When Katrina and the Waves performed the UK’s Eurovision entry in 1997, the BBC asked its Kansas-born singer to tone down her accent.
Katrina Leskanich was not pleased. “I told them that would be me impersonating Dick Van Dyke, and it wasn’t going to be possible.”
Sharing memories of performing in the Eurovision song contest ahead of this year’s final, being hosted in Liverpool, Leskanich recalled how performing in Dublin in the 1990s felt like “a barn dance”.
She told the Radio Times: “Compared to today, it was like a small barn dance, very intimate. The hosts, RTÉ, were wandering around saying: ‘We can’t win, it’s breaking the bank.’ We knew all the other artists, and every night another country would host a party.”
The improvised feel extended to her own victory, which took her by surprise, not least since it was the UK’s first since Bucks Fizz in 1981. “Even backstage, when it looked as though we couldn’t be overtaken, people were saying: ‘Don’t get too excited.’ So we just sat there, guzzling champagne.”
Leskanich did not realise she had to perform again, so continued drinking, soon becoming “300 sheets to the wind” before feeling “the hand of Ronan Keating on my shoulder: ‘Come on, love.’” She remembered the encore as “out of tune, out of time, the wrong words, utter chaos”.
She added: “I glanced up and Terry Wogan had a Guinness in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, and was balancing an Irish whiskey on his head. Good times.”
Katrina and the Waves were already known thanks to their 1985 hit Walking on Sunshine, and they used a song recorded four years earlier, Love Shine a Light, to represent the UK. “We hadn’t put it on an album. It had gone in the bottom drawer because somebody said: ‘It’s a bit too Eurovisiony,’” Leskanich said.
Leskanich had seen her band as a wildcard entry, given she did not have the wholesome look typical of the era’s winners. “It was still squeaky clean back then, and I was busy trying to look like Nico from the Velvet Underground,” she said.
Ultimately she thinks it was this difference that gave her the winning advantage.
She said: “I can’t stand these dreary ballads full of self-importance. You want to get some goosebumps moving in the room. That’s what happened for us. We had some crackle and pop, and we were in.”
She said the band had seen off stiff competition from more conventional Eurovision rivals, including a song named Yodel in the Canyon of Love, but they retained confidence in the quality of their song.
“When you’re in these competitions, the other songs don’t so much grow on you as lose their offensiveness,” she said.
Wogan, the host, had told her that “he really believed in the song”, despite others warning her that the UK was unlikely to win due to political voting. “I didn’t understand that then, but now, having watched 289 Eurovisions, I have a better idea,” she said.
She thinks that although much has changed 26 years later, the contest has retained its essential nature.
She said: “It’s still a curiosity, a bit like Miss Universe. The UK hasn’t always put forward its best music, but other countries do, and their cultural aspects are captivating. The buxom milkmaids bent down, cleavage falling out over the pails of milk, the babushkas … You don’t know where to look, but you keep looking.”
