[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

[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.