221/917 Marianne Mendt: Musik (Austria 1971)

Sometimes even a die hard Eurovision fan starts getting doubts. Sometimes the overwhelming "public opinion" gets over you: Eurovision is rubbish, it is just bunch of commercial crap without any meaning, any artistic integrity, musical value and nothing to do with real life, passion or the country it is representing. Fortunately it does not take but to hear a perfect Eurovision song like Austria 1971 to snap out of it and continue to enjoy the contest as it was and is supposed to.

Musik sung by Marianne Mendt is a song that combines all the ingredients that some people claim are missing from the Eurovision Song Contest. The song is full of energy and the singer belts the song out with passion without shouting. The orchestral arrangement is sublime, unfortunately the strings are almost unheard due to bad sound mixing (to hear the song in its full glory listen to the studio version of the song synced to the preview video). To give the song local flavour, Mendt sings the song in the local dialect of her home town Vienna. After listening to the song one has to stop to catch one's breath. And then listen to the song again.

The 1971 Eurovision Song Contest was packed with perfect entries and the Austrian one was the most difficult to digest, at least to the juries. The 16th position among 18 entries is pure madness.

Marianne Mendt has continued her career as an actress and a jazz singer. Listen and watch her recent interpretation of Cole Porter's Love for sale here.

My points 5/5.

569/917 Live Report: Why do I always get it wrong (United Kingdom 1989)

After its fourth victory in 1981 the United Kingdom seemed to lose (at least for a while) the ambition to present interesting and memorable Eurovision entries. Still, for some reason it had become a habit for the international juries to give the UK high votes no matter how dispensable their song was. While not their worst song of the 1980´s, the 1989 English entry is a good example of that.

Actually the melody of Why do I always get it wrong is quite good and the soloist of Live Report Ray Caruana was one of the better singers of the 1989 Eurovision Song Contest. The jury seemed to agree and awarded the UK their 12th silver medal in this contest.

Still something is wrong with this package. The artists lack completely any enthousiasm whatsoever and even the singer seems to want out of the stage as soon as possible. The arrangement of the song is another lost opportunity. With tasteful use of the orchestra the song could have risen over the mediocrity to something special. Now the well built melody is buried under the 1980's most unimaginative synthesizer pling plong sound. Really a lost opportunity here.

The UK audience lost interest in this song very quickly. In the UK's singles chart the song rose no higher than at #73. Not many people kept the song in their memory after that.

My points 3/5.