Eurovision 1978 – The last year hosted in France

Well, as at this year of course – I’m not saying France will never win again, but their 1977 win was their last one as at 2023. They’ve come close a few times, most recently in 2021 when they came second, but no wins. The contest was hosted in Paris, and had two presenters for the first time in its history. I don’t know why, but my personal suspicion is that the female presenter didn’t speak English well enough, and they didn’t want just one male presenter. I don’t know what it is about Eurovision that seems to demand female hosts.

This is the biggest contest so far – twenty participants. All countries returned from 1977, plus Turkey and Denmark came back, the latter after a 12-year absence. This year also has the first nul points entry since the new scoring system was introduced a few years earlier. There were no postcards as such – instead the artists were filmed backstage as they made their way to the lift that would take them up to the stage.

Eurovision 1977 – The year when the language rule was reinstated

I can’t really find a reason why the language rule was reinstated, so quickly after it was dropped (only four years I think), but it feels like a little bit of a last minute decision, since there were two countries who had already selected their song (Germany and Belgium) and were therefore still allowed to sing in English. I kinda feel like for one year only there should be an anti-English rule, so that the UK will have to send a Welsh barbershop quartet or something, but let’s face it, the two majority English-speaking countries hardly need any help to fail these days, and I think it’s been pretty conclusively proven that it’s not the language that wins the contest, it’s the quality of the song, especially recently.

Anyway, there were eighteen participating countries this year. No newcomers, but Sweden came back and Yugoslavia didn’t enter. It was held in London, UK, and it’s funny to see Angela Rippon presenting, seeing as I saw her get voted off Strictly Come Dancing only yesterday. There were no postcards (boo!) and the lowest-scoring song scored only two points.

Eurovision 1976 – The year that wasn’t quite so hard to rank

I could have gone for a few other titles here – the one with all the full stages (since there were many acts with the maximum six people on stage), or the one where I couldn’t find a full video (for some reason there is no full version of this contest available on YouTube at this point in time, which was rather annoying). I went with this one, because while there were still a lot of middling songs, it was actually for once quite easy to go ‘I like this one better than that one because of this particular thing’.

The contest was held in The Hague in the Netherlands, and I liked that every performer got a big bunch of flowers straight after performing. They probably didn’t have a clue what to bloody do with them, but the Netherlands is good at flowers, dammit, so we’ll hand them out like we mean it! I also liked the postcards, which were actually filmed in the home countries of the artists.

There were eighteen countries competing this year. No newcomers, but Sweden, Malta and Turkey dropped out, while Austria and Greece returned. There were no nul pointers this year – the lowest score was 7 points (totally deserved last place too).

Eurovision 1975 – The year with the last Dutch win for over four decades

Yes, unfortunately the Netherlands’ good Eurovision record was about to go right down the drain. I don’t think we necessarily performed badly (or at least not in the pre-2000 era), but we wouldn’t win again until 2019.

The contest was held in Stockholm, Sweden, with an introduction which assumes that no one knows what or where Sweden is, and at one point a rather cringy viking dragging a blond woman along with him by her hair. Ahh, the seventies, eh?

The postcards feature the performing artists painting a portrait of themselves (with predictably mixed results) including a flag, which the camera then focuses on to indicate the next country. The portraits being a bit shite I can pardon, because not everyone is a painter, but the flags do bring up some very questionable results. Germany’s flag is, apparently, black, orange and orange, Luxembourg decided to adopt the Dutch flag (that blue was way too dark for Luxembourg) and while I appreciate that the UK flag isn’t the easiest to draw, whatever they came up with was more Picasso than Rembrandt.

There were a record of nineteen countries participating, with Turkey making its debut, France and Malta returning and Greece dropping out after their debut in the previous year. There were no nul pointers this year, but Turkey came close with a mere 3 points – quite undeserved, but we’ll get to that.

Eurovision 1974 – The year with ABBA

The most famous Swedish band of all time started their career as winners of Eurovision. Well, maybe not started – I actually have no idea how long they’d been going for when they won, but I’m pretty sure no one outside of Sweden knew who they were.

The contest was held in Brighton in the United Kingdom, because Luxembourg declined to host a second time in a row due to expense. Has there actually ever been another country to host on behalf of someone else, or has it always been the UK who stepped in? I could probably find out, but I’m not all that bothered really.

Just as in the year before there were seventeen countries participating, but not the same ones: France skipped a year due to the death of their president (last minute withdrawal) and Greece made its debut. Scoring went back to 10 points to give out per country, resulting in very low numbers overall (ABBA won with only 24 points) and lots of ties – three songs tied for 4th place and 4 for 14th! Aside from that I was pleased to see that the postcards are back.