3. Seyyal Taner & Lokomotif – Şarkım Sevgi Üstüne (Turkey 1987)
Redeeming features?
Turkey’s first decade at Eurovision was a pretty dismal one, with two last places already under their belt, but they must have felt that they were onto something with this one. Seyyal was a big star, and the song took inspiration from the schlager songs that had done very well in the prior years but kept a distinctly Turkish sound while adding elements of contemporary pop. It’s very catchy and energetic, and one would have thought it could have earned Turkey a respectable result.
What went wrong?
Now we’re at the business end of the countdown, this part gets a little bit trickier. Sure, there have been undeserving losers mentioned already, but their fates have been mostly easy to explain. One feels that this one had all the ingredients to do much better than it did. Perhaps jurors still were just reluctant to vote for Turkey, who never did well until the televoting era. Was it the language? Maybe the sheer unadulterated energy of the song was a con as well as a pro – it’s extremely fast and furious, and perhaps the whirlwind choreography, the key-changes and the ridiculous tempo simply left the jurors exhausted. The singers themselves were certainly out of breath by the end!
