Jade and green. Are there any better colours for your Eurovision outfit? Well, maybe there were in 2017. But back in the 1990s, if you wanted to make an impression, these colours were definitely eye-catching. Now imagine those colours in ladies’ evening wear-cum-lingerie. And then imagine them set off with a long dark raincoat. What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot, as it turned out for Finland at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin. CatCat, the sister duo of Virpi and Katja Kätkä, had won Finland’s national selection with Bye Bye Baby. It was a popular choice at home: the song received almost 26,000 votes in the first Finnish selection to use public voting, comfortably ahead of its closest rival.
Being second in the running order was partly what could go wrong. CatCat performed immediately before Ireland’s Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan, whose home entry, Rock ’n’ Roll Kids, went on to win. And the Finnish song had to wait through the votes of the first 15 countries before receiving anything at all.
In the end, only two juries had Finland in their top ten. Bosnia and Herzegovina awarded one point and Greece awarded ten, leaving CatCat in 22nd place out of 25 with 11 points. So, apart from that, they had it in the bag.
There had been rather more optimism before the contest. Finnish tabloids expected success, while Swedish newspapers had even tipped the catchy melody as a possible winner. The sisters’ distinctive Dublin costumes, known in Finland as “Minni-asut” or “Minnie outfits”, were criticised in the press afterwards, with some people blaming the poor result on the clothes. I’m not sure the outfits were entirely innocent, but the running order and the unusually limited jury support hardly helped.
The result also meant Finland was excluded from the 1995 contest under the relegation system then in use. Yet the deceptive dream did not entirely end in Dublin: Bye Bye Baby remained popular in Finland, became a Eurovision classic there and formed part of the domestic CatCat boom of spring 1994. A song can finish 22nd and still win the afterlife.
