JOHNNY LOGAN – “What’s Another Year?”
You can see why he won it even before you hear him sing: his side-saddle lounging on the Eurovision stage signalled a more intimate, warmer performance than the Contest had been used to, particularly after the ABBA insurgence. Ballads had always been big; upbeat songs had got even bigger – Logan’s mournful poking at crushed hopes was a smart, competitive move.
But in the real world? Mush. “What’s Another Year?” is an adequate soft-pop song, a few years out of date, given a greasy reading. The single version – with that sax intro so bright and unavoidable – sounds bigger, slicker and hollower than Logan’s Eurovision performance: even less of the song’s bitterness comes over, and little enough was allowed through anyhow. Logan isn’t asking listeners to pity him, or sympathise, and certainly not to simmer and rage alongside him. He knows his market better than that: he’s asking us to mother him, and clearly thousands were happy to oblige.
3
OMG the CRYING EYE LOGO on the sleeve!!
Also, after the fascinating discussion over “mum and dad” music on the Spinners thread, I would guess you’d be on safer ground invoking those dread spectres for Johnny L.
And here’s me thinking the last one would be Lena Mart.
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.
Too creamy – you can imagine Cliff tackling it, which may have improved it a little. It’s one of several maudlin, no-future MOR 1980 number ones that “mums and dads” were digging while us 15-year olds were getting our heads around Closer.
Anyone out there got a list of the other Eurovision entries that year? I remember thinking this stood out and sounded like an obvious winner.
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.
I can barely summon up the energy to discuss this, it’s just so insipid. What is so profoundly depressing about this type of music is that it assumes that there is an audience out there who deserve and want no more than this type of sentimental drivel (the public gets what the public wants)- when other contemporary chart hits past and present give the lie to that myth. As a Eurovision hit this was manipulated into it’s chart position by judges and media impressarios (the public wants what the public gets) and no doubt bought up by the Celtic diaspora on a wave of nationalistic credulity. When people moan about the current Eurovision situation (block votes and unholy alliances) they should remember crap like this.
The sleeve is definitely more interesting than the music. Skinny tie & leather/vinyl trousers imply punky leanings with even a hint of ‘continental’ sophistication but the rolled up sleeves and comforting mullet suggest that he’s really the homely type. Cool logo.
On the cool sleeve front – the Barney Bubbles retrospective book ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ is due to be published today I believe.
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.
Cover version watch: Shane MacGowan! One of those late performances where he sounds completely dead, in spirit and of thought. You might think that this could make for an emotionarry jarring and arresting listen, but the song really isn’t quite good enough to wring any resonance out of.
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.
Light Entertainment Watch: Johnny’s UK TV appearances include;
THE BASIL BRUSH SHOW: with Johnny Logan, Brotherhood Of Man, Jennifer Hill (1980)
THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: with Prima Donna, Johnny Logan (1980)
THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: with Johnny Logan (1987)
GRACE KENNEDY: with Time, Johnny Logan, David Snell (1983)
SUMMERTIME SPECIAL: with Jim Davidson, Five Star, Johnny Logan, Kevin Devane (1987)
SUNDAY, SUNDAY: with Johnny Logan, Alex Higgins, Patricia Hodge, Mark McManus (1987)
WOGAN: with Michael Bentine, Johnny Logan, Whitley Strieber (1987)
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.
Sorry to say, of that lot the only ones I can remember (and liked a great deal) were the Four Bucketeers. I was lost to pop at this point.
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.
Bit of a Spoiler Bunny moment at #11 there Billy…
‘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?
The best being No UFOs by Model 500, which I heard for the first time when Lord Tarkus played it to me while I was blindfolded. Ah, he probably doesn’t remember…
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.
I saw my mate who got me into this the another night for a beer and he told me to watch out for this one, an aussie who sang for ireland and started sobbing “I love you, Ireland!” when they gave him the medal. He looks a bit of a sweetie to me. No wonder Louis got his claws in him. Tried to play this but switched it off as I started to get angry. Was 1980 really this bad?
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
Re #11 – Not quite a spoiler. ‘Hold Me Now’, Logan’s unique second Eurovision winner of 1987 peaked at number 2.
##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?
Available on the b-side of “Gin Soaked Boy” Divine Comedy.
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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It’d been a while since we’d had cause to visit Eurovision, and from this song’s intro of lugubrious but slick sub-Sanborn soprano saxophone and lush chords – you have to correct yourself that you haven’t put on the first Christopher Cross album by mistake – the scenery appeared to have changed beyond recognition over four years, not to mention the decade which had elapsed since Ireland had last won the contest. But somebody had obviously decided that Eurovision needed to “grow up,” thus the triumph of this very efficient but rather hollow AoR ballad.
Logan sings with very careful attention to pronunciation and pitch, so much so that at times he sounds uncannily like a slightly slowed-down Anne Murray, and although the song is expensively produced and orchestrated with what sound like protoype Fairlights, and is yet another one of those songs bearing tokens of grief and loss with which I could, until you know when, all too readily identify (“Reaching out for you/But you aren’t near,” “What’s another year/For someone who’s lost everything that he owns?”, “I’ve been praying such a long time/It’s the only way to hide the fear”), the overall effect is so bland and syrupy (though Logan does his best to imbue the song with at least a cursory element of emotion) that you eventually shrug your shoulders, can’t connect through the keep-out layers of smoothness.
Logan won Eurovision again, as a writer and performer, in 1987 with “Hold Me Now” (a number two hit in the UK) which if nothing else did bring this tale of lost love to a retrieved, happy ending, and went on to write Linda Martin’s 1991 winner “Why Me?” – he was at the centre of Ireland’s near domination of the contest throughout this period, and you can’t damn him for having made a decent living out of it. But, despite its superficial air of contemporary, “What’s Another Year?” is finally a song which could have been a smash for Tom or Engelbert in any year.
Punctum’s on a roll! Been liking your analysis of the hits so far!
Punctum @33: “Hold Me Now” doesn’t have a happy ending! It’s a break-up song, and hence more like a sad prequel to “What’s Another Year” than the comforting resolution you suggest.
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.
The Eurovision fans, of which there are many and mostly (but not all) gay, refer to this as “What’s another queer”
No we don’t.