Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.
A year that is impossible to miss when you want to remember is 1985, the gentleman’s year when what you had really resigned yourself to would never happen happened, Norway won the international final.
I would like to claim that the success story this year started with one of the better Norwegian finals, where 10 composers were invited to create a song, a procedure that I like very much, then the person who creates the song is much freer to create something that they really want can stand for.
The voting was very exciting with a foreign expert jury that had a different favorite than the people and luckily you can perhaps say that it was the people’s favorite that got the ticket to the final in Gothenburg, until then the shortest journey any ESC participant had ever taken.
I myself was in the military where I traveled around Troms and Finnmark county as a session assistant and back in 1985 it was not as common to have a TV in all hotel rooms so I was curious if Berlevåg Royal Hotel had it and well they did not.
Big crisis, I had to watch the final in a TV room next to the reception and at that time the TVs weren’t particularly big, I just want to inform you and as if this wasn’t enough the TV cable was hanging near a back door of a bar and bar staff kept walking in this door and disrupting the broadcast.
And as if this wasn’t enough, on this day they opened the world’s northernmost nightclub, which when the songs were performed didn’t really care about the broadcast, but when the rumor that Norway could win the whole thing also came into this TV room and cheered, but others words not quite as I could actually imagine watching the broadcast.
At that time you got VG and Dagbladet very late in the day in Finnmark and the first chance to buy these was on a ferry we took the following Sunday and another crisis, they were sold out for VG, but luckily I found a copy in a bin box so I saved myself inside.
The strange thing about me is that it was only in 1995 that I had the Norwegian winner as my favorite and I will therefore highlight my favorite from 1985 and that is Portugal.
“Penso Em Ti, Eu Sei” was the name of the song and, as usual for my favorite songs at the time, it came much closer to the bottom than it deserved, second last place in fact.
Maria Adelaide Mengas Matafome Ferreira is a bit too long to have as an artist name, so Adelaide Ferreira was left as the one who sang this song and apart from singing she must have had many roles in various soap operas in Portugal, no wonder she actually burst into tears when she had finished singing his song, so this is obviously a very personal song, but the song is absolutely nothing to cry about.
1983 was my first trip to Europe and my first Eurovision at the venue. In 1984 I went to Europe again and watched Eurovision in Denmark with a penfriend who lived near Legoland. We spent the day at Legoland and then returned to his apartment to watch Eurovision. Unfortunately in 1985 I was unable to travel to Europe and so could not watch Eurovision but was well informed about the entries via penfriends and even got several vinyl singles. I had many favourites, number one being Kinder dieser welt from Austria, with Denmark, Germany, Italy and Norway making the top 5. 1985 also provided a few horrors especially the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Featured image – Youtube