#STORYOFMYLIFE – Day One with James from EI

In this series, we’ll be talking to someone and asking them to pick five songs (over five days) that mean something to them. These may not be their top five songs of all time – merely songs that attach to a specific memory or time in their life.

We continue this series with James from Eurovision Ireland. What’s his first choice, and what’s the story behind it?

Željko Joksimović – Nije Ljubav Stvar

Anyone who knows me knows that languages are a real passion of mine. Indeed, my Eurovision Ireland colleagues know this all too well as I’ve often dragged them into bookshops looking for dictionaries and phrase books in an array of languages… from Monégasque in Monaco when JESC was in Nice, Ukrainian in Kyiv, and most recently Alsatian, Romansh AND Swiss German in Basel!

Loving languages and Eurovision often go hand in hand and the contest has brought so many new languages to my ear. NOX and Forogj, Világ! made me want to learn Hungarian. The ethereal sounds of Christine Guldbrandsen’s Alvedansen gave me an appreciation of Norwegian. But the deep melancholy and poetry of songs like “Lejla” by Hari Mata Hari and Molitva by Marija Šerifović captivated me so much I went to university to study the language (or some would argue four!) that they were sung in. I could have included any one of a long list of songs in this series, but I settled on Serbia’s 2012 entry Nije Ljubav Stvar – very simply because this was the first song I understood in Serbian.

Thanks to Eurovision I could say deeply romantic and profound things in Serbian long before I could say anything useful, just by quoting Eurovision lyrics – often to the deep bemusement of my lecturers and fellow students! Anyone who has learned another language knows it starts as a wall of noise. Impenetrable. Indistinct. But little by little, you chip away at it and it starts to give you something. Single words and simple questions turn into phrases. These turn into longer conversation, ideas, stories, feelings… but it takes time, a lot of effort and a lot of work.

I started studying Serbian in autumn 2011, so by the time the contest rolled around in 2012 I had a few months of solid learning under my belt, even with a long way still to go. Listening to Nije Ljubav Stvar ahead of the contest, it was definitely my kind of music. A brooding and haunting ballad with a strong traditional sound. But what made this special was that the very first time I heard it, I understood. “Better luck next time, you tell me that so easily,” – I didn’t have to look up a translation of the lyrics – I knew what he was singing! That moment when you realise all your hard work with learning a language, new grammar, new words, new ways of expressing things, it’s all starting to pay off… it’s such a rush of a feeling and one you never forget! I’m not saying I studied for a degree purely to be able to understand Eurovision music in its native language… but it was definitely a deciding factor!

If you have five songs that really mean something to you, drop us a line with them and the stories behind them, and you could feature soon.

Author: John Stanton

Source: Eurovision Ireland