eurovision years which I think there are plenty of. The 90th eurosong is not one of those. In fact the whole 1962 Eurovision song contest is one of the dullest and most unforgettable contests ever.
The french singing star François Deguelt had represented Monaco already two years previously with an excellent song Ce soir-là by Hubert Giraud (my review to this great song can be read here) resulting the third place in the final results list. In 1962 Deguelt managed to improve the rating with the 2nd place with 13 points. The winning song, Un premier amour by Isabelle Aubret (in my opinion one of the best songs ever in the Eurovision history) gathered twice the amount of points.
But unlike the result would suggest, Dis rien (penned by well known French singer Henri Salvador) is far inferior to François Deguelts earlier song. Lyrically the song consist mostly of cliches of a French love song and the melody is uninspired. The slightly jazzy arrangement does little to improve the overall impression, which makes me wonder what the juries saw and heard in this song that made them attribute their points to it. Even the singer himself looks like having trouble in keeping awake singins this dull ditty. Maybe the overall low quality of songs (except of the winner and one or two of the other songs) made the juries to follow the old formula. It is in french, it is a ballad, therefore it must be good.
The 1991 is not one of my fondest Eurovision memories. Finland was at the wrong end of the score board again, the winner was far from my favourite and the contest itself was a big mess. That may be the reason that I don't recall many good songs from that year. When the random nuber generator draw me the Luxembourg entry from 1991 I was almost ready to award the song the all too common two points out of five. Well let's just listen to the song once I thought. I was surprised.
Luxembourg was one of my favourite Eurovision countries right until it decided to withdraw from the contest in 1993. The 613th Eurosong was an attempt by the Luxembourg tv to repeat their former successes that had combined a traditional French ballad with a young female singer. Although they didn't succees this year (either), their 1991 entry was much better than I remembered.
Un baiser volé was very formulaic French Eurovision ballad. In first decades there were usually 2-4 of those taking part every year. So in 1991 I very much dismissed this song for being not among the best of those ballads. Nowadays when one has to wait sometimes couple of years to hear a decent French ballad on Eurovision stage this song feels not bad at all.
Also Sarah Bray was much better singer than I remembered and her performance is actually nice to hear and watch. And unlike most of the songs that year, the live version works much better than the studio version shown in the previews.
I tried but found almost no information at all of this young singer, who apparently vanished into oblivion after the contest. If anything, Sarah Bray (real name being Mick Wersant) at least was Luxembourg citizen unlike most of the others that had represented the grand duchy. Where are you and what are you doing, Sarah?
Ireland is famous for the high number of ballads sung by a male artist in Eurovision Song Contest (19 out of 48 between 1965 and 2015). Of these 19 four were sung during the first consecutive four years that the country took part in the contest. Looking back at those years it is hard for me to distinguish these four entries from another. The third Irish Eurovision entry is the best of these four.
The Irish entry from 1967 is a nice song. Not too slow and not too syrupy, but a positive love song dreaming of a home and a future that the protagonist wishes to build with his loved one. Nothing more. Sean Dunphy was a good singer and sympathetic enough to reach the romantic hearts watching the contest. If I could choose reached the glorious second place in the final results beating for example the more somber French ballads (like L'amour est bleue which later became a world wide best seller.)
I quite like the song. Among the staggering number of 33 different Eurovision ballads from the Green island this is among the best, but still not worth more than three points from me.
Four years prior to the preview videos (and during the era when music videos were a novelty) one was created for this song. See it here. Can't you sense the sparks flying between Sean and his sweetheart?
The French entry from 1988 is one of those songs that at the time did nothing to me, but during the last 27 years has become one of my favourites. In 1988 I thought that Gérard Lenorman was a new inexperienced singer whose insecurity made his voice tremble and shake. His voice was far from the strong and straightforward singing voices of Lara Fabian and Céline Dion who took most of my attention that year.
When I received the VHS copiy of the 1988 contest in the early 1990's and got to hear the French entry again, my opinion changed. I also learned that Gérard Lenorman was an established star in his home country and his trembly voice was his trademark. His performance was also far from insecure. He controlled the stage and it felt like he was not singing to the camera but personally to me sitting by the tv.
The song itself, written by the crooner himself, is nothing special, but a well crafted love song made to honor the French ballad traditions, not much different from French eurovision ballads from the 1960's. The orchestral arrangement by the Eurovision veteran Guy Matteoni emballishes the song which on stage is bigger and more pompous than the rather sparsely arranged recorded version.
The studio version of the song is completely another story. On his album Heureux qui communiquent and on single the song is over four minutes long. To make the song fit the three minutes maximum length the track was edited to leave out every other phrase rather than to edit out a verse or a refrain. So if you have only heard the Eurovision version of the song (available on the 1988 Eurovision compilation album), be prepared to surprises when you listen to the album version of the song. In either way Chanteur de charme is one of the better songs of the 1988 contest.
In the 1990's I developed a notorious touch of death. Not once or even twice but four times a song that I had pointed as one of my absolute favourites crashed at the dreaded last place in the final results. In 1999 I had a very good prediction that Spain would do well, and then what happened?
Four years previously Spain had done all but win the contest with their magnificent entry Vuelve conmigo. The 1999 Spanish entry was for me a clear follow-up to that song and sure to do at least as well. The elements were very much the same. An enigmatic melody with tasty arrangement which with a good singer and spanish lyrics (among songs mostly sung in english) created a enchanting package, at least on its recorded version. With, for the first time, no orchestra but a backing track the song did sound very much the same in Jerusalem.
At the time I didn't see much wrong in the performance. Lydia Rodríguez Fernández had couple of flat notes here and there, but otherwise she managed to keep her voice in control and delivered the song all right to the audience. Later I've realized that the small faults in the performance ruined the overall impression. Still I think that the last place was far from deserved. My points 3/5.
I have a difficult attitude to groups with three female singers and one male singer. Boney M. is maybe the only group that has used this formula successfully (although only half of the group actually sang on their records), but on other occasions I find this combination uneasy to follow. The Irish Eurovision representant of 1982 is a good example of a group that has a peculiar chemistry which all but ruins a plausible song in my opinion.
The Duskey sisters (consisting of two sisters Barbara Ellis and Sandy Kelly and their cousin Nina Duskey) had already participated in the Irish Eurovision selection one year earlier with a bouncy song Where does that love come from, and finished third in the results. Unfortunately the song that got the group finally to the Eurovision stage is much weaker.
Whereas the 1981 song is a charmingly old fashioned pop pearl with the threesome trading vocal lines and performing the song enthousiastically and inspiredly on stage, the 1982 song is very formulaic pseudo modern ditty with obvious lyrics and melody that stays the same after the first third is up. What makes the song interesting is a challenging orchestral arrangement which really gave the orchestra run for their money and the opportunity to spice up the otherwise rather tasteless soup. This wonderful orchestral backing is completely absent from a dull recorded version of the song.
To make the song more appealing the three Duskeys were joined by their Welsh cousin Danny Duskey, but this did very little to make the performance more interesting. Quite the contrary to me. The foursome sang together throughout the song without anyone (least of all poor Danny) having any moment to shine. Because the choreography of the four Duskey cousins was exactly the same and his voice was buried under the female voices, one wonders what the male member was doing in the group. Just like in the Belgian entry from five years prior, Danny seemed to be the silent boy who had been bossed around by the three female cousins to join them on stage to do exactly the same as they were doing. Well, that's the connotation I get from this song anyway.
Despite the mediocre result in the final results (11 among 18 participants) the group continued to be popular in their native Ireland. After a car accident the group broke up and the members continued their careers separately. Sandy Kelly found success in the country branch culminating with a recording done together with Johnny Cash. Danny Duskey would have his time to shine, when he participated in the Song for Europe contest in 1986 as a member of a group Palace. That song is also, in my opinion, better than the one he got to sing with his bossy cousins in Harrogate.
