There is still no prize for the
winning act. In talent shows, like America’s Got Talent, the winner
walks away with a million bucks. In the Eurovision, there is still some
sense of an amateur competition: the composer may collect a gong, but
not the winning artist.
It’s not hard to mock the Eurovision – and, let’s face it, that can
also be a very enjoyable exercise. Among the most inviting targets for
critics are the lyrics of the songs. These often express trite
sentiments, and make frequent use of the most obvious of romantic
cliches. When words fail, Eurovision song-writers are quite prepared to
seek other alternatives. Perhaps, the most flagrant example of this
tendency occurred in 1967, when the Spanish artist, Massiel, sang “la”
138 times in less than three minutes.
Ireland has always been permitted
to perform in English, but sometimes it’s been difficult to believe that
our entries were written by people who spoke the language fluently. In
2000, for example, Eamonn Toal urged us to remember that “our footprints
leave a harvest for the children” – a difficult concept to grasp. In
2007, Dervish informed us that “the archipelagic icicles have melted
like the cage” – a tricky line to sing, let alone understand.
However, it ill becomes any lover of pop music to be too critical of
the standard of Eurovision lyrics. A recent analysis of 225 songs that
had reached number 1 in the US charts in the past few years found that
their average vocabulary was pitched at the reading level of an
eight-year-old. It speaks volumes that the same analysis revealed that
the most advanced use of language could be found in the work of Justin
Timberlake. The word that featured most frequently in the lyrics of
these 225 hit songs was “yeah”.
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