Limahl and the Eurovision Song Contest

Limahl and the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’

This may come as a surprise to some fans of Kajagoogoo, but back in the days when Nick, Steve, Jez and Stuart were busy being ‘Art Nouveau’, future band mate Limahl was doing something quite different – recording for the Eurovision Song Contest!

Shortly after moving to London in the June of 1979, the young (soon-to-be) Limahl purchased some studio time to record some new songs. This triggered some interest in Limahl by in one of the recording engineers, who paired him with female vocalist Christine Panayi.  The duo set to work on a song that was later to be entered into the ‘Song for Europe’ selection process – hopefully gaining entry into the Eurovision event representing the UK.  Working under the name ‘Kris’ (a play on their first names – Chris/Christine), the pair set to work.

Photograph courtesy of limahl.com

The single ‘Strange Kinda Love’ was the result.

Limahl describes the recording session:

“I took the underground to ‘Kingley Studios’ near Regent Street where I met Christine and our photo was taken together just outside the studio building…the recording session was fun, I liked the song and learned it pretty fast but one small thing bothered me……they told me I was singing too “proper” !!  In their opinion the voice training and theatre stuff had perhaps steered me too much in the direction of a theatre style voice and I was quite secretly upset by this observation, although I didn’t show it.  Thankfully they persisted in pushing me in the direction of a more contemporary sound which finally came”

Unfortunately, the song did not get selected for the Eurovision Song Contest that year…

http://www.limahl.com/media/swf_players/strange_kinda_love.swf

Many thanks to Limahl and Christine for bringing this article to KajaFax!

For more information on all things Limahl, please visit the official Limahl website:

http://www.limahl.com/

2011 KajaFax