Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

It's no news France Eurovision and Eiffel tour have a long lasting love affair but last night it was taken to another level in the 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony. We all remember poor Tom Leeb who was chosen to represent France in 2020 Eurovision, climbed to Eiffel tower to belt out his song only to see Eurovision being cancelled and even France Television cancelling him for 2021 later on. That has been perhaps the high light of France Eurovision loves Eiffel tower in fandom's collective memory until now. Last night Eurovision 1988 winner Celine Dion returned to the spotlight after four hard years trying to recover and survive her illness and showed she was in top form in her first live performance since 2020. Belting out Edith Piaf's L'Hymne á l'amour like there was no tomorrow she reconquered the world. Well, I must say I do enjoy Tom Leeb's entry quite a lot. After all. 

  Andrea Mirò performed this fantastic song   Non è segreto  written by Armando Mango in Sanremo 1988 Newcomers but was eliminated from the final. She was there year before with equally fantastic  Notte di Praga , placing 4th. Later she would marry Eurovision veteran Enrico Ruggeri and go rock. 

  Catanian beauty Marcella Bella has a long career and nine Sanremos under her belt, and in the late 1980's  she scored a hit after hit there along with good placements (3rd, 6th, 4th) this being the third one in 1988 placing 4th, Dopo la tempesta . and being a Top-10 hit in Italy. One of my favorites along with Tanti auguri .

  As I have arrived today to Venezia, hoping not to find acqua alta, it's a perfect opportunity to post this beautiful song from Sanremo 1984: Acqua alta in piazza San Marco by late Giampiero Artegiani. (NQ among Newcomers) He was back in 1986 with ... e le rondini sfioravano il grano , another beautiful song (3rd in Newcomers). He never made it big as a singer but had success as an author for others, including Sanremo 1988 winner Perdere l'amore, and Italy's home entry in 1991 Eurovision, Comme è ddoce 'o mare.  He also wrote and produced Zarrillo and Silvia Salemi among others.

While waiting for the entries for UMK2023 aka Finland's national selection for Eurovision song contest let's look back at some of the best non winning ones from yesteryear. While we are at it, let's take yet another Petri Laaksonen's entry. In 1988 he teamed up with Eurovision 1983 veteran Ami Aspelund and created this very catchy, very Eurovision at the time arrangement with a touch of Slavic male choir with Southern European cliches but it works wonders but sadly placed only third. Ami never recorded this one but Amor Amor reappeard of another Eurovision veteran Sonja Lumme's album a few years after with a tuned down arrangement . And yes, you guessed it. Finland's winner Boulevard placed second to last with 3 points in Dublin. No comment. 

Italy took its well deserved third victory - finally! - at the Eurovision song contest 2021. Over the years several other Italian entries would have been worthy winners. In this series I will go through all of them from the worst ranking to the win ners By 1988 the Eurovision enthusiasm in Rai must have been very low as they ended up sending Sanremo 1988 third placed Luca Barbarossa (60) after the winner Massimo Ranieri ( Perdere l'amore ) and runner up Toto Cutugno ( Emozioni ) apparently had declined. So, Barbarossa took his Sanremo entry's L'amore rubato single's B-side Vivo and renamed it Ti scrivo pretending it was a new and unreleased song. And for Eurovision he didn't even bother to cut this nearly 5 minutes long song to 3 minutes but it only faded away after 3 minutes.... finishing still 12th out of 21. Many still wonder how Rai even got away with it?! But Luca back then had already tasted success at home and this Roman singer-songwriter went on to win Sa...

Out with the pink and baby blue , Celine Dion creates with Nununu cloathing brand that liberates children from the traditional boy/girl thinking. (Yet they have dresses, even tulle, what's girlier than that???.... hmmmm)  Here CELINUNUNU unites two forces by one voice: fashion has the power to shape people’s minds. inspire your children to be free and find their own individuality through clothes.

Over the years I have already presented nine albums that have shaped my music taste including ones from Alice, Cyndi Lauper, Mango, Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush, Madonna, Diana Ross, Jean-Jacques Goldman and Craig David. Time to dust the series! One of the most remarkable ones is no doubt Franco Battiato and his Fisiognomica . This was a #1 album selling over 300.000 within the first  two months of release..... The album, his 15th studio album, came out in 1988 following post-Eurovision pop album Mondi lontanissimi that I already loved, and two operas he had composed and this album has also hints of them as most songs were written the operas in mind but turned out too pop for them, as he has told. Battiato's love for the Arabic music is also present and he even sings in Arabic in Zai saman and in Sicilian in Veni l'autunnu. Included is also Juri Camisasca's (who I adore) Nomani , originally written for late Giuni Russo (who I love), but then recorded by my favorite fe...

Celine Dion plays the movie soundtrack card once again Did you know the first original recording of this global success snobbed by NRK for Eurovision was by Johnny Logan? Finally released on Secret Garden's new compilation.  Tanel Padar keeps scoring hits from his solo EP Maria Naumova who? - Marie N! - Who?

Today Céline Dion turns 50. How times flies! This blogger has always preferred her French catalogue and picking up favorites from the last four decades isn't easy but here goes. The ones (of many) that havee had a secial meaning to me in some point of my life. In random order:

  Albanian Elhaida Dani is out with a new song  Më Mbaj or Keep me. She has written the song herself and is writing and recording her new album in Italy in both Italian and English, but this one's strickly in Albanese. Beautiful. And kinda melancholy. The late summer/early autumn blues continues with Eric Saade 's Another week . Released already some time ago but it has proven to be a real earworm and pops into your head when you last expect it.... and comes with quite a Swedish party video, too! Dima Bilan 's latest is  Держи (Hold). The Russian superstar continues to deliver radio friendly pop tunes and this is another one, a bit groovier and poppier than most lately though. And the video is shot in oh, so fashionable Portugal. And must be sponsored by the car manufacturer.... Lara Fabian has already released a second single Choose what you love most (And let it kill you) off her new album Camouflage , but this first single Growing wings is stuck i...

Fashion Icon. That's not what comes to mind when thinking of Céline Dion really is it? Icon perhaps but certainly not fashion one. But weird things happen and the somewhat glumsy, glum and ordinary looking housewife with a lot of money but no style kind of Céline has transformed herself this year. Six months after the death of her husband she hired Law Roach has her stylist. Roach says she has no fear and they both don't care what people think. The restyling has also helped Dion in her grieving process and rebooting her career. Like it or dislike it, she won't go unnoticed anymore. Watch out Lady Gaga, there's a new crazy in town! Check out below some of her styles over the past few months that have sent Vogue and the fashion world into frenzy.      Below Céline as we used to know her..... ;-p

Eurovision song contest 1988 winner Celine Dion is back big time. And staying close to her late husband for a long time it's a new era for Celine now and she has released a new French album, that will be followed by a new English album soon enough. And as usual she's as popular as ever as the both the album and same titled single made it to #1 in France and many other French speaking territories. Encore un soir is written by by Jean-Jacques Goldman, who is a guarantee, but sadly he has not provided other songs to the project. Celine and her team have went for some new songwriters for her this time. Curiously this album also includes a remastered version of Celine's 1984 release Trois heures vingt . This was one of her late husband's favorites and was played at his funeral, exactly at 3.20pm as the start of the ceremony.  The other side (and voice, funny how she sounds so different in English) is presented in Recovering , the first officially released track f...

Gerard Joling, that walking advert for botox clinic and teeth whitening gone bad (remember Ross in Friends back in the day?) has released his new song Lieveling sporting some interesting wardobe choices. Especially the jacket is genius - never thought those aprons sold for tourists in Italy could  be fixed to look so good!  All this said, Gerard has a lovely voice and this song is insanely catchy! Not usually my cup of tea but I love it! And Dutch has never sounded so good. Or maybe it has, in Shangri-La . Watch and learn, Jari Sillanpää :-)

Lena Philipsson is set to start her new show in Cirkus, Stockholm to celebrate her 30th anniversary as an artist, and why not also her 50th birthday she just celebrated last month. The new show is based on her latest album Jag är ingen älskling released late last year. Of course she will be also performing her older hits and there will be quite a lot of talk, too, but then knowing her twit sense of self irony and comedian skills that's only a good thing. She also explains it's going to be very intimate affair, as the audience will be very close to her and stage, and not a huge show as she's done all that before. It's a lot of her by the piano and the band playing in the background. But the rehearsals have proven it doesn't stop the audience getting on their feet and dancing along to the music and in such moments the stage pretty much disappears and she's just singing among them.  She's got Emma Bucht, a theater director onboard making the show so besid...

Or so the story goes. Apprently the Soviet propaganda wanted to take also the Eurovision trophy in the crazy years of change in the late 1980's. Back in 1987 the Minister of Education for the Soviet Union Veselov brought out the idea. He even had proposed popular singer Valery Leontiev as the ideal debut artist but both president Gorbachev and the leaders of Communist Party considered the idea "too radical". LOL. The talk continued until the whole union was gone by 1991. Russia did enter the contest in 1994 and despite sending local superstars Philip Kirkorov and Alla Pugatseva among others failed to make an impact, even not qualifying in the 1996 pre-selection. They took a break of a couple of years before re-entering and have been very succesful ever since with one victory, 4 second places and two third places so far.... Nine other former republics of the Soviet Union have entered the contest since 1990's though: Lithuania 1994, Estonia 1994, Latvia 2000, Uk...

OGAE Italy is present in Sanremo and they interviewed Lara Fabian ( here , in Italian) who represented Luxemburg in 1988 Eurovision with Croire , finishing 4th (behind cartain Celine Dion for example). This year, as we know, the Sanremo winner will be handed the ticket to Vienna 2015 Eurovision with a possibility to turn down the offer as well. Lara Fabian failed to impress Italians in the first night and her Voce is among the bottom-4 songs in risk of an elimination from the final. These days it has also emerged a general Italian has no clue who she is, fueled by some "well informed" journalists who shold be stripped off their accreditation immediately. Anyways.... when asked if she should win would she do it again, go to Vienna and represent Italy?  "I have already done it. In my career I don't want to repeat things  but go ahead for new things. I would turn it down,  I have done Eurovision already. It was a great experience and such fun!"

The biography in Luca Barbarossa's official website writes that in 1988 he participated in the Eurovision song contest in Dublin with Ti scrivo , that was actually Vivo , a song released too early for the contest. Because of that he was disqualified two months after Eurovision with a letter.   Now, that Ti scrivo wasn't a new song is no secret or news but that he has been disqualified is. Have anyone of you heard of this before? Vivo was originally the B-side of his Sanremo single L'Amore rubato . To discover this bit in his biography is Federico Stufi of OGAE Italy. The other Eurovision experts in Italy seem equally uninformed of this fact (if it is a fact, of course!). Emanuele Lombardini of EurofestivalNew s says he has been trying to interview Barbarossa for months but the man has always refused with "I have no time". Let's wait for further developments and clarification.... Italy came 12th in Eurovision 1988 with 52 points. Btw, is this also t...

It's 25 years since Celine Dion won Eurovision with Ne partez pas sans moi . Since then she's been having due different careers in French and in English; different productions, songs and even style, I'd say. Occasionally, but very rarely those two meet. This ads to the fact she was also a child star and when Eurovision came it was a bit of an ultimatum and deal breaker; or she wins or it's over.... She won, walked into Berlitz school of languages in Quebec and the rest is history as they. Over 200 million albums sold worldwide speak louder than she sings.  She's has just released her 11th studio album in English, Loved me back to life , the first one in six years. As usual for a global star of her caliber it's filled with collaborations (duets with Stevie Wonder and Ne-Yo to start with) and songs picked from the finest in the industry. The first single is the title track Loved me back to life , and other songs like Somebody loves somebody , and Water and a...