Waterloo

Steyn On-line ^ | May 17, 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

Among the many victims of Covid-19 is this year's Eurovision Song Contest. When its cancelation was first announced, Mark harked back to its Boom-Bang-a-Bang Ding-Ding-a-Dong heyday and talked to Dana about a lovely exception to that rule. Last night, the BBC, in lieu of the actual competition, invited viewers to vote for the all-time greatest Euro-blockbuster. The winners, not surprisingly, were the most successful act ever to come out of Eurovision.

It was all more harmonious in the old days. One recalls the 1990 Eurovision finals in Zagreb, when the charming hostess, Helga Vlahović, presented her own fair country as the perfect Eurometaphor: "Yugoslavia is very much like an orchestra," she cooed. "The string section and the wood section all sit together." Alas, barely were the words out of her mouth before the wood section was torching the string section's dressing rooms, and the hills were alive only with the ancient siren songs of ethnic cleansing and genital severing. Lurching into its final movement, Yugoslavia was no longer the orchestra, only the pits. In an almost too poignant career trajectory, the lovely Miss Vlahović was moved from music programming to Croatian TV's head of war information programming.

The Eurovision Song Contest has never quite recovered, but oh, you should have seen it in its glory days, when the rich national cultures that gave the world Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Purcell, Debussy, and Grieg bandied together to bring us "La-La-La" (winner, 1968), "Boom-Bang-A-Bang" (1969), "Ding-Dinge-Dong" (1975), "A Ba Ni Bi" (1978), "Diggy Loo Diggi Ley" (1984), and my personal favorite, "Lat Det Swinge," the 1985 winner by the Norwegian group Bobbysocks. The above songs are nominally sung in Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and even English, but in fact it's the universal language of Eurogroovy: "Ja, ja, boogie, baby, mit der rock 'n' roll."

[dynachrome]

“Lat Det Swinge,” the 1985 winner by the Norwegian group Bobbysocks

Lawrence Welk would be proud. (I am traumatized by this)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVj0YQnsHSg

[texas booster]

Now that is a blast from the past! Thankfully my hairstyle has changed from blow dried to ... gone.

Ah well. But a delightful read from Mr. Steyn, with his usual excellent wordplay.

In 1974, a quartet of Swedes emerged victorious and never looked back, except to check whether their hot pants had split:

[mosesdapoet]

.Their metal string instruments produce a distinctive sound and have a name.

[bIlluminati]

So who won? I’m not up on Euromusic, but from the examples given, it seems quite derivative of American pop.

[Kriggerel]

Eurovision is mostly a nightmarish, “woke” joke these days, with things like bearded drag queens winning. The only Eurovision drag queen I could stand watching was the Ukranian one in 2007, who did “Dancing Lasha Tumbai.” That was at least funny. :P

[Lurker]

For later.

L

[KarlInOhio]

So who won? I’m not up on Euromusic, but from the examples given, it seems quite derivative of American pop.

Well considering this:Among the many victims of Covid-19 is this year's Eurovision Song Contest. When its cancelation was first announced,

I would say we all won. But for this year I think the all time winner was a little duet by the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshall von Blücher: Waterloo. Wait, different Waterloo? You can't mean the London train station won?

[jmacusa]

Have you ever heard the “Trololo’’ song? Holy Smokes. Talk about bizarre.

[pepsi_junkie]

In the '90s the event was hosted in Dublin. The hosts plan for interludes between acts and they decided that to showcase Irish heritage they'd do a routine with traditional Irish stepdance. But they jazzed it up with more modern music (celtic influenced, of course, but with lots of pop influence as well) and they choreographed it with step combined with more modern dance. It was just a few minutes long and played between acts to fill time. But the crowd went nuts. It got a standing ovation, unusual for such time filling acts. That performance is on youtube if you care to see it..

The producers sensed that they'd stumbled on a formula for a big hit and made it longer and bigger and rolled it out as its own show, Riverdance. Made a lot of money all over the world before it was done. But it was never officially an entrance in the competition so it won't be one that was considered for this bit of fan voting. But it probably generated a lot more interest over time than most of the 'real' acts that Steyn mentions. Not as much as Abba but way more than anyone might have expected.

[Rummyfan]

So many good one-liners and puns in this one by Steyn I don't know where to begin. But...

Tim Rice once said to me how much he liked that slightly off-kilter translation quality to their lyrics. On last week's Mark Steyn Show, he recalled how, when he worked with Benny and Björn on the musical Chess, they sent over a tune with a dummy lyric for the first two lines:

One Night In Bangkok
Makes a hard man humble...

Tim knew enough not to mess with that.