Joking successfully is not easy, since humour has a tendency of translating rather badly.
The 1982 Finnish entry is said to have been an attempt at writing the worst eurosong ever, and the national final expert jury (probably finding themselves slightly above average taste and a bit too posh for a contest as simple as this one) thought it would be funny to send the protest song off to Harrogate.
It was a bad idea for many reasons. First of all, this bunch of "experts" overlooked some really good quality songs (most notably "Mitt äppelträd" by Ami Aspelund) in the national heat. Secondly, it is nothing but a waste of time and money to enter a song you don't even believe in yourself to a contest like the ESC.
And, perhaps most notably, the attempt failed. "Nuku pommiin" is nowhere near the worst eurosong ever.
In fact, it is a brave attempt at doing something radically different on a eurovision stage. A noisy relative to the 1967 Monegasque entry, also dealing with the risk of the world getting blown away in a nuclear disaster, dressed up in the heaviest rock gear ever heard until then at the ESC.
Nul points?
Well, why not? If you send in something bold and daring, you always run the risk of displeasing the audience. Taken that into consideration, it is better to be edgy and pushy on last place than bland and mediocre in the middle.
Mission accomplished, I guess.
Kojo - Nuku pommiin (Finland 1982)
I remember that no-one in Finland (apart from the songwriters) was a bit surprised when this song received the round zero.
ReplyDeleteEven the conductor Ossi Runne reportedly didn't like this song a bit, but he showed a brave face in Harrogate. He did his best to better the song, with the orchestral arrangement the Harrogate version sounds much better than the recorded version.
But that didn't help, a well deserved null points from Finland.