Eurovision 1961 – the year with the first Saturday show

Yep, that’s right, up until this year the contest had been held on a weekday.

France hosted after their win in 1960, so the contest was held in Cannes. The contest was growing too – there were no less than three new countries participating this year: Finland, Spain and Yugoslavia, making for sixteen contestants.

The downside to having sixteen contestants in an era whose (which’s?) music I don’t like, is that it means even more opportunity for not liking a song, and in that sense this year was pretty tough on me. You can more or less disregard every ranking below 2nd, because all those were really just an agonising toss-up of whether this annoying voice deserved to be lower than that boring melody. And when I say agonising I mean not the agony of choice, but the agony of really not wanting to listen to these songs ever again, but (having committed to doing a ranking) making myself listen anyway.

Eurovision 1960 – The year when the previous winner first passed on the award

Yeah sorry, I couldn’t find anything more interesting to say about this year. It’s not as boring as 1958, but less interesting than 1959. The Netherlands declined to host, despite winning the previous year, because they already hosted in 1958. Guess who stepped in? Yep, the United Kingdom! So the contest was held in London and hosted by ultimate posho Catherine Boyle. The most fun thing in these ancient contests is the giant, low-tech scoreboards with assistants pointing at the relevant artists with giant sticks as if they’re teachers in a classroom.

This year the amount of contestants went up to 13 – Luxembourg returned after their one-year hiatus and Norway made their debut. As usual my ranking should be taken with a grain of salt – often it’s just a case of trying to determine which song I find a hair more boring than the next one.

I should also come back on my comment on Germany’s song in the previous year, where I wondered whether the German ladies were the only identical twins to ever participate in Eurovision. My husband asked me today (quite rightly) how on earth I could have forgotten about Jedward, and I honestly feel ashamed that I did. It’ll be a while until I get to them, but they really ought to have been unforgettable.

Eurovision 1959 – The year with the triple reprise

The fourth edition of Eurovision was held in Cannes, France, after they won in the previous year. Contestant-wise it went up to eleven – Monaco joined for the first time, and while the United Kingdom returned, Luxembourg decided to skip a year (again, no idea why). Each contestant was introduced by means of a revolving backdrop with images representing that country (you know, a windmill for the Netherlands, that kind of crap), and that backdrop was also used during their song.

I’m very glad to say that this year was much more palatable than the previous year, and there’s even one song that I’m really rather fond of by now. This is also the only year in which not just the winner got to sing their song again, but also the two runners-up, hence the title.

Eurovision 1958 – The year with *that* song that didn’t win

Why the fuck can’t you italicise words in the title? Stupid WordPress… >.<

This year the contest was held in Hilversum in the Netherlands, since they won the previous year. The United Kingdom skipped a year, not sure why, but Sweden joined, so there’s still ten songs to suffer through listen to.

From my previous listen-through I should recommend the interval act, which was an upbeat piece of music excellently performed by the Dutch orchestra on site, probably led by Dutch stalwart Dolf van der Linden.

Morbid fact: this is the first ESC where every contestant is dead (at time of writing, of course).

Eurovision 1957 – The (first) year when the winner didn’t host

Switzerland hosted the first edition and won it, and were apparently disinclined to host again, so the contest went to Frankfurt in (West!) Germany. I cannot figure out exactly why Germany was chosen to host, but maybe they just asked around and Germany were the first to say yes. Who knows?

Participants were down to one song each, but we have no less than three new countries debuting: Austria, Denmark and the United Kingdom. There are also two returning artists – something which was much more common in these older contests than it is now.

Anyway, onto the songs!

Eurovision 1956 – The year when it all began.

This year is unique for a number of reasons. Firstly because all participating countries submitted two songs, which has never happened since. Secondly because only the winner was announced, and no other ranking is known for any of the other songs.

Eurovision is known for its controversy (which comes in many, many different forms), and this year is no exception – the Luxembourgish jury could not be in Lugano (Switzerland), where the contest was held, so two Swiss nationals voted in their place. No one knows for certain how things went, but the subsequent Swiss win is just a little suspicious in light of that.

So, as I said, I’m going to post these songs in the order in which they were performed, but I will also list their final official ranking (except this year of course – see paragraph 1) and my own personal ranking, insofar as I’ve been able to establish one.

Unlike the first time when I did this, I will not be commenting on presenters, interval acts or voting, unless I really had something to say about it. During my previous ESC project I literally watched the whole contest, including the voting, but I really can’t be arsed to this time, so in this second round it’s going to be all about the songs. I probably will repeat my previous comments on a song (when I have them), to see if my opinion has changed at all. Note that the ESC at this point did not yet have the rule that a song cannot be longer than three minutes – this becomes relevant very soon!

A Eurovision Bonanza

So, it’s been literally years since I last used this blog, and just like my previous Bible-reading experiment I’m going to go off on a completely different tangent, that being the Eurovision Song Contest. About three years ago, during the height of the pandemic, I decided that I was going to watch every single ESC ever. I should start by saying that I’m a big fan, even though for the longest time there would literally only be about two or three songs out of the whole contest that I actually liked. Only in the past four years or so has the quality gone up by so much that I might end up with up to a third of the songs on my general playlist. That’s by the by though – I love Eurovision because it’s camp, it’s inclusive, it’s a celebration of Europe and it’s many diverse countries and cultures, and it’s simply one of the most entertaining things you could possibly watch.

Anyway, back then I posted my musings on Reddit, in the r/Eurovision subreddit. It generated some traction, I had a few regular commenters, and overall it was a fun project to do. And even then I was vaguely musing about doing the whole thing all over again, because listening to every song just once really isn’t enough to form a proper opinion on it. So I was sitting on that idea, letting it mull in the back of my head, waiting for something to give me that last little push to go ahead and actually do it.

Well, that push has arrived in the form of u/cookiefonster on Reddit, who has decided to do exactly what I did three years ago, except in much more detail. The contest started in 1956, but I didn’t start commenting on every single song until about the mid-sixties, mainly because the songs in the early contests are all very samey and totally not the kind of music I like, so I found it all quite dreadfully boring in those early years. Still, I’ve now started again, and I’m going to make an effort to say at least something about each song (even if it is ‘I can’t find anything to say about this song, which happens quite a lot).

The other thing I’m also going to do is try to rank the songs, or at the very least pick a ‘favourite’ for each year. The reason that’s in quotation marks is because for some years, picking a favourite is going to be akin to trying to decide whether I’d prefer to be kicked in the shins or punched in the face. There will also be quite a few songs that go onto the ‘this is joint last because it’s too boring and I can’t be bothered to try and decide whether it’s more boring than the other boring songs’-pile.

If this all sounds very negative, well, that’s my house style I guess. I do my best to find humour in sitting through hours of music I don’t like to try and find the gems that absolutely can be found among them. There are some old ESC songs that I absolutely adore, and I’ll be gushing about those.

Don’t expect a regular schedule – I’m going to do these as and when I find time and motivation, and I might even get bored again halfway through, who knows. Look out for 1956 soon, when it all began…