In which we learn the importance of a really good dialect coach...
Sorry about, that kids (and special apologies to dear Thombeau, emcee extraordinaire of The Redundant Variety Hour, on whose turf I am most definitely treading here), but for no good reason I've had this tune stuck in my head for the past day or two, and there's no good vintage video I can find of dear Miss Dionne Warwick having her way with it. Leave it to the inimitable song stylings of Miss Cia Löwgren, then, to drive it right out.
Whatever she may or may not be adding to the proceedings, however, it has to be admitted that it's the backup dancers - the Safety Gals, as it were - who are really rocking this casbah. As for Miss Löwgren, the French Wikipedia reports that she was last seen in a "série de comédies pornos danoise" in 1975, which doesn't really sound like a major career move. Given that she looks like Cindy Brady as reinterpreted by Mattel and sounds like Claudine Longet on a very bad day, I suppose it's a not a huge surprise.
Certainly nothing like learning that Scandinavian variety specials can be just as lunatic as their Italian counterparts. Who knew?
Aha! Although I have never actually heard of the "lady" (and bearing in mind the direction her career travelled, I am not really surprised), it would appear from YouTube that this TV spectacular was a British production - starring none other than arch god-botherer Dame Cliff ("I'm not gay at all") Richard and chums, it appears to have been designed solely to showcase how utterly dire the pre-Abba North European musical world really was. Check out more here if you dare. I won't be, obviously. Jx
ReplyDeleteI don't like to cast aspersions not being musically gifted myself and I usually adhere to the don't mock if you can't do better school of criticism but that child must have known someone to get on that program! The audience would seem to agree.
ReplyDeleteThe dancer directly behind her with the silvered dress is selling it for all she's worth.
She has a quality that an old friend used to refer to as "je ne sais huh?"
DeleteBut the dancers make it all worth while...
Poor thing. A chauffeur for a 442? Tsk Tsk.
ReplyDeleteOh. My. God.
ReplyDeleteYour description is spot on, of course!
Happy New Year, darling! XOXO
However was she able to afford a chauffeur?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a clip from the kind of film in which we find out a lot more about their relationship later on, in a scene that also includes a chambermaid and a pizza-delivery boy....
DeleteOh, I don't think she's quite up to Eurovision standards - which really says it all, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling it was friction or maybe even suction, but certainly not diction, that won Miss Löwgren this spot.
ReplyDelete