Museum Monday Week Nine: Johnny Logan

25 July 2016 at 21:00 CEST

Johnny Logan performing in 2015 Guy Levy / © BBC

In part nine of our Museum Monday series we look back at one of the most successful acts to have taken to the Eurovision stage, Johnny Logan. He won the Eurovision Song Contest not once but twice as a performer, in both 1980 and 1987 and in 1992 as a songwriter. The term legend is often overused, however, in the case of Johnny Logan, he isn't just any legend, he's a Eurovision Legend!

Over the years many singers have participated in the Eurovision Song Contest more than once. Often previous winners, such as Gigliola Cinquetti, Anne-Marie David or more recently, Charlotte Perrelli, have returned only to fail to repeat their success. Others such as Dima Bilan, Linda Martin and Elena Paparizou, have struck gold on their second attempts. Johnny Logan is the only participant to have won the Eurovision Song Contest each time he has performed. However his involvement with the event goes even further than singing.

In 1980 Johnny represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest with What's Another Year, written by Shay Healy, beating Germany by 15 points. The song topped the charts around Europe including Ireland and the UK. In 1984 he wrote Terminal 3 for the singer Linda Martin which finished second behind Sweden's famous Herreys before returning to the contest in 1987 to make history by writing and performing his second winning entry Hold Me Now. Not content with this, Logan decided to go one better and wrote Why Me? for Linda Martin who took the title in Malmö in 1992.

Johnny Logan therefore performed a song written by someone else in 1980, performed his own song in 1987 and wrote the winning song in 1992. With such unrivalled success it's perhaps no surprise that he was dubbed Mister Eurovision by both press and fans of the contest. Logan continues to perform today and more recently sang a medley of his winning songs at Eurovision's Greatest Hits in London in 2015.