Mark Pentleton

Today I’m playing the love duet from the film Moulin Rouge. It’s dedicated to my cousin Anita and her new husband Jimmy who got married yesterday in the beautiful surroundings of Ardkinglas in Argyll. We had a lovely day at the wedding and wish every happiness to Anita and Jimmy – and I hope you [...]

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A big song for Eurovision day itself – performed in French by the Greek-German singer Vicky Leandros, representing Luxembourg back in 1972, just three weeks before I was born! This is one of the signature Eurovision songs and was released in English, German, Greek, Italian and Japanese after winning the contest. For a little nostalgia, [...]

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Tomorrow evening in the Telnor arena in Oslo, this song will be performed by the Belorussian group 3+2, accompanied by Swedish composer and performer Robert Wells of Rhapsody in Rock fame on the piano. I’m not sure how it will go down – it’s a nice ballad, with the added cheese factor of butterfly wings [...]

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Nel blu dipinto di blu, often referred to as Volare won the Sanremo Music Festival in 1958 and was then chosen to represent Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest. It came third, but nonetheless was voted the second most popular Eurovision song ever, beaten to the top spot by Abba’s Waterloo. Today’s interesting but possibly [...]

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There was something about Eurovision in the 1980s – it was probably when I first got interested in the contest and its linguistic and musical “exoticism”, but there’s definitely something about some of the big songs from the 80s, including this classic from Johnny Logan with which he won his second Eurovision (previously with What’s Another [...]

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Day two of our Eurovision countdown and we’re going back to 1988 with Lara Fabian’s Croire, representing Luxembourg that year. The song ended up in 4th place – the winning song in 1988 was Céline Dion’s Ne partez sans moi.
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It’s Eurovision week, so that means only one thing – cheesy tunes from me for at least the next six days! The 2010 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Oslo on Saturday evening, and until then we’ll be reliving some classic ballads from the past, starting today with Nicole’s winning song from 1982, Ein [...]

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