Linda Martin - former lead singer of the band Chips - had gone solo and was given a dramatic pop song written by Johnny Logan, who had made a splash winning the 1980 ESC but whose career subsequently had gone more or less down the toilet.
Apparently he scribbled down this song in a matter of minutes while killing time at Heathrow, never regarding it as one of his better songs. I couldn't disagree more.
I'm intrigued by the inner monologue of this song. How the response to an old lover's sudden comeback is superficially happy and careless while old memories seem very hard to dismiss. It is easy to say that things are forgiven and forgotten, but are they really?
"I told him nothing's changed and I still feel the same." So she told him. It doesn't mean it's true. It makes me wonder what happens once they are reunited and the song ends. Will they be all smiles or will there be a tense drama à la Bergman? I love not knowing, I love that not everything is said in the open. It's a great little story.
Johnny Logan would famously get a second chance and even if there was no grand international career in store for him, he will always remain Eurovision royalty. In 1992, he and Linda Martin scored Ireland's fourth victory together with "Why Me?" - another really good, but possibly slightly less intriguing, song.
A deserved 2nd place?
Indeed. There were better songs in the running in 1984, but this one is certainly ahead of the Swedish winner in my list.
Linda Martin - Terminal 3 (Ireland 1984)
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