Iceland had a difficult beginning at the ESC: despite high hopes and a very good dose of the strongest confidence, their first entry landed in a lackluste 16th place out of twenty entries in Bergen 1986.
Icy - Gleðibankinn (Iceland 1986)
Icy were followed by two more 16th places and then a nul pointer. Was Iceland bound to be a hopeless little nation at the edge of the world, never going to achieve ESC success?
All it needed was for someone to do their homework properly. For 1990, some Icelandic composers took a careful listen to what kind of sounds and rhythms had worked well for Sweden, Norway and, above all, Denmark in the near past.
The result was a very cheerful little song called "Eitt lag enn", a jaunty euroschlager you could twist again to. Performed by Stjórnin (Grétar & Sigga), Iceland managed to make quite an impression and ended on a fourth place in Zagreb. Iceland's first taste of success!
Stjórnin - Eitt lag enn (Iceland 1990)
Iceland has only managed top five placings on two more occasions: 1999 and 2009, both times ending in second place. Icelandic thunder seems to strike roughly every tenth year. Does that mean victory in 2019?
Sigga entered twice more, (once with Heart 2 Heart - basically an enlarged version of Stjórnin - and once as a solo singer) trying to better herself, ending in 7th and 12th place respectively.
Heart 2 Heart - Nei eða já (Iceland 1992)
Sigga - Nætur (Iceland 1994)
No comments:
Post a Comment