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Introduction
Eurovision 1961 was hosted in Cannes, France, in the exact same building as 1959. This time, I watched a recording from the Dutch channel NOS with its post-2005 logo, but the commentary was in English. I couldn’t make out every word of the commentary, which makes me feel better about my skills in other languages. This Eurovision was hosted during a massive rainstorm, and the commentator says it’s fitting for the tension each country is facing—exactly the sort of humor that British commentary is famed for. We get a little tour of the building before starting the contest, which would become the norm in modern Eurovision.
Sixteen countries participated in this contest, making it the first one with more songs than 1956’s fourteen. It had all countries from 1960, plus three new ones: Finland, Spain, and Yugoslavia. Spain is the biggest mainstay of these; they’re one of the big guys, always eager to showcase their musical identity. They haven’t tasted victory since the four-way win in 1969, a year after their only solo win, but they’ve come close many times. Finland had terrible luck when the language rule was enforced, and they only won in 2006 with the perfect combo of absurd costumes and banger music. However, they earned second place in 2023 with their own language, which I think is awesome.
Yugoslavia is the only country that has won Eurovision (in 1989) but no longer exists. They’re also the only Slavic country to participate during the Cold War. Though Yugoslavia is no more, its successor states (especially Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia) have a knack for embracing their own culture and sense of humor, unlike some countries in Eurovision. Not all former Yugoslav countries have been as successful—Bosnia and Herzegovina is clogged by financial problems, and Montenegro is best known for their infamous 2012 entry, “Euro Neuro”.
Spain: Estando contigo
Artist: Conchita Bautista (not to be confused with Conchita Wurst)
Language: Spanish, which Spain has used every year except 2016
Key: G minor in the verses, G major in the chorus
It may sound admirable that Spain has stuck to Spanish—sometimes with a mix of English—but they completely ignore their other languages in Eurovision! Frankly, it’s weird that France has used their other languages (like Corsican and Breton) multiple times, while Spain, whose other languages are much less endangered, hasn’t. What about Catalan or Basque or Galician or all those others? At least Andorra’s songs have represented Catalan.
As much as I wish Spain would represent more languages, Spanish is a wonderful language full of personality, and I’ve learned it on and off for the past year. I’m still not that good at it, but I can understand some if I listen close enough.
This song’s composition contrasts against its title (Being with you). It’s a jazzy tune alternating between minor and major key, and the lyrics are about how amazing it is being with the one you love. Perhaps I am stereotyping, but lyrics about love always sound a little more passionate in Spanish. Eventually, the major key dominates and the song sounds more typically Spanish. All in all, it’s a fitting debut for Spain.
Monaco: Allons, allons les enfants
Artist: Colette Deréal
Language: French
Key: B♭ major, B major
I can practically hear people who don’t speak French giggling like children when the French presenter says “baguette”. I always forget that the word also refers to stick-shaped objects, like a conductor’s baton.
This is another song that sounds like the opening of a family movie, both in composition and lyrics. The title means “let’s go, let’s go children”, and it’s basically a “today’s gonna be a great day” song in French. I’ve come to find charm in this style of entries that I keep calling “old-timey”.
Austria: Sehnsucht
Artist: Jimmy Makulis, a Greek by birth
Language: German
Key: C major
This is mostly an average 60’s ballad about being with your love interest. The instrumental breaks liven things up a bit, but it goes back to ballad style when he sings. Also, maybe it’s his accent, but his lyrics are a little hard to understand. It plays things completely safe with the early 60’s Eurovision formula and thus fails to stand out.
Finland: Valoa ikkunassa
Artist: Laila Kinnunen
Language: Finnish, the first non-Indo-European language in Eurovision
Key: B minor, C minor
In Eurovision, there’s a pattern with countries that don’t speak Indo-European languages.* At first, their language performs poorly, but if the country keeps using it, it grows on viewers and scores better. Finland is an extreme example: it took 62 years for a song in Finnish to reach the top five. The previous record was seventh place, but now it’s second place! When the language rule was first dropped in the 70’s, Finland sang in English each time, and they initially did the same starting 2000. However, since 2008, they’ve sent non-English songs now and then, and this year, it paid off. (Don’t forget that Finland has sung in Swedish twice: 1990 and 2012. It’s their second official language.)
This is a ballad with lots of minor key 2-5-1 chord progressions, so it would fit well in an old movie. It seems that this genre has become common once again in this contest. I find it charming to hear genres of music sung in a language you wouldn’t expect, but I wouldn’t think much else of it even if it was in English or German.
* Except Israel. Hebrew songs have scored highly from the start.
Yugoslavia: Neke davne zvezde (Неке давне звезде)
Artist: Ljiljana Petrović
Language: Serbo-Croatian (Serbian). See disclaimer below.
Key: G major
No European language is more annoying and confusing to talk about than Serbo-Croatian. Everything I’ve read about it seems like it’s one language with minor differences in each country, and when Yugoslavia existed, it was considered one language. But after the breakup, people talk about Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin as though they’re four different languages. You’d think each Serbo-Croatian speaker would call their language the name matching their country, but then you have Bosnia and Herzegovina with its mess of people calling it Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian.
In this post series, I’ve chosen to call the language Serbo-Croatian, followed by the regional name in parentheses. This will also apply to songs after the Yugoslav breakup. If you’re a speaker of this language, I hope you find it an acceptable compromise.
Oh yeah, I should talk about the song itself. Eurovision 1961 so far has a LOT of slow ballads, and if you’re a longtime Eurovision fan, you’re probably laughing because people complain about ballad overload every year. Once again, my brain is considering where this would fit in a stage play. Maybe this could go a third of the way through, when the protagonist sings about their emotional dilemma.
Netherlands: Wat een dag
Artist: Greetje Kauffeld
Language: Dutch, whose unusual G sound I can’t get over
Key: G major, A♭ major
There are so many movie-like songs in this contest, it almost feels like I am watching a stage play. More specifically, a DVD of a stage play whose audio comes in multiple languages, and I am watching it with someone who keeps messing with the language settings. The DVD would have to have a ton of unusual languages on and not just English and Spanish and maybe French, so, um… maybe a disc meant to be distributable throughout the EU?
I think my metaphor fell apart.
This song starts seeming like yet another slow ballad, but thankfully, it transitions to an upbeat movie-like song. The title means “what a day”, and it feels like the movie protagonist is reflecting on an average but pleasant day. Either at the start of the movie, or as a breather midway through. I don’t know why I am thinking about movies so much. I barely ever watch them except on long flights.
I need to stop getting sidetracked. This song has a catchy chorus with a fun chord progression, so it stands out for more than anything before. The closest contender is Spain.
Sweden: April, april
Artist: Lill-Babs (Barbro Margareta Svensson)
Language: Swedish
Key: B♭ major, but it somehow ends in D♭ major
Yet another song that belongs near the start of a movie or stage play. It’s quite literally about April, not even about a romantic event, just about the month itself. It has some bird-like whistling and a lot of talk about animals and nature. Other than the premise about a particular month, I have seen all of these song tropes before. They’re just shuffled in a different way. I do appreciate the upbeat goofiness of this song, and the singer’s hand gestures convey mood without language.
The song’s key change is a bait-and-switch. In the instrumental break, it first sounds like it’ll move up to B major, one half step up from B♭ major. But then, with some transitionary chords, it instead goes three half steps up to D♭ major. It really catches you off guard. Shortly after that key change, Lill-Babs lets some laughter seep out, a common pattern in songs of this theme.
Germany: Einmal sehen wir uns wieder
Artist: Lale Andersen, who was 55 years old
Language: German, with one verse in French
Key: E minor in the verses, G major in the choruses; these have the same key signature
This song’s title means “one day, we’ll meet again”. In the verses, Lale Andersen’s notes match a melody, but the lyrics almost sound spoken, like she’s dejected and resigned. Her singing in the choruses sounds close to speech, which isn’t a bad thing; it makes her lyrics easy to understand.
Though it’s Eurovision tradition to mix languages together, the French part was almost certainly added just to appeal to Francophones. I shouldn’t be too critical; this song is bittersweet in just the right way. It’s an often misused word, and I really do mean it like partly bitter, partly sweet. Definitely one of the better songs.
France: Printemps, avril carillonne
Artist: Jean-Paul Mauric, who sadly died at 37
Language: French
Key: E major, F major
Wait, didn’t we just have a song about April from Sweden? Well… two songs about April shouldn’t be much weirder than two songs about breakups.
The lyrics of this song are extremely similar to “April, april”, just in French and with more focus on animals. So the question comes down to: whose song about April was better? Both sound like the opening of a kids’ movie, both have extravagant hand gestures, both simply talk about the natural wonders of April without focusing on romance. Unfortunately, Jean-Paul’s singing is a little off key after the key change. The bright side is I can say the same misheard lyric in “Blood & Glitter” from 2023: Sweden better.
Aside from the singing near the end, this song was pretty good too.
Switzerland: Nous aurons demain
Artist: Franca di Rienzo
Language: French
Key: C major
After the small steps towards modernity in 1960, this contest has gone back to romantic movie songs, and this time we have an orchestral waltz. The title means “Tomorrow we will have…” and it’s about reassuring her love interest’s doubts about the future. I know the contest will step forward in style again by the time we reach the 70’s.
Belgium: September, gouden roos
Artist: Bob Benny, returning from 1959
Language: Dutch
Key: F major, F minor, A major, back to F major… at least, that’s one interpretation
Why did Belgium have so many returning artists in the early years? Did they get lucky in the national selections, or did Belgian singers have little interest in competing? Better question, why did Eurovision 1961 stick so heavily to the old-timey movie style? These are hard to enjoy as standalone songs, I’m sorry. I know my reviews of Belgium’s songs have been meager, but I’ll have tons more to say on their iconic songs like “Euro-Vision”, “J’aime la vie”, and much later, “Sanomi”.
Norway: Sommer i Palma
Artist: Nora Brockstedt, like last year.
Language: Norwegian, with a repeated phrase in French
Key: F minor
This song’s title means “Summer in Palma”, a city on the beautiful German island of Mallorca. What do you mean, “Mallorca is part of Spain”? I don’t know what you’re talking about. (Sorry, I had to make that joke.)
The song’s repeated phrase in French is “Si, mon amour”, which doesn’t quite mean “yes, my love”. If you speak German, it means “doch, meine Liebe”. If you don’t, it means “yes, my love”, but as a contradictory response to a negative yes/no question, like “Are you not coming today?” “Yes, I am.” Alternately, you could interpret it as “sí”, the Spanish word for yes, which would match the lyrics where the singer doesn’t understand her love’s language. It’s all up to interpretation!
In a way, this is the opposite of “Voi Voi” last year. This time, the singer travels far south, and it’s much slower paced. I find that the songs complement each other well.
Denmark: Angelique
Artist: Dario Campeotto, who died two months ago
Language: Danish
Key: A major
After an exception last year, Denmark has gone back to sappy romantic songs. This one is short and simple and not too sugary, and it sticks out slightly by mentioning famous artists like Shakespeare and Rembrandt. The randomized ordering of this contest put all the romantic ballads together, and it took until 2013 to resume deliberate ordering. That’s when the EBU decided random ordering had more drawbacks than benefits.
Luxembourg: Nous les amoureux (the winner)
Artist: Jean-Claude Pascal
Language: French
Key: A minor
Now, we’ve finally reached the good stuff! This song is special among early Eurovision winners because its meaning changes if you know the story behind it. If you don’t know it, it seems like a song about forbidden love, but if you do know, it’s about society rejecting a gay relationship. Indeed, Jean-Claude Pascal eventually came out as gay.
This song is filled to the brim with clever lyrics, for example: “Nous, les amoureux, nous ne pouvons rien contre eux / Ils sont mille et l’on est deux, les amoureux”, which translates to: “We, the lovers, we can do nothing against them / They are a thousand and we are two, the lovers”. It’s an eye-opening look at how western Europe perceived homosexuality just two generations ago. Back then, it seems like most people either refused to accept it or didn’t know it existed, and those who knew they were gay thought almost no one else was. These days, we know gay and bisexual people are quite common, since it’s now much easier to come to terms with it. I think much of today’s gay youth takes their rights for granted, and it’s important to know things weren’t always this way. In some parts of the world, they still aren’t this way.
Even if you don’t know the song is about a gay relationship, there’s a message in it that anyone can understand. It’s that love is real, no matter who it’s between, and no matter if everyone else denies it. The song’s composition fits this theme perfectly, since it’s in a gloomy minor key but sometimes seeps into a more hopeful major key (C major, the same key signature as A minor). Even if the jury didn’t know the song’s true theme, it’s easy to understand why it won.
United Kingdom: Are You Sure?
Artist: The Allisons (Bob Day, John Alford)
Language: English; I won’t count “au revoir” as French, since English has loaned many foreign greetings.
Key: A♭ major
The only duet in the contest, this song is a refreshing breath of modernity. It has a slight rock sound with a straight rhythm, and the vocal harmonies remind me of the 60’s pop music the UK would become famous for. However, this song is weaker than the last two British entries, and I don’t know why the orchestra is so damn quiet in the live performance. I checked out the studio version, and the instrumental is much more audible there.
Italy: Al di là
Artist: Betty Curtis
Language: Italian
Key: A♭ major
This contest ends with a romantic opera song once more. The title means “beyond”, and the lyrics say that beyond everything else in the entire world, there is her lover. It feels like the part of a movie where the protagonist is about to reunite with their lover. I guess it’s a fitting ending, but I struggle to say much else about it other than the hand gestures that Italians are famous for.
Who’s my favorite?
This one is easy. Most songs in this contest, I found boring. Spain and the Netherlands’ songs were pretty decent, but the biggest highlight by a landslide is the winner: Luxembourg, Nous les amoureux. No other song has anywhere near as strong of a message. Out of the first six contests, I’ve agreed with half the winners:
- Germany, 1
- Luxembourg, 1
- Netherlands, 2
- Norway, 1
- Sweden, 1
- (3 winners)
The streak of Germanic countries has been broken! Luxembourg is a borderline case, but I’m not counting them as Germanic because most of their Eurovision singers are French.
General thoughts:
I found Eurovision 1961 an underwhelming year. Most countries sent theater-style music that blended together, and most of the theater-style music was dreary and slow. The UK’s song felt closer to modern music, but the quiet orchestra weighed it down. Spain sent a more creative song a little different from the rest, the Netherlands was nice and uplifting, but Luxembourg is the only true highlight of the contest. It probably didn’t help that there wasn’t much interesting done with the staging, and I realized that when I saw the extravagant dancing in the interval act.
When looking at the results, I noticed something peculiar: the jury votes were highly biased towards late songs. The obvious conclusion is that since the contests have gotten more countries, it’s harder for judges to remember them all. However, I’d argue there is a second cause: most entries are repetitive and samey. The juries were always a little biased towards late songs, but the lack of variety amplified the bias.
I could tell Jean-Claude Pascal didn’t expect to win, because he stuttered a lot when he received the news and was asked to sing again. I’m glad he won, because the more our society accepts homosexuality, the more “Nous, les amoureux” becomes a keystone part of Eurovision history.
See you next time as France beats the Netherlands for most Eurovision wins. Hopefully the next contest won’t be so boring to analyze!
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