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?
Warm summer, beautiful landscape and all the rest of the delights of your homeland have been constant subject for songs in the event that, apart from being a contest for songs, is a good opportunity to market your country for tourists and visitors. Sweden used the first two years of the 1970's to sing about lovely winter (in 1971) and summer (1972) of this Scandinavian kingdom. To sing both these well crafted tourism commercials Sweden chose a four member folk group Family four.
Their 1971 entry Vita vidder (to which I will hopefully return in the near future) was a melodic masterpiece by Håkan Elmquist, a song of many dimensions and stages. Perfect performance by the Family four gave this song one of the best results Sweden had ever had in the Eurovision so far.
The Swedish entry from 1972, composed as well by Elmquist, was much simpler and less structured praise of wonderful summer days. Family four did, again, a wonderful stage performance of the song with the girls starting the verse and the boys continuing. The verse is followed by a peppy and almost irritatingly hilarious refrain which is interrupted by a gorgeous middle eight with wonderful harmony singing by the group. Although not as perfect as the 1971 entry, Härliga sommardag manages, once again, be a delightful and very Swedish song to which Family four does justice with a big J. The recorded version is even better.
Unfortunately the juries, consisting of two members from each participating country, were not as thrilled of the Swedish summer as they were of the winter a year earlier. The song placed 13th among 18 participants.
Family four continued its career until 1974. Two of its members, Marie Bergman and Pierre Isacsson continued their careers as solo artists. Bergman would represent Sweden for the third time in 1994, and the same year Isacsson would, tragically, die in the Estonia ferry accident.
The voyage between the Mols peninsula and the town of Skagen of Denmark is over 200 km long and it takes about 2 and half hours to drive by car, but only three minutes to sing a love song about. The Eurosong 720, suggested by my friend Asko Murtomäki, is a seductive ballad about a woman longing to be with her lover at the other end of the country. According to many a Eurovision masterpiece. I agree.
Denmark, who during the 1980's and early 1990's was known for bouncy pop songs, changed the pace dramatically in 1995. The song written by Lise Cabble is different from both the previous danish representatives and the other 22 songs that took part in the 1995 contest. The Danish themselves were rather hesitant, as the song was chosen as their entry with a very low margin.
However in Dublin the song stood up from the rest with its laid back atmosphere and sparse instrumentation. The interesting melody and the soulful voice of Aud Wilken was a perfect match and for once the Danish language sounds beautiful like italian to an enchanted ear. Her husky performance is at the same time thoughtful, passionate and seductive (without taking any of her clothes off).
If in the home front the expectations were not that high, the international audience took the song directly to their hearts. The song was among the favourites from the beginning and finally reached the fifth position only eight points short of the bronze medal. After the good result even the danes themselves realized the potential of the song and Fra Mols til Skagen became a big hit in the homeground.
For Denmark, who usually plays it safe in the Eurovision, to do something different really paid off. Fra Mols til Skagen is definately one of the most memorable songs of the Danish Eurovision history and the 1995 contest.
Lisa Cabble would return as a composer to Eurovision in 2011 and 2013, when her song Teardrops would win the whole contest. Aud Wilken took part in the Danish Melodi Grand Prix again in 2007 without success. She has only one solo album in her catalogue. Cannot understand why.
This is a unfortunately usual story. A young competent artist performs well a challenging song on the Eurovision stage making also a terrific recording out of it. However, the juries (or the televoters) don't get the song and it goes nowhere and the artist is never heard of again. Such was the case also for the song performed 127th in the Eurovision history.
The song Paradies wo bist du is a not your usual Eurovision entry of the mid 1960's. The song combines in an unorthodox way German schlager and latin rhythms with an interesting melody line. The song was the first but also the most unconventional of four great Eurovision entries written by well known composer Hans Blum.
The recording of this song is excellent with arrangement and production way ahead of its time. Especially notable is the use of the wordless female vocal which is used more like an instrument than a backing vocal. Young 24 year old Ulla Wiesner does a immaculate job following the complicated melody line managing to add some personal interpretation in the recording. The arrangement of the live version on Naples Eurovision stage is much more conventional losing the enigmatic ambience of the studio recording.
Still the song in its live version would have deserved better fate. The voting system of the mid 1960's did not do favours for songs like this. Each country gave points to maximum three songs (out of 18) they deemed best, so it was no surprise that a song so different and exotic would not receive any points at all.
For poor Ulla Wiesner the drawn last place in the 10th Eurovision song contest meant abrupt end for her singing career. In the Internet very little (if any) information can be found of her singing activities after the 1965 Eurovision song contest, although the bad result was by no means her fault. The song itself disappeared and the studio recording can be found only on German Eurovision compilations that are currently sold out. I tried in vain to find a link to the studio version on Spotify, YouTube and GrooveShark.
Hans Blum wrote another three entries for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967, 1969 and 1985. With less adventurous songs he managed each time reach the top ten.
My points 3/5 (I make my judgement according to the live version. The studio version of song would easily receive 4 points from me or possibly the full fiver)
p.s. This song was suggested for me by a fellow blogger Tobias Larsson. If you have a song, a decade or a country you want me to write about, please send me a comment or tweet me to mikko_suhonen. I'm looking forward to your contribution.
After several two or three pointers I'm more than glad to have random number generator draw me a full pointer for a change. The 304th song to be sung on a Eurovision stage is on the surface a boringly normal schlager sung in a very traditional way. But if you listen to it more, you'll find that there is more to it than meets the ear.
As mentioned before, André Popp is one of my favourite Eurovision composers. I have already given the full 5 points to his classic L'amour est bleu from 1967, and he also wrote two excellent entries for France in 1964 and in 1960 when Tom Pillibi would win the whole contest. Should these songs be drawn or requested to my blog, I promise to attribute high points to them as well. Apart from his four Eurovision entries, Popp has written numerous hits for French artists and scores for about ten films.
For his last (so far) participation in the ESC Popp also acted as conductor. Song Une chanson c'est une lettre was sung by 30 year old French singer Sophie Hecquet. Before Eurovision her main achievement in the music business was to have accompanied Johnny Hallyday on his tours in the mid 1960's.
Sophie is a good a singer and shining performer and she looks stunning in her red dress on a brigh blue stage. However the real star of this show is the song itself. The melody is simple and the chorus is almost naively repetitive. What makes the song stand out is the distinctive time signature that the song is composed on. Most of the song is in 6/4 time and in the verse Popp alters between 6/4 time and 4/4 time. 6/4 time signature is quite rare in a pop song, which gives the song a totally different feel and combined with a most ordinary melody the result is quirky and mysterious. Additionally André Popp's arrangement is excellent and the Swedish orchestra is up to the task.
On top of it all the lyrics are a poetic masterpiece telling in different ways and metaphors how a message of love is so much easier to put in a song or a poem than to tell someone face to face. A song is a letter, that is never sent. You can openly tell "I love you" in a song, when you are not the one to sing it. When one speaks of love the words get stuck in your throat, but in a song or a poem love is always perfect and you are not afraid to feel silly.
The lyrical genious Boris Bergman had already written song for Monaco in 1973 and he would eventually write the French entry as late as in 2013.
The juries in 1975 did not see this detailed perfection and awarded the song only 22 points and 13th place in the final results (among 19 participants). Neither has this song become particularly popular among Eurovision fans. To me this song, from the typical schlager intro through the affective key change and until the charming finale, is one of the dearest memories from 1970's Eurovision Song Contest, certainly one of the best songs in 1975 contest, which was filled with premium quality entries anyway.
Sophie would not continue her career as a singer. Instead she made a career as a radio and television presenter and a producer in Monaco, Luxembourg and Belgium. She died in 2012 at the age of 68.
Telephone in its differents incarnations has inspired Eurovision song writers during the decades. Already in 1957 Margot Hilscher demonstrated with a phone in her hand how this apparatus is used. 40 years later Kølig Kaj had a long distance romance with a switchboard operator. The 595th Eurosong reminds us of two things that today's generation have never used or even hear of.
If you want to find a happy, jolly, uptempo Eurosong and want to avoid gloom and doom, Denmark is always a safe bet. Especially during the 15 years after their long absence in the Eurovision (during 1967-1977) it was very difficult find a non smiling face when Denmark's team was on stage. Coincidence or not, eight of those 15 songs (from 1978 to 1993) had lyrics by Keld Heick.
That was also the case in 1990, when 17 year old Lonnie Devantier was sent to represent Denmark with a song about telephone booth, answering machine and a boyfriend reluctant to answer the damn thing (To my younger readers check Wikipedia for Answering machine and Telephone booth to know what this song is about.)
The song is very much a prototype of all the Danish Eurovision entries from the 1980's with catchy refrain, overtly smiling singer (although her boyfriend stubbornly refuses to return her phone messages) and hysterically whirling backing dancers. And of course, the song being Danish, there is a happy ending as after throwing her last coins into the public telephone the boyfriend finally lifts the receiver.
I was a friend of the jolly Danish tunes in the mid 1980's but by the the change of decade even I thought that enough was enough. Hallo hallo was not one of the better songs from our Scandinavian neighbours and instead of being genuinly happy the smiles and the movements looked to me very forced even then.
Lonnie Devantier made couple of records after her Eurovision debut, but she is mostly known in Denmark as a songwriter using the name Lonnie Kjer. If you want to know what she sounds like today, check her 2008 single Dina/Det bli'r ikke bedre at Spotify. She has really gone far from the telephone booth in 18 years.
Latino pop charmers like Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias stormed the world charts in the late 1990's making the Spanish rhythms fashionable and a good product to sell. However in Eurovision it took couple of years before the Spanish television TVE caught on and tried to use the formula in the Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurosong 857 was first of several Spanish Eurovision entries trying to benefit the hype.
In the 1990's Spain had sent mainly ballads to the Eurovision song contest. These songs resulted both good placings (best being the 2nd place in 1995) and disasters (the last place in 1999). In the new millenium TVE tried to hit the jack pot sending a stereotypical latino charmer in tight trousers and white teeth to swing his hips on the Eurovision Stage.
22 year old David Civera delivered what he was commissioned to do. Looking comfortable on stage with his two backing dancers he did good job making the audience at the huge Parken stadium dance to the hot Spanish rhythms. The televoters, however, were not smitten as they were supposed to and awarded Civera and Spain enough points to climb to the 6th position in the final results, which must have been a disappointment for TVE. Spain tried to repeat the formula several times, but this sixth place remains the best position for a Spanish entry in Eurovision since 1998.
I have never been that keen on Ricky Martin or Enrique Iglesias and David Civera does not make me change my mind. Not his fault, but these Spanish swinging charmers are just not my cup of tea.
The Eurosong 399 was requested by my french friend Sebastien Berteaux. The song Amsterdam was performed by 30 year old Sjoukje van't Spijker under her stage name Maggie MacNeal. The song that represented the host country Netherlands came fifth after a very tight race.
Maggie MacNeal was known internationally as the other half of a "Beauty and a beast"-type of pop duo Mouth and MacNeal, which had had some big hits around Europe and their biggest hit How do you do made the charts even in the United States. The duo split up soon after their 1974 participation in the Eurovision song contest singing I see a star. Spiker has continued her solo career until the beginning of the 21st century.
Amsterdam was a big ballad very much different from the ditties sung by her former group. MacNeal took the stage wearing a glittering evening gown and singing a very traditional Eurovision ballad.
More than the song I remember the tight voting which gave the MacNeal and the Netherlands a convincing lead from the beginning and she was looked very much like the winner during the first third of the voting. After that, however, both Germany and Ireland stole the lead from the host country and Maggie MacNeal could later see herself driven over by Switzerland and the United Kindom as well.
Today I see the Dutch entry from 1980 an OK song, not a killer but certainly not one of the worst ballads ever sung in the contest. Not one of my current favourites anyway.
