This article forms part of the OnEurope archive and was originally published on oneurope.co.uk. It has been permanently migrated to oneurope.net, the official home of OnEurope.
Eurovision 2013 was full of songs competing for attention, but sometimes one line is enough to decide whether an entry sounds inspired, unintentionally funny or simply impossible to forget. These are my picks for the contest’s best, worst and most baffling lyrics, from Albania to the United Kingdom.
There is poetry here, along with romantic declarations, heroic imagery, strange questions and phrases that seem to have wandered in from another song. Some lyrics are elegant; others are memorable precisely because they make you stop and ask what they mean. Either way, these are the lines that stood out.
The Eurovision 2013 lyric list
Albania – We only speak one language, so there are no tears anymore
Armenia – Who’s the one with the clever face? That can tell us what is in space?
Austria – But when you’re down here kneeling, there’s no chance to see it
Azerbaijan – I’m lost in your smile, freefalling for miles
Belarus – We play-oh, we play-oh to the rhythm of a cha-cha
Belgium – ‘Cause he didn’t fight for life when he was up against the wall
Bulgaria – Golden boys, girls for millions
Croatia – And the last piece of dried old bread I’ll share with you
Cyprus – And I will always be here for your hardest goodbye
Denmark – So come and face me now here on the stage tonight
Estonia – Now I’m standing on the road looking into my heart where the wind is whistling
Finland – I don’t think I know ladies that will give you cuter babies
France – My neck still shows your tag, I liked exchanging skin
Georgia – My heart is higher than the highest kite
Germany – Crash and burn and lose my mind
Greece – A traffic light in the middle of the sea
Hungary – she makes a carriageway of rosemary pulled by crickets
Iceland – When the wind blows against me I climb over tall mountains
Ireland – And when the stars are aligned you got to make love a state of mind
Israel – Once again at daytime, I’ll save a warm and enveloping gaze
Italy – As the world falls to pieces, I distance myself from excesses and bad habits
Lithuania – Because of the shoes I’m wearing today, one is called love, the other is pain
Macedonia FYR – Come on now, get up all gypsies
Malta – ‘Cause good ol’ Jeremy likes his rigorous routine
Moldova – For a thousand nights, the silence swallows me, it wants to forget you, it’s asking too much
Montenegro – I need a party that won’t stop until a girl is showing a piece of flesh
Netherlands – Hopes turned into fear and with my one wing I can’t fly
Norway – I have the future on my tongue
Romania – Like a mountain in the sky, love is high so high
Russia – What if we aimed to stop the alarms?
Serbia – Trust me, sister, I’m doing you a favour
Slovenia – you flow through my veins, inside me you’ll stay
Spain – You are the light that crosses the universe
Sweden – Isn’t it crazy? Yeah, isn’t it crazy?
Switzerland – time is flowing to the sea, we’re together, you and me
Ukraine – I’m like a butterfly spinning round the sun as if to dare
United Kingdom – you never see the rainbow, you just curse the rain
From “a traffic light in the middle of the sea” to “you never see the rainbow, you just curse the rain”, Eurovision 2013 offered lyrics that could be tender, dramatic, confusing or gloriously odd. Whether any of them would help a song win—or condemn it to the bottom of the scoreboard—is another matter entirely.
