| A new millennium clocks over and
our tolerance for Eurovision winners rapidly abates. The winning entry
this year was the sort of thing that would make Ken Bruce very happy,
and consequently the rest of the world very sad. One of the worst parts
of writing these reviews is that I have to revisit scenes like this:
two cheeky, emoting, middle-aged men with guitars and an annoying
auto-tune effect (cf. Cher), singing a song called "Fly on the Wings of
Love" (is it just me, or does love feel absolutely nothing at all like
this?). Break it open and one finds the words Radio Two written through
the core. It's not incompetently dreadful, it is annoyingly memorable. The
natural reaction is therefore to either hum along (if you're Ken Bruce)
or feel nauseous (if you're not). It's all a bit cardboard and dreary
with fake (or perhaps real, but therefore all the more grating)
bonhomie. It's quite depressing. Malta did their best to raise our spirits, with a spot of calypso given the German disco treatment (synth steel-drums). If Alma Cogan had lived (and been pickled) this could be her delivering this, but it isn't. It's a not un-typical Maltese woman. As calypso goes it's hideously wrong, but it could be a lot worse (Agadoo...). Also in a bid to raise spirits were our hosts, Sweden. Desperate not to win, they lifted the novelty stakes a notch and took us another step towards Lordi with Roger Pontare, a sort of Bill Maynard character dressed like a Red Indian and surrounded by an awful lot of smoke and turkey feathers like an explosion at a Bernard Matthews factory. The song itself, divorced of its fancy dress performance, owes much to The Final Countdown and its ilk and is frankly let down by a rather weak chorus. It could've been so much better. Our favourites of the night, by an astronomical unit, were Latvia's charming indie-kids Brainstorm doing the sort of thing that might easily have charted five years ago at the height of the Britpop boom, were it not for them being Latvian and all. Their definitely kooky lead singer flexes about the stage in his velveteen shirt, white flares and daft, wide-eyed grin. He's so dreamy with his weird voice like a stretched cartoon Brett Andrerson. The song, despite being lusciously draped in strings by the end, is a very un-Eurovision bit of '90s guitar pop with a strong (and suitably stretched and dreamy) chorus (cf. Germany, ten years later). It's heartening that it finished third. For each year's songs we apply our points in the 12-10-8 style of the modern contest, irrespective of how the voting functioned at the time. In brackets is the position the song came on the night:
Europe's winner was Denmark. Russia came second, Estonia were fourth, Ireland sixth, Croatia ninth, Netherlands 13th, Macedonia 15th, the UK 16th, Romania 17th, Spain and Finland joint-18th, Switzerland 20th, Israel 22nd and France 23rd. To see our original thoughts, recorded on the night of the contest, click here. |
 Our winner: Kenny Everett's Brainstorm.  Sweden.  Malta's entry pushing pineapples.  Europe's winners: the older Olsen siblings.
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