What a shock, we are in Ireland again for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. As it was the 40th Anniversary there was a quick montage of all previous winners and the only thing I can remember from that was “why the hell is Celine Dion dressed as a half-business lady executive, half ballerina and Canada’s not in Europe, right?”
The previous year there were 25 entries and this year there were 23 so one can only assume there’d be an anti-war and some of the counties had joined back together or something. Anyway, once the ginger host had done her part it was on with the show…
The United Kingdom’s entry was a bit risky in 1994. It was rap! Some might say I missed out the letter “C” just now but no it was a Eurovision attempt at rap music. Granted, it wasn’t up there with The Beastie Boys or Run DMC but it was worth a shot. If the contest was judged on the singers ability to wear tartan and wave their hands around in the air then the UK would have blown the competition out of the water but it wasn’t and we didn’t and the only times tartan should be worn with arms flying around so much is when I am at my Christmas parties.
Although Love City Groove were the UK entry there was a qualifying competition in the UK for the song to represent us and Love City Groove was not my favourite. I really thought this one should have went on to represent us but hey ho.
This was the first year that Russia performed in the Eurovision. If you think that’s confusing just wait until you see their entry. They’d obviously been watching too much Queen videos, decided they couldn’t afford a full band consisting of four people and tried to morph all the members of Queen into one person instead. They then told Mr. Queen to pretend he was from the 18th century and go on stage and sing a really rubbish song.
Iceland finally decided to enter a different singer this year after 100 years of having the same lady singer. This year they entered what looked like a Priest, Vicar, Minister or some church type person and made him sing about the vacuum cleaner from Teletubbies.
It is a little known fact that when Louise Nurding left the girl band Eternal in 1995 that she secretly entered the Eurovision Song Contest representing Spain. Unfortunately she only finished 2nd so had to marry an international football player and sing songs about being Naked to stay famous.
One night while Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley were writing Absolutely Fabulous and drinking a bottle of wine Jennifer dared Joanna to dye her hair jet black, fly to Turkey and sing their Eurovision entry. Joanna accepted and done her best. Unfortunately she couldn’t concentrate on her performance as she was too busy looking for her other glove.
Croatia played a blinder in 1995. They managed to convince Meryl Streep to sing opera alongside her daughter. I really like this song as it was different and all about the song and the voices.
I think I have figured out France’s tactic. Sing in French but at the end of each line put a word that everyone will remember from French class. It worked – they came 4th.
If you let your kids watch in this year and if they weren’t scared already, when Hungary came on they would have been begging you to let them vacate the sofa.
Denmark next and this was my favourite song of 1995 and is still one of my favourite Eurovision songs ever. Performed by Aud Wilken, who I can only describe as the Danish version of Cerys Matthews, I just love, love love this song.
In fact I love this song so much that when a song called “From Paris To Berlin” came out a few years later my crazy mind made a bizarre link and decided to put both these songs together. I made a video mash-up with the video of “From Paris To Berlin”, the music of “Fra Mols Til Skagen” and subtitled with the lyrics “From Paris To Berlin”. Are you keeping up?
If you ever wondered what going to a family party with Leona Lewis was like then watch Israel’s entry.
Time for the interval act and how can you possibly follow Riverdance from the previous year? Quite simply, you can’t!
So, which song won? Well, here’s where I have a problem with this particular year’s winner. A song, by definition is “a short poem or other set of words set to music or meant to be sung” whereas the winning song from Norway consisted of an Enya wannbe who failed her audition for Lord Of The Rings singing for 5 seconds at the start followed by a lady wearing her dad’s shirt playing the violin for the remaining 2 minutes 55 seconds. NOT A SONG! What makes it worse is that the daddy’s shirt wearing violinist was IRISH! Oh well I suppose it’s a nice tune…
Until next time, be less Irish!
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