The Finnish Music Quarterly (see below) also has a deliciously wry account of Finland's woebegone history in the Eurovision song contest. The writer is Kati Sinisalo:
We Finns are Eurovision losers. A nation of zeros... Nothing seems to help. Dance music, dirges, ethno-chants, folk songs, disco, reggae, Spanish music, and others have been tried. Fiddle scraping, flute playing, behind bumping, and tango dancing have been tried in vain.... The annual European festival of kitsch music is a bit of a sore spot for us Finns. On the one hand, people sniff at the contest, on the other hand, '...What if we finally did succeed this year?'
...What was the idea in 1976 when Pump pump performed by Fredi and Friends was chosen to be Finland's representative? The refrain sung in English was 'Let your hip go hippety pump pump / That's the way we dance 'til we die ... ay ay ay...." But the Finnish original fit the choreography even better; a large man bumping his behind into small women backup singers while singing 'Bum against bum bump bump, now that's something'.... [see photo]
Did the audience perhaps not really get the message of Kojo's wheezing protest song against the neutron bomb called Nuku pommiin? After all, it was in Finnish, so few people understood the critical lyrics and the irony of the Finnish title, which means 'oversleep' but literally means 'sleep into the bomb'.... Rikki Sorsa's Reggae OK (1981) was not OK either. Nor did Pave Marijanen's Yamma, Yamma go down well with European pop fans; it came in last place in Sweden in 1992.
There's a happy postscript. Finland's Eurovision ignominy gave way to sudden triumph last month, when Lordi soared to first place on the wings of their anthem "Hard Rock Hallelujah."
