Editorials & Opinion

The Best of the Worst – Peter’s nul points countdown

“Nul points” is the stuff of Eurovision folklore. Despite never actually being uttered on stage at the contest, it has become a phrase that has transcended the contest and entered into popular culture. Reserved for the very worst of the worst, the absolute pits, only a handful of songs in the history of the contest have ever been unlucky enough to “earn” this accolade. Many have said that it’s better to get zero points than two or three, and this maybe be true – it’s certainly a very exclusive club.
Since the expansion of the contest to include semi-finals and around 40 countries to potentially received votes from, some thought the days where a contest could produce a song that fails to register any score at all were long over, but just last month in Vienna, not one but two songs managed this dubious feat. A lot of fans thought they didn’t deserve their fate, but what of the other songs that have scored nothing over the years? Were they really as bad as history would have you believe?
To answer this question, I’ll be counting down in two parts some of the songs that in my completely factual opinion maybe weren’t so bad after all – and a couple that definitely were! Obviously I haven’t included songs from the scoring systems in use before 1975 when a total of about 17 points was on offer and half the songs failed to score; this countdown is for the last 40 years when a nul pointer was all the rarer. If you disagree, or indeed emphatically agree, please leave your comments and let us know. But for now, let’s dive into the depths of Zerovision…

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