This week, for a change, all of our team’s picks will be those songs that we simply can’t stand. As always, all opinions are those of the writer giving them, and not necessarily of escXtra as a whole! Starting off the week is a song that some consider to be the true winner of 1968 – Rodrigo most certainly does not.
United Kingdom 1968: Cliff Richard – Congratulations (2nd place)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN4cSu45HXI
Much controversy arose a couple of years ago when it surfaced that, allegedly, Spain had bought the 1968 contest, being the only reason why Massiel’s ‘La la la’ defeated Cliff Richard’s ‘Congratulations’. Whether true or not, I still can’t believe that there are people so deluded that think that the latter is, in fact, a better song than the former. ‘Congratulations’ is all sorts of annoying, and every time I hear the first couple of chords I want to put an end to my life (well, probably not so badly, as how else would I rant about it).
The point is, I simply don’t get the hype around that song. I find that there are really no redeeming features to it, perhaps Cliff’s voice excepted. But the lyrics (granted, La la la is not bloody Shakespeare, but even though it seems hard to believe the lyrics are actually quite good), the melody, the annoying beat. I know a lot of fans think it should have won. In my head a runner up position was surprisingly high.
Looking back at the early days of the contest there are a lot of gems that easily get overlooked, normally because fans are obsessed with mediocre (at best) efforts like this one. I guess that is what makes it, for me, the most obvious anti-pick from the early days of the contest. I wish the ‘Congratulations’ era (it even gave the bloody 2005 special contest its name, for crying out loud) be over soon and we move on to more deserving, real quality, entries that have been since lost and forgotten (see what I did there?).
