The 9th episode started at 18.10 on Sunday 27 August. Elsje van Jaarsveld presented it while Ilse Schurmann wrote the text and produced the show. Technical production is by Wihan Nel.
This episode again ended after 20 minutes at 6.30 pm. During that time, 5 songs were played.
SONG 1 was RISE LIKE A PHOENIX by CONCHITA WURST. Conchita represented Austria in 2014 in Copenhagen. It was only Austria’s second victory after 1966 by Udo Jurgens. There were high expectations for Eurovision 2015 in Vienna with Udo going to get a central role in the hosting. Unfortunately, he died 5 months before Eurovision started that year.
SONG 2 was IK WIL ALLES MET JOU DELEN by MAYWOOD. This was the entry for the Netherlands in 1990. One member of the duo Alice May composed the song. Maywood was a household name in the 80’s with several hots like Late at night, Rio and Mamo, all in English. Maywood also had hits on the South African charts. Dominec Reynecke covered the song in Afrikaans but unfortunately it is not on Youtube. Maywood also released an English version of the song, NO MORE LIGHTS TO GUIDE ME. Interesting is that a Dutch song is played 10 or so minutes after Max Verstappen of the Netherlands won the Dutch grand prix in Zandvoort.
SONG 3 was YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE by SERGEY LAZAREV. Survey represented RUSSIA at the 2016 Eurovision song contest and ended in third place. He won the televoting but did not get enough points from the juries to win. Sergey was a big favourite Eurovision fans, but things have changed since the war in Ukraine and many fans turned against Russian artists. Roy of ESC Covers was at the time the president of the fan club of REST OF THE WORLD (the countries who could not participate in Eurovision) and they voted Sergey’s song has their favourite and Roy handed an award to Sergey in Stockholm at the press conference. Sergey also recorded the song in Russian. In South Africa RIAN SWANEPOEL recorded it, but also in English.
SONG 4 was LONG LIVE LOVE by OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN. She represented the United Kingdom at the 1974 Eurovision song contest and got fourth place. Although Olivia was one of the favourites that year it was mainly related to the fact that she was so well known from big hits especially in the USA from about 1969 onwards.
SONG 5 was ERES TU by MOCEDADES. They represented SPAIN at the 1973 Eurovision song contest. The song ended in second place. It was sung in Spanish and was a very big hit in most of the Spanish speaking Americas, but also in the United States as well. Juan Carlos Calderon composed the song. He was Spain’s top composer at the time. Mocedades also recorded it in English, German, Italian and Basque. Many covers were recorded of the song in several languages. Famous artists who covered it are Dana Winner, Il Divo, Perry Como, Nana Mouskouri, Karel Gott and The Kelly family. In South Africa GE KORSTEN recorded it in English as TOUCH THE WIND. Namibian singer TIRO did it as well, RINA HUGO recorded it in Afrikaans as JY’S VIR MY and NEDINE BLOM did it also in Afrikaans as WAAI WEER WIND as a promo CD single.
The Mocedades vinyl single was released in South Africa, actually two different pressings by R P M. People will notice it was only released here in 1974 and not 1973 when it was the Eurovision entry, making these two singles very sought after by fans.
The 9th episode was a very interesting one and we are looking forward to the remaining 4 episodes.
Featured image source – Youtube