When your country has had success in our favourite TV show, the pressure is always on your singers to repeat that success year after year. But there often comes a year (or more), when those good placings desert you.
I like the 1973 contest. It’s nicely optimistic, and there is a decent group of songs. So a song that would do reasonably well in another year just falls away. This happened to today’s birthday girl Martine Clémenceau. Her little song had nothing wrong with it as such, but her fate was that there were many better songs around. Her final placing of 15th was France’s second worst at the time, and it would take until 1986 before a French song had a worse finishing position. But was she hard done to? I think so.
Martine is 74 today.
Bonne anniversaire, Martine!