Carola - Fångad av en Stormvind (Sweden, 1991) André Claveau – Dors, Mon Amour (France, 1958)īy 1958, the tumult of rock’n’roll was raging throughout Europe, not that you would have noticed inside Hilversum’s Avro Studio, where André Claveau, a singer already in his late 40s, was taking on all-comers with the lullaby-like Dors, Mon Amour. Brotherhood of Man – Save Your Kisses For Me (UK, 1976)īrotherhood of Man seldom bothered to hide their debt to Abba – listen to their 1977 hit Angelo next to Fernando – but, even at their naffest, one suspects Björn and Benny would have balked at the cutesiness of Save Your Kisses For Me, with its accompanying dance routine and it’s-actually-about-a-toddler concluding twist. Your enjoyment of Heroes may depend on your feelings about David Guetta’s brand of pop house, which it resembles very closely, specifically recalling his 2014 single Lovers on the Sun, with perhaps a soupçon of Avicii’s Wake Me Up thrown into the mix. Vicky Leandros couldn’t have looked more Greek if she had come onstage with a bouzouki, then started smashing plates and shouting “opa!”, but her homeland didn’t, at this stage, participate in Eurovision, so she wound up representing Luxembourg with the (very) faintly country-inflected Après Toi: bog-standard early-70s Eurovision balladry, but subsequently a UK hit. Vicky Leandros – Après Toi (Luxembourg, 1972) Jacqueline Boyer - Tom Pillibi (France, 1960)Īn early sign that Eurovision was as much about performance as song, Tom Pillibi, with a smug titular character who sounds like a distant relation of the guy who thought the song was about him in You’re So Vain, is ingratiatingly perky, but Jacqueline Boyer properly sold it onstage, injecting a surprising amount of flirtatious energy. Formerly members of Norway’s 1979 Eurovision entrants, the glamorously-named Chips. There is a distinct hint of Waterloo – still! Eleven years later! – about the galloping intro and sax-laden sound of Let It Swing, while the English lyrics offer the thought-provoking opening line “Look at me, I’m climbing up a ladder”. Bobbysocks! – Let It Swing (Norway, 1985) Boom Bang-a-Bang, selected by the British public in a vote that relegated a song by the then-unknown Elton John and Bernie Taupin to last place, apparently much to the duo’s relief, sounded, in John’s subsequent estimation, “like something pissed Germans would slap their knees to in a Bavarian beer hall”. No less than four countries had to share the prize in 1969. Lulu, whose song for the UK, Boom Bang-a-Bang, shared the winning slot with three other countries in 1969. Corry Brokken – Net Als Toen (Netherlands, 1957) Perhaps there was a reactionary backlash against early 80s pop’s synthesisers and makeup, similar to that which put Engelbert Humperdinck at No 1 at psychedelia’s height: how else to explain the UK popularity of Nicole’s winsome Ein bißchen Frieden (A Little Peace), which is essentially I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing without the tune? 60. Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta – A-Ba-Ni-Bi (Israel, 1978)īy now, Eurovision’s Abba tendency was beginning to look a bit clapped-out: witness the Alphabeta – three boys and three girls – and the cantering but club-footed cod-disco of A-Ba-Ni-Bi, its chorus catchy only because you are clobbered over the head with it about 7,000 times. It is startlingly pallid, although be thankful for small mercies: it originally had seven verses. The old Father Ted joke about Ireland deliberately entering a terrible song in Eurovision because it couldn’t afford to host the contest the following year had its basis in a persistent rumour about Rock ’n’ Roll Kids. Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan – Rock ’n’ Roll Kids (Ireland, 1994) It was hhistoric in some ways – Dave Benton was the first black performer to win Eurovision and it was the first entry from a former Soviet country to win – but not, alas, musically.
Middling disco-house, like a less impactful version of Phats and Small’s Turn Around, with a cheesy chorus and a lot of irksome vocal ad-libbing.
Tanel Padar, Dave Benton and 2XL – Everybody (Estonia, 2001) Obviously, no one was expecting Eurovision to come up with a winner that reflected 1979’s cutting-edge pop – Gary Numan, the Specials etc – but there are limits. Milk and Honey – Hallelujah (Israel, 1979)Ī song so weedy that a light breeze would knock it flat, sung by an ineffably annoying cabaret turn in sequinned braces. Perhaps it is kindest to say that there were evidently plenty of people who found Netta’s performance of the staccato Toy, replete with onomatopoeic vocalising, chicken noises, flapping arms and much self-consciously wacky gurning to camera, endearing rather than wildly infuriating and leave it at that. Endearing or wildly infuriating? Israel’s Netta performs Toy at Eurovision in Lisbon in 2018.
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