Intro Post

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Introduction

The final Eurovision of the 1980’s was the only year the contest returned to the country where it began: Switzerland. This time, it was hosted in the city of Lausanne. It had the same lineup of countries as 1987: every country that had ever participated except the three that start with M.

This contest featured the only victory of Yugoslavia, three years before the country’s collapse, and thus the only victory of a country that no longer exists. This puts Croatia in a strange position where they haven’t officially won the contest, but a band of theirs won for the country they used to be part of, and the contest took place in their capital the next year. This also happens to be the last contest with singers under 16 years old—two of them, in fact. The presence of preteen singers was highly controversial, so the next contest introduced the age rule. If that wasn’t enough, it’s the last contest where the final song performed won.

Fortunately, this should be the last contest for quite a while where finding commentary is a pain in the ass. I could only find it with Spanish commentary, so that’s what I’m watching. I also have an uncommentated version in higher quality so that I can better judge the songs. I know I don’t have to watch it with commentary, but postcards without anyone talking over them just feel so wrong. Plus, no matter which language the commentators speak, I can always tell when they (for example) mention ABBA or list the five singers who won for Luxembourg.

I have to say, I’m not a big fan of the previous winner singing their winning song at the start (which was also done in 1988). I liked it better when the contest opened with a reimagined orchestration of the previous winner. Plus, I didn’t come here to watch Celine Dion promote her new song, I came here to watch Eurovision! Anyway, the duo of Swiss presenters mostly hosted this contest in French, but they switched to English, German, and Italian a few times. Even a bit of Romansh, if I’m not mistaken! That is Swiss multilingualism at its finest.

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Italy: Avrei voluto

Artist: Anna Oxa and Fausto Leali

Language: Italian

Key: A major, D major

This is a romantic duet between a man with a raspy voice and a woman with a mildly breathy voice, where they take turns singing that they wanted more out of their romantic relationship. It starts with almost no accompaniment for the first minute, but then is orchestrated as a thoroughly Italian rock ballad. I could imagine this as a musical number in a romantic movie, where the man and woman are in two different places but sing together anyway. I don’t like the song’s abrupt ending—seriously, why didn’t it end with a grandiose major chord? Otherwise, it’s a solid start to this competition.

Israel: Derech Hamelech (דרך המלך)

Artist: Gili Netanel and Galit Burg-Michael

Language: Hebrew

Key: B♭ major

Gili was the 12-year-old boy who sang the lead part; Galit was an adult woman who sung backup, along with two other women.

This song is something, alright. It’s a major key ballad with extremely religious lyrics full of archaic biblical words. The title means “the king’s highway”, if you were wondering. I’m not sure if Gili’s performance itself was so poorly received that it led to the age rule next year, or if it was more due to the presence of two children competing. The other sang for France and her performance was less controversial.

I’ve been told that Gili was overworked when rehearsing this song, which is why he didn’t sound great on stage. I don’t think Gili’s singing is that bad, but children are extremely out of place in Eurovision no matter the circumstance. He really depends on the adults for backup. You can’t treat children performing in a song contest the same way as adults performing in one.

Ireland: The Real Me

Artist: Kiev Connolly and The Missing Passengers

Language: English

Key: C minor

In case you’re wondering, this singer was not named after the capital of Ukraine. It’s just a nickname for Kevin.

This song achieved a measly 18th place out of 22, Ireland’s lowest ranking of the 20th century. The good news is, this means the lovely Irish-language song “Ceol an Ghrá” (15th place out of 18) was no longer their lowest ranking.

Kiev Connolly must have thought he would automatically score highly because he sang in English. He was wrong, wrong, so wrong!! His singing over this average 80’s pop song sounds utterly dreadful and flat. The backing singers are gentle and quiet, careful not to overpower Kiev, but I almost wish they did.

Netherlands: Blijf zoals je bent

Artist: Justine Pelmelay

Language: Dutch

Key: C major

This is a romantic ballad for sure, but not quite a power ballad. It’s a bit mellower with more focus on piano parts, and thus a bit nicer than most ballads. The instrumentation fits the simple lyrics, which basically mean “I love you just the way you are, so please stay that way”. Unfortunately, her voice cracks when she tries to sing dramatically, especially in the final notes.

Turkey: Bana Bana

Artist: Pan, a band started in 1984

Language: Turkish

Key: D major or minor? Kind of in between.

Turkey in 80’s Eurovision is like, so hmmm, I heard ballads are supposed to be trendy these days, right? No thanks, I’ll keep being Turkish instead. This is such a shameless and proud piece of ethnic music and I love the overly energetic conductor too. It’s too chaotic for me to truly love it, but it’s certainly unforgettable and stands out from the rest. At this point, Turkey didn’t care the slightest about winning Eurovision, and indeed this song got second last place. The repetitive lyrics would annoy me in most circumstances, but they’re so goofy that I can’t hate them at all.

Belgium: Door de wind

Artist: Ingeborg Thérèse Marguerite Sergeant, or just Ingeborg

Language: Dutch

Key: D♭ major

A simple romantic pop song, whose singer wears a quirky beige suit for some reason. It’s nice if a bit underdeveloped. The male backing singer in the second half adds a bit of life, but he could have been a lot more prominent. Also, what is it with songs in this contest and abrupt endings?

United Kingdom: Why Do I Always Get It Wrong?

Artist: Live Report, a band whose name cracks me up for the dumbest reason

Language: English

Key: B♭ major

I should not find it so hilarious that an 80’s British band has the same name as track number 57 on the Undertale soundtrack. However, I do find it hilarious and there’s no getting around it. Especially because this song has absolutely nothing to do with news reports. Instead, it’s a stereotypical 80’s ballad with synth keyboards and dramatic drums and lyrics about romantic failure. I’m surprised the UK went for this genre, because normally this is more Ireland’s kind of song, but it worked out considering they achieved second place.

Actually, wait for a second. I want to go on a tangent about “Baka Mitai”, the famous Japanese song from the Yakuza video game series. One portion of this Eurovision entry sounds eerily similar to Baka Mitai: from “regret my momentary weakness” up to the song’s title drop, which further makes this song amusing to me. But this isn’t the only reason I’m bringing up Baka Mitai. Back when I initially discovered all those 20th century Eurovision songs, which is now a year and a half ago, whenever I heard an 80’s or 90’s ballad, I thought “oh, this sounds like Baka Mitai!” But now when I hear Baka Mitai, I think “oh, this sounds like a 90’s Eurovision ballad!”

The thing with Baka Mitai is that it hits every trope in this style of ballad to perfection, so it’s implicitly the standard by which I judge all Eurovision ballads. Basically, the more a ballad sounds like Baka Mitai, the more I like it. In this song, the resemblance is mostly confined to the section I mentioned. However, there’s a few later ballads with a much greater resemblance to Baka Mitai. Be prepared for me to go off about how great they are, OK?

Norway: Venners nærhet

Artist: Britt Synnøve Johansen

Language: Norwegian

Key: G major, A major

Wouldn’t you guess, it’s another slow power ballad! Sung by a high-pitched singer, plus backing singers for extra harmony. The D minor chord in the verse is an interesting touch, but otherwise this is too slow and ballady for me.

Portugal: Conquistador

Artist: Da Vinci, a band formed in 1982

Language: Portuguese

Key: D major, E major

This song has a subject that the band absolutely would not get away with in the current era: a celebration of Portugal’s colonialism. However, it doesn’t come off as any sort of nationalist propaganda to me, just a lighthearted homage to history akin to “Dschinghis Khan”. Still, it is unquestionably a product of its time.

As a piece of music, this is one of the best songs in the contest so far. It’s a pumping 80’s pop song with an extremely catchy melody in the chorus. I love how the chorus makes rhymes out of Portugal’s former colonies: Bissau and Macau, and Timor with “conquistador”. This is exactly the right way to make a song about centuries-old historical events: have some fun with it! This song doesn’t quite have the magic of Dschinghis Khan, but I get a fairly similar vibe from both. It almost feels like a major key counterpart to Dschinghis Khan.

Surprisingly, this song’s English version (called “Love Conquistador”) isn’t about history, but about a romantic womanizer. The chorus listing countries has been replaced with “take me to the left, take me to the right”, which I suppose is fair. The original lyrics are heavily directed at Portuguese speakers, whereas many English speakers have no idea Portuguese is spoken outside Portugal and Brazil, let alone that Praia is the capital of Cape Verde. I only know that because of the many hours I spent as a kid staring at maps.

Sweden: En dag

Artist: Tommy Nilsson

Language: Swedish

Key: D♭ major, E♭ major

This is halfway between a romantic power ballad and a romantic pop song. It’s perfectly fine but not all that memorable. The main sections of note are the guitar solo and trumpet parts, which both come in after the abrupt key change. I think it would have benefitted this song to introduce the trumpets sooner. I’m surprised this achieved fourth place; I’m not sure what sets it apart from the other pop songs and ballads.

Also, random fact: the singer of this song is the Swedish voice of Patrick Star.

Luxembourg: Monsieur

Artist: Park Café

Language: French

Key: C minor in the verses, C major in the chorus, D major in the final chorus

For a change of pace, we now have a swing rock song heavy in guitar. I like the funky verses and trumpet parts, but everything else about the song annoys me. The choruses have an extremely basic alternation between two chords that doesn’t even sound good. Also, the lead singer has a strong English accent that makes the lyrics hard to understand. I can barely even tell it’s in French. Why did Luxembourg love sending native English speakers so much? Worst of all, the song ends abruptly YET AGAIN. Why did the composers of Eurovision 1989 all forget how to end a song?

Denmark: Vi maler byen rød

Artist: Birthe Kjær

Language: Danish

Key: E major, F major

After so many countries that didn’t take the contest seriously this year, it’s super refreshing to see a country that did. As with last year, this song narrowly earned third place; last time by two points, this time by one point. It got 111 points as opposed to last year’s 92, so it’s Denmark’s second best result of the 20th century.

Everything about this song nails the Nordic dance formula. For one, it follows the classic formula of one key change at the verse and none in the bridge or final chorus; I explained why that works so well in “La det swinge”. It’s upbeat and full of good melodies, it’s staged professionally, and the relatively old lead singer (40 years) beams with charisma, as do the backing singers. I can tell that effort went into making this an appealing performance, and I could have easily imagined it winning the contest. Out of Denmark’s dance entries of the 80’s, this clicks with me by far the most.

The upbeat performance perfectly matches the lyrics, which are about painting the city red, especially the parts that may seem dreary and gray, to have the best time you possibly can. The title means “we’ll paint the city red”, which has the same number of syllables as the Danish title, but that’s not what the English version is called. Instead, it’s named “I’m chasing butterflies”, and it’s directed to an unspecified person encouraging them to see joy in the world. Loosely the same theme, but different lyrics.

The most memorable part about this song is that it’s the only Eurovision entry with two conductors. The singer invited the first conductor onto the stage, so he left the orchestra unconducted for a few measures till the second conductor came in. That must have taken so much practice to get down! I’m guessing this gimmick was done to give Denmark a better shot at winning.

Austria: Nur ein Lied

Artist: Thomas Forstner

Language: German

Key: E major

This song achieved fifth place, which was Austria’s highest ranking between their two victories (1966 and 2014). Compared to the Netherlands and Norway’s gentle ballads, this ballad tries too hard to be bombastic. But what do you know, the juries ate it up anyway.

Finland: La dolce vita

Artist: Anneli Saaristo

Language: Finnish, plus a phrase in Italian

Key: G minor

After all these regular ballads and pop songs, it’s time for something you’ll only hear in Eurovision: a Spanish-sounding salsa song, complete with guitars and castanets and brass riffs, sung in the Finnish language. This, people, is the right way to make a song transcend language barriers! Not name dropping 20 different historical figures. Seriously, this song makes me smile so hard.

I’ve discovered plenty of ordinary good songs from Eurovision, and that’s totally good and all, but what truly made me obsessed with the contest are the entries that go out of the box. These songs take the most ridiculous premise anyone can think of, and make it into an unironic banger. In this case, the premise is a salsa song in Finnish. On paper, this might sound like trying to make an applesauce taco or fish-flavored ice cream. However, salsa music and the Finnish language turn out to blend perfectly! I love it so much when Eurovision songs pick an exotic combination of genre and language and make it work this well.

What makes this song work so well is that the lyrical rhythm is designed around Finnish first, not English or Spanish. As I’ve said before, spoken Finnish has a very even rhythm compared to other European languages, so when you want to design a song for Finnish, it’s best to carry that rhythm into the lyrics. Spanish is somewhat like this too, but since it doesn’t distinguish vowel length, it’s fit for faster lyrics. This song is built for the Finnish language, and she sings in it with so much passion.

If you read about a Eurovision singer’s discography, you can usually guess whether their entry is designed around their own language or not. The difference especially shines among Finland’s representatives: some (like Anneli Saaristo) have a discography in Finnish, while others primarily sing in English. I think it’s possible to adapt a song into any language if you’re clever enough, but some of Finland’s entries do a terrible job adapting from English. Luckily, this is not one of them.

Another nice little touch is that the acoustic guitars have microphones next to the strings, which proves they aren’t just for show. I love that Finland went the extra mile with live instruments, back when they were still allowed to. This song achieved 7th place out of 22, one of Finland’s best results in the 20th century. It may seem odd that they scored high with a genre you wouldn’t expect from them, but that’s not a bad thing at all!

France: J’ai volé la vie

Artist: Nathalie Pâque, the youngest Eurovision solo singer ever

Language: French

Key: A♭ major

Nathalie Pâque sang for Eurovision five days before her twelfth birthday, so she’s a bit younger than Israel’s singer. The kid who sang with Hot Eyes in 1985 was nine years old, and I’m not sure about the age of Spain’s backing singers in 1979. She sings much better than the kid from Israel, but child singers are still out of place in Eurovision. She sells this song well with her hand gestures, but she’s also disconcertingly jumpy, as child singers tend to be. I find it amusing that it wasn’t until two countries sent children that Eurovision instated the age rule.

As a song, this is a decent enough ballad with a few saxophone parts. Compared to other songs in this contest which end abruptly, this song’s ending is really stretched out. The lyrics are strangely dramatic and poetic. Something about stealing someone else’s life and rising from ashes; an odd thing for a child to sing about. I really doubt she understands what the lyrics are about, but to be fair, I don’t think I do either.

Here’s an amusing fact: Because the minimum age was set to 16 in 1990, Nathalie remained the youngest Eurovision singer by birth date until 1994. Theoretically, someone younger could have sung in the 1993 contest, which was four days after her 16th birthday.

Spain: Nacida para amar

Artist: Nina (Anna María Agustí Flores)

Language: Spanish

Key: G major, A♭ major

Just like last year, the female presenter of this contest loves showing off her language skills regardless of fluency. She announced this song in slow Spanish, then the male presenter announced it in French. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still cool to know a modest amount of various languages, but it’s hard to top Lill Lindfors’s language flaunting in 1985.

I find it really funny that Finland sent a Spanish-sounding song whereas Spain went with a full-out power ballad, sort of like their entry in 1985. The lyrics are about saying goodbye to a love interest who she’s had tons of steamy sex with but doesn’t care for her anymore. It has some lovely piano parts and a good buildup throughout, but her singing after the intro could be a smidgen less waily. The postcard shows her full of enthusiasm about this contest, and that carries into her performance. I’m glad she’s so joyed to perform in front of a crowd, but she looks a little too happy to sing about a painful goodbye. Maybe you could interpret her performance as focusing on thankfulness.

Cyprus: Apópse as vrethoúme (Απόψε ας βρεθούμε)

Artist: Fanny Polymeri and Yiannis Savvidakis

Language: Greek

Key: F major, G major

This time, Cyprus gives us a romantic duet about a newfound marriage. The singers are in wedding outfits, so the song really wants to make it clear what it’s about. However, there’s no way an actual married couple would dress on stage like this. The kiss at the end suggests they were dating at the time, as with most Eurovision kisses. They sing this song nicely, but otherwise it’s an average ballad that I will quickly forget about.

Switzerland: Viver senza tei

Artist: Furbaz, a vocal quartet

Language: Romansh

Key: F♯ major

Now here’s something interesting: the first Eurovision song since 1972 to be sung in a country’s minority language. Well OK, French and Italian are technically minority languages in Switzerland, but it’s silly to count them. From this contest to 1993, we had one song each in (at least partly) a minority language, which is super cool and neat. Note that I’m counting Finland Swedish as a minority language. Even after the language rule was repealed, minority languages have continued to show up every few years. Usually it’s just as a few phrases in a song, but it’s always so much cooler when the whole song is in an exotic language.

Anyway, this is the one and only Eurovision song in Romansh! It’s the fourth official language of Switzerland that everyone forgets about, and the least spoken of the group. The vitality of Romansh is precarious, but it benefits from nationwide official status much like Irish. Not all endangered languages have this luxury.

As a song, this is a classy ballad sung by a woman on piano in the lead, plus three harmonizing men in backup. The lyrics are directed to the singer’s love interest, who she couldn’t live without. It’s similar to what Switzerland has sent in other Romance languages, but with a soothing vibe like “Ein bisschen Frieden”.

The nice thing about Eurovision songs in minority languages is that you always know the artists made an active choice to use the language, instead of changing the language to score higher or to comply with rules. In the 21st century, the same goes for native language songs from countries that favor English. With all that said, even though this is a decent song, I wouldn’t find it memorable if it wasn’t in Romansh.

Greece: To dikó sou astéri (Το δικό σου αστέρι)

Artist: Marianna Efstratiou

Language: Greek

Key: C major, D major, E major

The title means “your own star”, and the lyrics basically encourage the listener to find their own path through life if they’re feeling down. This starts as a gentle ballad, but gradually builds up into a pop song that’s uplifting but blends in with the rest. The very brief first key change before the second key change takes me back to the 70’s and early 80’s, which did that annoyingly often.

I have to say, I was really expecting more from Greece’s 1980’s entries, considering that in the 2010’s they were famed for their crazy ethnic songs. The only 80’s entries of theirs that really wowed me are the rejected ones. Let’s hope I like their 90’s songs more!

Iceland: Það sem enginn sér

Artist: Daníel Ágúst Haraldsson

Language: Icelandic

Key: C major

This is such a nothing song and I can see why it got zero points. It’s a dull attempt at a synth ballad with no progression and a lifeless performance. My impression is that Iceland didn’t take the contest very seriously in their first four years, because they felt their language was a big handicap. Their zero-point score probably motivated them to put more effort next year, when they achieved fourth place.

Germany: Flieger

Artist: Nino de Angelo

Language: German

Key: D major

I’ve read that Guildo Horn in 1998 gave Germany a massive resurgence of interest in Eurovision. Does that mean all their entries until then will be really boring? God, I hope not. It’s always a gut punch when Germany sends a boring song, because it means I can’t root for my own country.

I can’t even tell anymore what is and isn’t a ballad. This is an inoffensive maybe-ballad that does nothing to me but doesn’t actively annoy me. So yeah, boring it is. I do like how Nino shows the Italian inside him whenever he clenches his fists.

Yugoslavia: Rock Me (the winner)

Artist: Riva

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Croatian), with a phrase in English

Key: E♭ major, E major

We’ve finally reached the first of three Eurovision winners in a Slavic language, and the last Eurovision winner to end the contest! Another song in Serbo-Croatian won in 2007, and one in Ukrainian won 2022. It’s nice that Yugoslavia got to win Eurovision before it collapsed, but it causes a small inconvenience when making Eurovision maps. Australia’s presence causes a similar issue, but the standard workaround is to pretend Iraq is Australia.

Yugoslavia is a thematically fitting winner for this contest, because it came right before the fall of communism throughout eastern Europe over the next year (though the Soviet Union would last a little longer). Unfortunately, the country’s next few years would not be pretty. I’ll see for myself how much the entries reflect Europe’s history of the time. It should be pretty interesting!

This is probably the most effort Yugoslavia put into their entry up to this point. After their first two tries at an upbeat rock song with an attractive female lead singer, they hit the perfect level of upbeatness and musical depth. I also think this song benefitted from its running order: after a lengthy sequence of ballads, a bouncy rock song was the perfect change of pace to attract lots of votes. The song has a few things in common with “La det swinge”, the winner four years prior: both are about the joy of rock and roll, both sound deliberately old-fashioned, and both use a lyrical hook that English speakers will recognize. In this song’s case, it’s “rock me, baby”, repeated throughout the song. I wish the song relied a bit less on its English hook, but it’s a worthy winner anyway.

An interesting question is: who would have won if Yugoslavia wasn’t at the end? Even though they scored second place, I have a hard time imagining the UK as a winner, because it’s too similar to the other ballads. Instead, I want to say Denmark could have won with a more advantageous placement. Their Nordic neighbors have won with similar songs.

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Who’s my favorite?

This time, it’s super easy. One song is so much better and more creative than anything else, and it’s Finland, La dolce vita. My second favorite would either be Denmark or Yugoslavia.

• Austria, 1
• Belgium, 1
• Denmark, 1
• Finland, 3
• France, 1
• Germany, 4
• Ireland, 2
• Israel, 2
• Luxembourg, 3
• Netherlands, 6
• Norway, 2
• Portugal, 2
• Sweden, 3
• Switzerland, 1
• Turkey, 1
• United Kingdom, 1
• (13 winners)

Finland’s 20th century entries are usually overlooked, but I’ve chosen three of them as favorites of a year. Hopefully I’ve helped shine a light on them!

General thoughts:

The interval act is a skit on stage recounting the story of William Tell, where a guy shoots balloons with arrows. It feels like forever ago the last time the interval act was a skit! That really brings me back, wow. His final trick with the apple narrowly missed, so the contest played rehearsal footage afterwards.

As with 1988, the presenters mostly stuck to their own first language, this time French of course. They were good hosts, more serious than last year but still affable. I just wish I could hear Terry Wogan blabbering about the scattered voting. I’m obligated to mention the winner’s reprise is in English, which proves Riva would have sung in it if they could.

As for the entries, most of them were samey ballads, but the ones that did something different (especially Finland) made it worth it. Once again, the long streaks of ballads demonstrate the downside of randomized ordering. Overall, I found 1980’s Eurovision noticeably weaker than 1970’s Eurovision. There were some amazing gems, but the bulk of songs blended into ballad soup or 80’s pop soup, especially late in the decade. Most of the entries that truly wowed me went for an unusual style, like Finland this year.

Before I end this post, I’d like to say: finishing 1989 marks the halfway point of my Eurovision blog post series! More specifically, the chronological halfway point, assuming I finish before Eurovision 2024. The halfway point in terms of songs is somewhere in 2001, but instead of getting bogged down with technicalities, I’d like to celebrate this milestone for what it is. I never thought I’d be making a Eurovision blog post series a year ago, but now after five months, I’ve reviewed half of all 68 Eurovision years! I can’t say “all 68 contests” because of 2020. I hope I catch up before the next contest, but we’ll have to see.

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See you next time for a contest filled with entries celebrating the revolutions throughout Europe.

>> 1990: The Year of Songs About Europe