Pingu's Ultimate 100 ESC Songs - THE COUNTDOWN

Pingu

Pingu

Noot noot
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Allora...

After doing the ABBA countdown and realising I quite like doing these, I'm going to attempt the difficult 2nd album AND attempt to wrap it up before the Eurovision shows start.

I first put this Top 100 together in around 2015 and refresh it every time I go to Eurovision as a nice travel playlist, but I'm going to open myself up to criticism by posting it for the first time. :disco:

Kicking off shortly.
 
OK so I was about to post a few songs that just missed out but I'm having a bit of a crisis over one of them so bear with me for a moment...

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OK I need to stop listening to those or I’ll end up trying to squeeze them in.
 
100. 🇮🇹 Francesca Michielin - No Degree Of Separation (Italy 2016)
The first Italian entry since their return that felt like a really exciting young prospect, with a really gorgeous, sincere song without slight air of smugness that sometimes accompanies their entries. Sadly it didn't fully translate on stage but I still feel this was hard done by in the final results.
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99. 🇩🇰 Malene - Tell Me Who You Are (Denmark 2002)
Speaking of hard done by, this must be one of the best last-placers of all time. This sultry gem was so on the moment for the early 2000s, but again it didn't quite work live, with Malene's rabbit in the headlights energy clearly being a bit of a turn-off.
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98. 🇳🇴 Charmed - My Heart Goes Boom (Norway 2000)
OK I have to admit that this is partly 10 year-old Pingu talking here, who was obsessed with this sugary nonsense from back in the day they were all trying and failing to be the Spice Girls. It doesn't have much teeth, but it is damned catchy and nobody can deny that they gave it all they had.
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97. 🇮🇪 Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan - Rock 'n' Roll Kids (Ireland 1994) 🥇
Look, I don't care what you say, this is so sweet and you they don't come much more dripping in melancholy than this. I went to a concert featuring all the Irish winners a few years ago, and the fondness with which this was clearly held by the audience was incredibly heartwarming.
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96. 🇬🇷 Anna Vissi - Autostop (Greece 1980)
There's more to come from this Eurovision legend, but I do have a soft spot for this early prototype which is more like a holiday kids' club song than a Eurovision one. I'd imagine I like this much more than Anna herself does these days, but maybe (hopefully) @Queen of the Bay can cast some light on that.
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Pingu said:
99. 🇩🇰 Malene - Tell Me Who You Are (Denmark 2002)
Speaking of hard done by, this must be one of the best last-placers of all time. This sultry gem was so on the moment for the early 2000s, but again it didn't quite work live, with Malene's rabbit in the headlights energy clearly being a bit of a turn-off.
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That this came last in a year as weak as 2002 is a travesty, but I agree that it was entirely her own doing. I would argue, though, that a rabbit in headlights performance can make you a relatable queen and for me the desperation in Tell Me Who You Are makes her delivery the perfect match.

However, in terms of a performer seemingly living out their nightmare she is still only second to Blanche :disco:
 
The only thing that annoys me about Francesca is that the non-Eurovision version is SO MUCH better.
 
Pingu said:
100. 🇮🇹 Francesca Michielin - No Degree Of Separation (Italy 2016)
The first Italian entry since their return that felt like a really exciting young prospect, with a really gorgeous, sincere song without slight air of smugness that sometimes accompanies their entries. Sadly it didn't fully translate on stage but I still feel this was hard done by in the final results.
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the lyrics and performance of this make this my favourite ever Italian entry, just nudging out Fuming in The Paroleh, or ‘Fiume di Parole’, as the Italians call it. Every line has a desperate urgency about it that makes it sound like she is singing for her life.
 
Pingu said:
I'd imagine I like this much more than Anna herself does these days, but maybe (hopefully) @Queen of the Bay can cast some light on that.
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Am assuming you're right, cause i've never heard her performing this since. Perhaps because the song itself was composed by one of ours Eurovision orchestra conductors instead of a composer so maybe it wasn't meant to have a life out of the contest. Some of her back vocalists here were singers in their very early days of their careers, including her sister.
 
Pingu said:
98. 🇳🇴 Charmed - My Heart Goes Boom (Norway 2000)
OK I have to admit that this is partly 10 year-old Pingu talking here, who was obsessed with this sugary nonsense from back in the day they were all trying and failing to be the Spice Girls. It doesn't have much teeth, but it is damned catchy and nobody can deny that they gave it all they had.
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The energy and visual of this is so terrifying primary school performance, it makes the early work of Anna Kumble look like PJ Harvey
 
95. 🇨🇿 Marta Jandová & Václav Noid Bárta - Hope Never Dies (Czech Republic 2015)
Considering this was a country still getting the hang of Eurovision fielding two singers that didn't quite fit the popstar mould with a staging budget of about 73p, this song was so much better than it had any right to be. I was willing this to creep into the final in Vienna so much, all the while with a slight sense of resignation about it, but hope never dies, eh?
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94. 🇳🇱 Teach-In - Ding-A-Dong (The Netherlands 1975) 🥇
It's the kind of ABBA knock-off you'd expect to receive in an ominous unsolicited padded bag from a tenuous online acquaintance, but this is catchy as hell. Probably the first old winner the jumped out at me when I was 9 and first entering the Eurovision rabbit hole, so it was very sweet to see the original line-up reunited for last year's interval act, clinging onto their instruments for dear life.
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93. 🇳🇴 Margaret Berger - I Feed You My Love (Norway 2013)
Well this is just sublime isn't it. I seem to recall this doing very well in the big Moopy Eurovision vote last year, and it's obvious why. It is perfectly contained Nordic melodrama with production that was strikingly on-trend for Eurovision 2013, but I sense will continue to age very well too.
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92. 🇮🇹 Gigliola Cinquetti - Si (Italy 1974) 🥈
Some more from the "perfectly contained melodrama" now but this time of the more southern variety. Surely the unluckiest Eurovision song of all time, with only ABBA getting in the way of Gigliola being Eurovision's first double winner, this is a masterclass in conveying so much passion and emotion by doing very little.
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91. 🇸🇲 Valentina Monetta - Crisalide (Vola) (San Marino 2013)
Continuing with the melodrama, but not of the kind that anybody could claim to be understated, it's the 2nd of 58 Eurovision efforts by Sammarinese Prime Minister Valentina Monetta. For 3 minutes in 2013, lovers of Melodifestivalen-style schlager, Sanremo pomp, and ropey Euro-wannabes of the Moldovan variety were all united behind this one.
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Pingu said:
91. 🇸🇲 Valentina Monetta - Crisalide (Vola) (San Marino 2013)
Continuing with the melodrama, but not of the kind that anybody could claim to be understated, it's the 2nd of 58 Eurovision efforts by Sammarinese Prime Minister Valentina Monetta. For 3 minutes in 2013, lovers of Melodifestivalen-style schlager, Sanremo pomp, and ropey Euro-wannabes of the Moldovan variety were all united behind this one.
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Ralph Siegal is extremely passionate about this song, furious still to this day that it didn’t qualify. And he’s right, what a song. There is some argument though that it takes maybe 30 seconds too long for the donk to come in.
 
Suomi said:
Ralph Siegal is extremely passionate about this song, furious still to this day that it didn’t qualify. And he’s right, what a song. There is some argument though that it takes maybe 30 seconds too long for the donk to come in.
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It does take a little too long but oh my when it DOES come in.

A travesty, at least she got there in the end with ‘Maybe’ despite being that much inferior.
 
Suomi said:
That this came last in a year as weak as 2002 is a travesty, but I agree that it was entirely her own doing. I would argue, though, that a rabbit in headlights performance can make you a relatable queen and for me the desperation in Tell Me Who You Are makes her delivery the perfect match.

However, in terms of a performer seemingly living out their nightmare she is still only second to Blanche :disco:
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Fewer points than bum note connoisseur Corinna May!
 
90. 🇮🇪 Niamh Kavanagh - In Your Eyes (Ireland 1993) 🥇
Of all the many Irish winners, this seems to be the one most palatable to the modern-day Eurovision fan, and Niamh must surely be one of the loveliest winners ever to come out of the contest. One of my favourite obscure Eurovision facts is that the demo of this was sung by one Idina Menzel, who also had the idea of putting the key change in.
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89. 🇷🇴 Mandinga - Zaleilah (Romania 2012)
This came towards the end of Romania's imperial era at Eurovision, and it felt at the time like it could be a genuine international summer hit. Sadly it got caught in the pile-up of uptempo pop songs left in Loreen's wake in 2012 and didn't have nearly as much of an afterlife as it deserved.
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88. 🇩🇪 Joy Fleming - Ein Lied Kann Eine Brücke Sein (Germany 1975)
It's remarkable that such a powerhouse performance in the patchy 70s era of the contest could do so terrible on the scoreboard (this ludicrously came 3rd from last), but perhaps the juries thought this was a bit too derivative or heaven-forbid AMERICAN to succeed in our little contest. Also, if ever there were a missed opportunity to take advantage of singing in English, this is probably it.
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87. 🇧🇪 Loïc Nottet - Rhythm Inside (Belgium 2015)
Belgium were really so useless at Eurovision at this point that it took everyone by surprise to see them fielding something so effortlessly cool. The song itself was just left-field enough without being alienating, and helped a lot by fantastic staging and Loïc himself being a total star. The start of Belgium's reinvention as Eurovision's cool kids.
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86. 🇮🇹 Mia Martini - Rapsodia (Italy 1992)
Admittedly, context helps this one along a lot, knowing that Mia's return to Eurovision came at the end of a stellar career and tragic life, but even on its own, it's such a hairs on the back of the neck performance. A true 4am drunk lockdown favourite.
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85. 🇺🇦 Go_A - Shum (Ukraine 2021)
I know that this one was always reasonably popular and I always quite liked it as well, but my god did it soar on stage in Rotterdam. I don't think any moment in last year's contest encapsulated the joy of coming together again post-lockdown than the crowd going absolutely bonkers in the hall to this. That the most recent chapter of Ukraine's history was represented by a moment of such pure euphoria makes the current situation all the harder to stomach.
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84. 🇷🇴 Luminita Anghel & Sistem - Let Me Try (Romania 2005) 🥉
Looking back to my teenage years, I think the clubby backing of this fooled me into thinking it was quite a credible Eurovision entry. Of course now I know that it's even better than that, and fits perfectly into the classic prototype of a singer at the tail end of her career yelling like her life depends on it over a schlager anthem, just wrapped up in an industrial coating. Oh for the days when something like this could come 3rd.
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83. 🇫🇷 Frida Boccara - Un Jour, Un Enfant (France 1969) 🥇
I know that French chansons were all the rage at Eurovision in the 50s and 60s, almost to the extent that anything not fitting that mould was treated with extreme suspicion. Even so, it feels like this entry took the genre and ramped it up to the next level, with spine-tingling results. There is a lot to like in the 1969 contest, but still it does seem a bit mad that this had to share the win.
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82. 🇫🇮 Ami Aspelund - Fantasiaa (Finland 1983)
My god, Finland were so underrated back in the day, especially in the 80s and early 90s when they had some fantastic moments, with their clipped language and moody minor keys creating a brand of schlager that I find more appealing than their Swedish happy-clappy counterparts at the time. They couldn't all fit in this top 100, but the side-stepping in this one certainly did its part in helping it over the line.
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81. 🇱🇻 Brainstorm - My Star (Latvia 2000) 🥉
What a great way to make a debut in the contest, when Latvia sent their biggest band with this lovely winsome number that just worked. It got in there just in time for the tail-end of the Britpop era with a singer who was kooky enough to be engaging but not enough to be distracting. No surprise that it effortlessly glided into the top three, but slightly more surprising that they didn't really manage to follow this up more than a couple of times in the subsequent two decades - quite the false dawn.
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80. 🇲🇩 Natalia Gordienko - Sugar (Moldova 2021)
This nonsense is precisely what we're missing in this year's contest. Exactly this. How did this manage to be so iconic every step of the way? From the three-hour delay to its reveal, to the explosion of colour in the music video, and then when we were worried the performance was going to be disappointingly subdued, we got the rictus grin, the mic drop, the "EUROOO-croak-OOPE" and the endless bragging about the longest note in Eurovision history which wasn't even sung by Natalia, pleasant to listen to, or the longest note at all! Incredible.
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79. 🇧🇾 Angelica Agurbash - Love Me Tonight (Belarus 2005)
In fact, I like to think of Sugar as the natural successor to this. Allegedly this actually was a record-breaker for the most expensive outfit ever at the contest, and also for the number of questions this raised. Who is she? How did she get this gig? Who is bankrolling this? Has she sung before in her life? This is elevated far above the standard Eurovision car crash for the simple reason that Angelica really does believe that she's Mariah Carey, with her look of deranged determination scarcely matched before or since.
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78. 🇮🇪 Liam Reilly - Somewhere In Europe (Ireland 1990) 🥈
This song snuck into my affections during the Eurovision Again lockdown cycle, and I can't quite put my finger on why. Perhaps I was a bit drunk and melancholy thinking of the Eurovision friends I wasn't going to get to see for a while, or maybe the Barry Manilow fan in me just appreciated it as the kind of song that does exactly what you want it to, with everything in its place. Either way, it's here so deal with it.
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77. 🇬🇧 Imaani - Where Are You? (United Kingdom 1998) 🥈
It's so easy to forget that we used to be bloody good at this isn't it. It's really rather depressing to know that this, 24 years ago, was our last gasp of greatness that wasn't a one-off statistical blip. What a high to go out on though, as the home entry with a song that fitted seamlessly into the pop scene of the time, the same pop scene that originally led to me watching the contest in the first place that year. Who knows? If she had garnered just a few more points and given the UK its 6th win maybe our run of greatness could have been extended for a short while.
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76. 🇧🇦 Laka - Pokušaj (Bosnia & Herzegovina 2008)
It's stuff like this that demonstrates why people who don't give Eurovision time of day sometimes just need to watch and listen, because so often the performances that present as or as dismissed as novelty nonsense have so much else to offer, with this being a prime example. Yes it's eccentric to the nth degree, but there's a fantastic song underneath there (with some delightfully bonkers lyrics), and it all comes together in one of the most joyous performances I can remember at the contest.
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I hope this culminates in you dropping the playlist so I can EDUCATE MYSELF.
 
75. 🇦🇩 Marta Roure - Jugarem A Estimar-Nos (Andorra 2004)
CD1, Track 1 on the first Eurovision CD I ever bought, this breezy by-numbers schlager track is another one that has strong nostalgia value for me, although I had managed to block out the pitchy, out-of-breath performance with terrible sound mixing. This was the first of many failed final attempts for poor Andorra, although personally I don't think they ever topped it.
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74. 🇧🇪 Kate Ryan - Je T'Adore (Belgium 2006)
Another failed qualification attempt here, and possibly the most infamous one, with Europe-wide star Kate Ryan taking quite the tumble from pre-contest favourite status. To this day I still don't quite know why. OK so it's not the winner that it was hyped up to be and there is that unfortunate money shot flub at 2:36, but all in all it's a catchy pop song, well-presented and reasonably well sung. It even had a brief afterlife in the UK as recurring commercial radio filler that summer.
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73. 🇦🇺 Jessica Mauboy - We Got Love (Australia 2018)
A slight paradox of going to Eurovision is that being there in the arena can sometimes be the worst place to actually watch. Such is the slickness of the modern day contest (Turin pending...) with every camera shot meticulously planned out, it can sometimes feel like you're observing the making of a TV show from a distance rather than experiencing a proper live performance. It's no wonder then that spectators in 2018 passionately started hailing this as a potential winner, as Jessica Mauboy is a true example of the singer performing totally for the live audience and not giving a damn how it looked or sounded on television. As we know, that went really well for her.
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72. 🇸🇪 Carola - Främling (Sweden 1983) 🥉
The moment that birthed a star or created a monster? You decide. Either way, there's no denying what an absolute schlager classic this is, with a powerhouse performance with the sort of polish that a 16 year-old can only produce is there really is true evil involved. Along with Gigliola, Carola is probably another should-be double winner, and we'll be hearing from her again later.
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71. 🇨🇭 Céline Dion - Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi (Switzerland 1988) 🥇
Unfortunately, unlike Carola, not everyone who makes an impression at Eurovision can go on to have a lengthy career. Poor Céline Dion from Switzerland managed to scrape a win by just one point, allowing her to make it into the Eurovision history books even if she didn't manage to capitalise on her success. This is a great French power ballad, the last one to make it all the way at Eurovision, but if you really want to do a deep dive while you're viewing this countdown, you should check out some of her subsequent English-language material. There's some great stuff in there that deserves a wider audience.
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70. 🇦🇿 Samra - Miracle (Azerbaijan 2016)
It seems bizarre considering what a stellar year 2016 turned out to be, but I remember towards the end of the selection process worrying that there would be nothing that came along for me to truly love. I needn't have fretted, as it arrived in the shape of this incredibly Swedish, incredibly generic but incredibly hooky offering "from" Azerbaijan. While poor tone deaf Samra was barely actually heard in her live performance, she did use her voice very well when casting the most incredible and effortless shade about that year's Armenian contender in this excellent piece of journalism.
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69. 🇸🇮 Anzej Dezan - Mr Nobody (Slovenia 2006)
Australia's representative this year, Sheldon Riley, is a huge fan of the contest. Like, "us" levels of obsession. He is truly living out his ultimate gay fantasy right now and that's why I'm all the more annoyed that he's decided to enter such a self-indulgent GCSE Drama piece of dirge. THIS is what that is supposed to look like when one of us inexplicably gets three minutes to shine on the world stage. And I'll accept nothing less.
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68. 🇳🇴 Tooji - Stay (Norway 2012)
OK, or this. This will do too.
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67. 🇸🇪 Arvingarna - Eloise (Sweden 1993)
Oh I just love how much the Swedes adore this kind of nonsense. I'd love this song regardless, but I'm not sure it would feature quite so highly in my affections were it not for the group of Swedish housewives in pink cowboy hats and feather boas singing this song in literally every karaoke bar during Melodifestivalen weekend.
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66. 🇮🇱 Ilanit - Ahava Hi Shir Lishnayim (Israel 1977)
Ilanit was Israel's first ever Eurovision representative, and it's her 1973 debut that she seems to be better known for. This is the one I have a soft spot for though. In the midst of cheesy, showy 70s Eurovision, there's something so lovely about this. It has the build and the dyamics you need for a Eurovision song, but it's just so beautifully effortless with it and a lovely respite from all the ABBA wannabes.
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65. 🇩🇪 Cascada - Glorious (Germany 2013)
I'm so glad that in Germany's transition from being the Eurovision class clowns to the purveyors of earnest radio bollocks nobody cares about, they briefly took a random detour and sent Cascada! Looking back, this is absolute tat especially when combined with the performance where poor Natalie threatened to veer dangerously off course at any given moment. Back in my poppy-EDM-loving student days though, this was all I could possibly wish for in a Eurovision song, and I most certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at it in 2022 either.
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64. 🇧🇦 Dino Merlin - Love In Rewind (Bosnia & Herzegovina 2011)
As we saw with Laka earlier on, sometimes Bosnia & Herzegovina were capable of a little moment of eccentric brilliance at Eurovision, and here's another one. I have never quite been able to put my finger on exactly what's going on here, and indeed why I love it so much, but I've always found this so utterly charming, both musically and in presentation.
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My number 63 came 3rd in 2016.

62. 🇸🇪 Malena Ernman - La Voix (Sweden 2009)
It's such a shame that Europe just wasn't buying what Sweden was selling during this era, because they were unashamedly just sending schlager nonsense like this, which you'd never get now. I remember finding it so utterly bizarre that respected and successful classical singer Malena even bothered to do Melodifestivalen in the first place, let alone with something like this, but as we now know, she's clearly one aria short of an opera and pretty much game for anything. Coming 21st at Eurovision clearly did no harm to her career - certainly not as much as that horrid daughter of hers did by forbidding her from flying abroad for work.
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61. 🇮🇱 Dana International - Ding Dong (Israel 2011)
As contest comebacks go, I don't think before or since has such a Eurovision icon returned to such a tepid response as Dana International and her failure to get anywhere near the final in 2011. OK so the contest had moved on since she just stood in a nice dress and sang her song in 1998 and she hadn't got the memo, but I still think this was massively hard done by and Europe are ungrateful bastards who don't deserve Dana. I defy you not to let out even a little gay gasp when she dares to take on the 3.8km long runway at the end of the song and just about makes it to the end by the final note.
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Loving the justice for Miracle!
 
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