JOHNNY LOGAN – "What's Another Year?"

Eurovision had had a few fallow years since its last number one by Brotherhood of Man. The 1977 winner “L’Oiseau et l’Enfant” by France’s Marie Myriam was a very pretty song with a memorable tune, but I don’t even remember hearing an English version, let alone seeing it in the chart. Then there were the two successive Israeli winners: “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” by Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta had the distinction of being effectively banned by Radio 1 for being crap, although Milk and Honey’s “Hallalujah” was more palatable – and they both made the top ten.

But Johnny Logan kicked off Eurovision’s best little sequence, with three consecutive winners reaching number one; and this is a song that knows just which buttons to press, not only for the Irish market (many a crooner to follow) but for the wider audience. A slightly different song from those that had been winning lately, but setting a trend for several of those to come (albeit not the following year).

Johnny Logan was in fact Australian, his real name being Sean Sharrock IIRC – getting an Aussie to do your Eurovision song was a move the UK tried many years later, aiming for a VERY different demographic!!

And this is another of those “modern pop started here” moments – because who was Logan’s manager? Some young chancer by the name of Louis Walsh.

I remember this getting to #1 but it’s another one that’s completely fallen out of my memory bank sound-wise but I don’t think I can bring myself to go and refresh my memory, it can only be a let down after that fantastic sleeve! The crying eye thing looks like it’s been pasted on from another, more interesting sleeve design, and Johnny is clearly going for the same look Cliff Richard had at the time.

Seven year old Billy was perhaps the ideal audience for this, being receptive to very simple storytelling and feeling gratified that he could fully understand it, yet without a sufficiently wide knowledge of popular music to realise that this sort of thing could be done much, much, better.

For all that, I actually still quite like this as an adult – though it’s very hard to feel much empathy for the singer, at least I don’t dislike him.

Number 2 watch: ‘No Doubt About It’ by Hot Chocolate. Not their greatest moment, though the thematic appeal of a song about a UFO was enough to make it appeal to a wide audience.

TOTPWatch: Johnny Logan performed ‘What’s Another Year?’ on 3 occasions in 1980; April the 24th, May the 15th and December the 25th. The line-ups of the two normal editions indicate what a broad church the chart music of 1980 could be.

Also in the studio on April the 24th were; Smokie, The Cure, Sky, The Cockney Rejects, and Bad Manners, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Check Out The Groove’. The host was Steve Wright.

Also in the studio on May the 15th were; Squeeze, Roxy Music, Jimmy Ruffin, Hot Chocolate, The Four Bucketeers, The Nolans and Peter Gabriel, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Just Can’t Give You Up’. The host was Dave Lee Travis.

No Doubt About It was barely more of an event than What’s Another Year. I remember Radio 1 dj’s going on about how it was based on a real life extra-terrestrial experience for Errol Brown but, unless I’m missing something, nothing happens in the lyric apart from a funny glow in the sky. Probably just the early days of light pollution.

As discussed on So You Win Again thread, their two biggest hits were deffo not their greatest moments.

‘No Doubt About It’ is the second greatest song ever about UFOs

(that statement was hysterically funny when a mate of mine drunkenly declared it at a party one night)

Christ, were Smokie still going in 1980?

His voice and delivery on this always reminded me of a rather low-rent David Gates. “The Sound Of Bread” was always brought along to parties around then, and possibly young Louis may have noticed its ubiquity and reckoned it would do for Eurovision.

Not quite Erithian, the dreaded warbler was born Seán Patrick Michael Sherrard. The Eurovision fans, of which there are many and mostly (but not all) gay, refer to this as “What’s another queer”

Johnny was certainly challenging Errol “Zebedee” Brown in the “tightest pair of trousers” competition

We could have been spared this if the silly regional juries in the UK had picked Pussyfoot instead of Prima Donna !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW4k6ZUowoI

##20 and 21 – blimey, my fact checker was off-kilter on Friday. I wasn’t paying quite so much attention to the chart by 1987 but that’s no excuse! I even called the wrong birthday number one for my twins in the “Geno” thread – it wasn’t the artist that shared a catchphrase with Obama, but the original version of that artist’s second number one. Either it was the stress of our impending office move, or senility kicking in early. At least I got the Louis Walsh bit right…

So if there aren’t any other Irish Eurovision winners to come on Popular, is this the time to discuss whether we wouldn’t have preferred “My Lovely Horse” to all of them?

I enjoyed the 1980 Eurovision, and retain sharp memories of many of the entries: particularly the deadpan conceptual electro-disco of Telex’s “Eurovision” (Belgium) and the chirpily ludicrous “Papa Pingouin” from Sophie et Magaly (toothsome twins from Luxembourg). Nevertheless, it was clear from the preview shows that Johnny Logan was going to win it for Ireland. In context with most of the other entries – and bearing in mind the weird aesthetic shift that takes place whenever one tries to evaluate Eurovision music (a phenomenon which has echoes in shows like The X-Factor, i.e. “Gosh, that almost sounds like a passable facsimile of real pop music, how clever, I LOVE it!”), it sounded sophisticated, contemporary and classy. Remember: in 1980 MOR terms, skinny ties and sax solos were positively bleeding edge…

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Punctum’s on a roll! Been liking your analysis of the hits so far!

Way back then I thought McCartneys coming up was going to be number one as it was in the US, it was the live version that DLT played and there were still talks of a Beatle reunion.

A long while back, but –

#14:

“No Doubt About It” goes further than just odd lights in the sky. A later verse has Errol rhetorically asking “What were these creatures that now stood in front of me?” He neglects to describe them further – little green/grey chaps with three heads? Towering beings of angelic beauty and demeanour? Gerry Anderson-style scarlet-spacesuited bodysnatchers? – but they’re definitely there. No doubt, indeed, about it.

I can’t believe no commenters above have mentioned this (too obvious?) but the lyrics of this song are clearly a meta-reference to Eurovision itself. (This was painfully obvious to me in 1980).

Not really, he hadn’t done it before so I doubt he did it on purpose.

Is this the first example of freeze-dried 80s? A 2 from me, knocked down from 3 thanks to the gratingly sharp sax.