Revisiting Eurovision’s Bottom-Ranked Songs
This weekend is Eurovision weekend. Let's celebrate by trawling through the glorious archives, shall we?
Part of makes the Eurovision Song Contest so unique is the convoluted scoring system. (It’s getting even more convoluted this year.) Basically, voting is weighted 50/50 between the public’s telephone votes and those of a professional jury.
In the extended section of the contest broadcast where the votes are phoned in via video link (“Hello Malmö, this is Vilnius calling!”), each participating country announces the entry to which it awards 12 points (“douze pwahn!”), ten points (“dee pwahn!”) and eight points (“ouee pwahn!”). Each country awards 1-7 more points to their third through tenth favourite, but these aren’t read out.
No nation is allowed to vote for itself, and regional blocs lead to certain countries reliably awarding each other the top points. The Viking nations of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland tend to back one another. So do the ‘Pyrenean axis’ of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the former Warsaw Pact countries of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Moldova. Other traditional quid-pro-quo-ers are Greece and Cyprus, Ireland and the UK, and Belgium and the Netherlands.
16 songs in the contest’s 57-year history have achieved Eurovision’s most ignominious feat: no votes whatsoever. In the English-speaking world, this is known as “nul points” (“nule pwahn”). It’s a made-up phrase; in actual French you’d say “zéro points” or “aucun de points”. In 2007, Tim Moore tracked down and interviewed 13 of these hapless performers for his book Nul Points.
Since the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, more countries participate in the voting process, so it’s almost unheard-of for a song to get nul points. The only one since then has been ‘Aven Romale’ (‘Come in Gypsies’) by Gipsy.cz (yes, their name is a URL), a Romani hip hop group from the Czech Republic. It’s pretty bad.
Here are some of the other least popular songs in the last five years of Eurovision, arranged by score from highest to lowest.
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‘Woki mit dem Popo’ (‘Shake Your Booty’) by Trackshittaz
Country: Austria
Year: 2012
Points: 8
Trackshittaz must be the best/worst-named act in music history. Once you get past the fact that this is two white guys rapping in German about arses, the song isn’t that bad: catchy ’80s-style electro with “ooh-ooh!” calls. But cop those backing pole-dancers! What initially look like Tron-style bodysuits turn out to be glow-in-the-dark illustrations of tits and arses that make Chromeo’s disembodied legs look tasteful and sophisticated. But that didn’t stop the song climbing the Austrian singles charts, where – appropriately – it reached number two.
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‘Stay’ by Tooji
Country: Norway
Year: 2012
Points: 7
Norway has the unfortunate distinction of being the country with the most ever ‘nul points’, but this one was an unfair result. ‘Stay’ came a respectable tenth in its semi-final with 45 points, but bombed in the final. It has the goods: a catchy chorus, ‘na-na-na’ vocals, vaguely Middle Eastern instrumentation, swoosh effects and even some voguishly squelchy bass. It was one of my favourite songs in last year’s contest, and it’s since got a workout on my iTunes. But it fell before the Swedish juggernaut of Loreen’s ‘Euphoria’, a breathtakingly great slab of pop performed with strikingly beautiful minimalism. ‘Euphoria’ won by the second largest margin in Eurovision history.
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‘Candlelight’ by Csézy
Country: Hungary
Year: 2008
Points: 6
Csézy seems to be Hungary’s answer to Céline Dion. This perfectly pleasant, relentlessly bland ballad reminds me of the sentimental Canto-pop you hear playing in Chinese restaurants. Its generic sentiments about love seem both written and performed by someone who doesn’t speak English; I feel almost certain that Csézy learned the lyrics phonetically.
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‘Complice’ (‘Accomplice’) by Miodio
Country: San Marino
Year: 2008
Points: 5
This power ballad is wimpy, but really not “sank pwahn” bad, and the little pixie version of Peter Andre is a decent enough singer; it reminds me of ‘7 Seconds’ by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry. Often Eurovision doesn’t favour songs in native languages, but the previous year Serbia had won with Marija Šerifović’s intense, dramatic ballad ‘Molitva’ (‘Prayer’) (I am still unconvinced that Šerifović wasn’t a Chris Lilley character), so perhaps San Marino thought they were in with a chance. A bigger failing is the dreary staging, consisting of a band and an interpretive-dancing ghost. Actually, I blame the ghost completely.
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‘They Can’t Stop The Spring’ by Dervish
Country: Ireland
Year: 2007
Points: 5
Ireland tends to oscillate between deranged pop and earnest traditional folk, complete with fiddles and tin whistles. This song is pretty corny (“They may scare the blackbird, but they’ll never stop it sing”), reminiscent of the sort of thing you’d hear over the end credits of a Disney film set in Ireland. But for me the killer was Cathy Jordan’s wobbly lead vocal. She did a much better job in the Irish national final, when perhaps she didn’t feel the need to turn up the blarney to 11. In the end, only Albania liked it, awarding it five points. (The next year, Ireland’s entry was the dismayingly awful Dustin the Turkey, whose ‘Ireland Douze Pointe’ more than quadrupled Dervish’s result with 22 points.)
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‘Get A Life – Get Alive’ by Eric Papilaya
Country: Austria
Year: 2007
Points: 4
Oh dear, this totally deserved its miserable result. I’m pretty sure Andorra and Switzerland only threw some crumbs its way out of alpine loyalty. It sounds like a suburban Boom Crash Opera cover band, and has a vague message of proactivity, none of which explains the truly insane rooster gimp backing dancers emerging from that AIDS ribbon. Every time I look at them I notice something new and ridiculous: their tails of marabou plumes; their bejewelled codpieces; their poncing dance moves; the fact the male ones have jackboots and the female ones have stilettos…
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‘Il Pleut de l’Or’ (‘It’s Raining Gold’) by Michael von der Heide
Country: Switzerland
Year: 2010
Points: 2
Has anyone ever seen Michael von der Heide and Thom Yorke in the same place at the same time? Despite the name, this is not about golden showers. Or is it? There’s a mushy, uneasy backbeat, as if the song had been written as a ballad but the songwriters were wheedled into making it a banger. With zero commitment to a true Eurodance sound, it feels 20 years older than it is, but perhaps that old-fashioned sound appealed to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who awarded both of its two points.
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‘Mála Dáma’ (‘Little Lady’) by Kabát
Country: Czech Republic
Year: 2007
Points: 1
These chunky, middle-aged Metallica wannabes seemed to be having a competition for widest onstage stance. They all look as if they’re about to poo on the floor simultaneously. Only Estonia liked this song, and even then not very much. Despite the long hair and sunnies, denim vests and leather fingerless gloves, there’s something oddly polite and half-arsed about Kabát (the band name means ‘The Coat’). I feel as though they were holding back for the international stage; their albums include The Devil Rode A Goat, Go Satan Go and Whores, They Know It.
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‘Copycat’ by Patrick Ouchene
Country: Belgium
Year: 2009
Points: 1
2009 was a year of Eurovision stinkeroos. Latvia’s ‘Probka’ (‘Traffic Jam’) and Bulgaria’s ‘Illusion’ both got seven points, and Andorra’s ‘Your Decision (Get A Life)’ and Slovakia’s ‘Let t’mou’ (‘Fly Through the Darkness’) both got eight. Only one miserable vote from Armenia saved ‘Copycat’ from joining the Czech Republic’s ‘Aven Romale’ on nul points. Speaking of copycats, Patrick Ouchene is an Elvis impersonator who sounds like Milo Kerrigan and looks like Brendan Fraser. Not hot Encino Man Brendan Fraser. Nowadays Brendan Fraser.
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Eurovision 2013 is screening on SBS1 in four parts this weekend.
‘The Heart Of Eurovision’: Friday May 17, 7.30pm
Semi Final 1: Friday May 17, 8.30pm
Semi Final 2: Saturday May 18, 7.30pm
Final: Sunday May 19, 7.30pm
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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She is the founding editor of online pop-culture magazine The Enthusiast and the national film editor of the Thousands network of city guides. Her debut book, Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit, will be published in June 2013 by Affirm Press.