The 10th episode started at 18.10 on Sunday 3 September. 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 RIVERDANCE by MICHAEL FLATLEY and his dancers, including dancing champion JEAN BUTLER. The composer was BILL WHELAN. This is not a Eurovision entry but was performed and played during the interval act. The interval act is after the songs were performed to give the people time to vote and then the votes were counted. There have been several interesting interval acts but RIVERDANCE from 1994 in Dublin, Ireland is the most famous and became a worldwide success. Michael and his dancers also visited South Africa.
SONG 2 was MISS KISS KISS BANG by ALEX SWINGS, OSCAR SINGS. They sang in English but a Spanish version was also released. The song represented Germany at the 2009 Eurovision song contest in Moscow. It did not score well but became a big hit around the world. R S G played it many times. The song was also covered in Afrikaans, with the same title. It is a duet between PATRICIA LEWIS and DAID HASSELHOFF (famous from Knight rider). David sings his part in Afrikaans as well.
SONG 3 was POWER TO ALL OUR FRIENDS by CLIFF RICHARD. It was his second participating for the United Kingdom, having sang for them in 1968 with Congratulations and coming 2nd. This time he had to be content with a 3rd place. The song was covered by various artists and the Greek cover is very good and was very successful. Unfortunately, nobody from South Africa as far as we know covered it in either English or Afrikaans.
SONG 4 was EUPHORIA by LOREEN. She represented Sweden at the 2012 Eurovision song contest in Baku Azerbaijan. She won the contest. The song was composed by Thomas Gson and Peter Bostrom. Roy from ESC Covers sent a lot of time with the composers. The song was covered in Afrikaans by Tanya V but it was nowhere near as successful as Loreen’s original. The Eurovision fans vote every year for their top 250 Eurovision songs and in 2012 Euphoria debited number one and achieved the position for the next 9 years, so a total of 10 years from 2012 to 2021 it was the fans number 1 song. In 2022 it was knocked down to position 2 by a song from Spain. This year Loreen took part again for Sweden with TATTOO, again composed by Thomas and Peter plus a few other people. And Loreen won again, so she not only gave Sweden a 7th victory but also became the first female to score to victories, putting her on par with Johnny Logan who is the only other singer with 2 victories.
SONG 5 was TAKE ME TO YOUR HEAVEN by CHARLOTTE NILLSON. Later, after her marriage, her surname changed to PERRELLI. Charlotte represented Sweden at the 1999 Eurovision song contest in Jerusalem. Roy from ESC Covers arrived at the airport from Johannesburg 5 minutes after the plane with the Nordic delegation, among others Charlotte arrived. Charlotte and Roy stood next to each other in the queue at passport control and chatted. He predicted that she would win, she was surprised but pleased. After her victory, she came to him with a signed CD single of her song. Back home Roy pitched the song to Patricia Lewis who also recorded it in English and it became a big success. Roy sent a copy of Patricia’s recording to the composers and producers in Stockholm and they were so pleased with Patricia’s version that they invited her to Stockholm where they produced an entire CD for her which included songs they had especially written.
The 10th episode was interesting, although ESC Covers are not found of instrumental songs but realize that Riverdance is special in its own way. Due to the rugby match next week, one episode will be lost and so there are just 2 episodes remaining.
Featured image source – Youtube