Mouth & MacNeal – ‘I See A Star’

30 May 1974

Not the pair of mismatched TV cops their name suggests, Mouth & MacNeal were the no-less-incongruous singing duo who represented the Netherlands at Eurovision 1974. Mouth in particular seems to have fancied their chances; on game night (in the video below) he bursts onto the stage waving giddily at all and sundry, keeps up an aggressively wacky expression throughout, and twice elbows the arm and rubs the head of his shorter and more likeable partner; for a fleeting instant between elbow jabs she visibly seems to be weighing up the relative merits of winning Eurovision versus kneeing him in the balls. At the start of the first chorus he turns a gimmicky barrel organ, then spends the rest of the track pawing and gurning like the organ-grinder’s monkey.

Mouth & MacNeal finished third, behind the two class acts of the contest. It’d have been a surprise if they had beaten both ‘Waterloo’ and Gigliola Cinquetti’s exquisite ‘Si’, but you have to wonder if Mouth’s grating wackiness cost them the votes to at least finish second. After all, ‘I See A Star’ feels precision-tooled for bubblegum-cabaret era Eurovision and the fashion for rock musicals like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar: big, bouncy, blaring. That’s not to say it’s particularly good or even likeable, but purely as a song it sticks its routine and in any other year could well have snuck the win. The takeaways here are: don’t perform like you’ve already won the thing; don’t grin and fidget like a sugar-rushing bear; don’t come at the greatest pop group of the decade. Oh, and leave the barrel organ at home.