THIS WEEK IN 1980
1 What’s Another Year Johnny Logan
2 Geno Dexy’s Midnight Runners
3 Coming Up Paul McCartney
4 Mirror In The Bathroom The Beat
5 She’s Out Of My Life Michael Jackson
6 No Doubt About It Hot Chocolate
7 Hold On To My Love Jimmy Ruffin
8 I Shoulda Loved Ya Narada Michael Walden
9 My Perfect Cousin The Undertones
10 Silver Dream Machine David Essex Exactly ten years after Ireland first won the Eurovision, 25-yearold Johnny Logan gave us a second victory singing Shay Healy’s ‘What’s Another Year’.
The song which launched Logan’s international career, soared to number one in a number of countries, including the UK, Israel, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, and of course Ireland.
It is widely regarded as one of the best Eurovision winners and was selected as one of the 14 greatest Eurovision entries for a special to mark the 50th anniversary of the contest.
Johnny Logan wasn’t the first choice to sing ‘What’s Another Year’, but Glen Curtin turned it down. Riverdance composer Bill Whelan rearranged the track to suit Logan’s singing style for the contest.
Logan would go on to make Eurovision history by winning the contest for a second time in 1987 with his own composition ‘Hold Me Now’. The man known as ‘Mr Eurovision’ would taste victory again in 1992 as writer of Linda Martin’s ‘Why Me’.
‘What’s Another Year’ is one of seven Irish entries to win Eurovision. It was preceded by Dana’s win with ‘All Kinds Of Everything’ in 1970 and was followed by the Logan double in
‘87 and ‘92, Niamh Kavanagh with ‘In Your Eyes’ in 1993, Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids’ in 1994 and Eimear Quinn with ‘The Voice’ in 1996.
We’ve also had some near misses, coming in second place with Sean Dunphy (1967), Linda Martin (1984), Liam Reilly (1990) and Marc Roberts (1997).
Ireland’s record in more recent times has been poor - since the introduction of semi finals in 2004, we’ve failed to reach the final seven times. With the 2020 contest called off, we’ll never know how Lesley Roy’s ‘Story Of My Life’ would have fared.