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Introduction
We’ve reached the tenth Eurovision Song Contest, and the first of three Eurovisions hosted in Italy! Each one was hosted in a different Italian city, and this was in Naples. For the first time ever, this contest was broadcast outside the European Broadcasting Union: in Czechoslovakia,* Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and the Soviet Union.** This time, I watched it with English commentary, which should be a nice breather from all this Dutch.
Sweden returned after skipping last year, and Ireland entered the contest for the first time, making for 18 countries total. You probably already know Ireland was a highly successful participant in the 80’s and 90’s. They’re the only country to win three years in a row (1992-1994), they’re the first country to win six and seven times (1994, 1996), and they had the most wins of any Eurovision country from 1994 to 2022. However, Sweden has caught up since then, and since 2023, their win record is tied with Ireland. It’s generally accepted that since the language rule was lifted, Ireland and the UK lost their advantage and struggled to shine (with a few lucky exceptions).
The winner of this contest is a fun one: “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” from Luxembourg, probably the most famous Eurovision song of the 60’s. I first heard a portion of it when watching a compilation of all Eurovision winners around April 2022, and it was the first to wow me. I’ve already heard the song in full, but I expect it to be the highlight of this contest anyway.
* Amusingly, I know someone who talks about Czechoslovakia as though it still exists.
** Referred to by David Jacobs, the British commentator, as “Russia”. Now that I think of it, it’s analogous to calling the United Kingdom “England”.
Netherlands: ‘t Is genoeg (also known as Het is genoeg)
Artist: Conny Vandenbos
Language: Dutch
Key: C minor
The British commentator had a tinge of bitterness when he said the Netherlands had already won in 1957 and 1959. It sounds like he hoped the Netherlands wouldn’t win this year and felt his own country, which hadn’t won yet, deserved to take home the prize.
Anyway, this is a spicy breakup song whose title means “it is enough”. It’s mostly in minor key, but seeps into major key a few times. The major key parts come off as reflecting on the few good times, and they’re sparse to indicate the good times don’t outweigh the cheating. I appreciate that they tried to differ the instrumentation from other Eurovision songs, but the percussion sounds a little too chaotic. At times, the drums feel like they get in the song’s way instead of adding to it.
United Kingdom: I Belong
Artist: Kathy Kirby
Language: English
Key: E♭ major
This tune was so well-known in the UK that the British commentator felt no need to discuss it. Instead, he let the Italian presenter introduce it—a good time to mention the stereotype that Italian sounds singsongy is 100% true. To this day, British Eurovision fans tend to be proud of their entries and confident they will score high, even if after a string of low-scoring years. It’s good to know some things never change.
This song scored well this year, reaching second place. I can see why: it’s upbeat with a little bombastic flair, and it’s in English. The theme is the opposite of the Netherlands’ song. It’s about a woman who has finally found a love interest good for her, after years of heartbreak. If these songs were arranged to tell a story, I’m not sure if it would go better before or after the Netherlands. Probably after, because the instrumental sounds like a genuine payoff.
Spain: ¡Qué bueno, qué bueno!
Artist: Conchita Bautista, returning from Spain’s debut in 1961
Language: Spanish
Key: F major and F minor in alternation
Oh, how I missed flamboyant dancing from the last contest. She’s dramatically singing about the joy of love in extremely Spanish fashion, and her dancing and singing both seem more heavily rehearsed than her song in 1961. Both songs alternate between major and minor key, but this song is a little slower and more serious than the last one. It feels like a fitting sequel to “Estando contigo”, and it was probably intended as one.
Ireland: Walking the Streets in the Rain
Artist: Butch Moore
Language: English, like all of Ireland’s entries except 1972, which was in Irish
Key: D major
These days, Ireland is viewed as a fallen hero of Eurovision. Their last win was in 1996, and they’ve only qualified for the final once since 2014. However, in the old days they were quite strong. I’d love to see Ireland win Eurovision again in the next decade, not because they would take the record back from Sweden, but because it would be a great redemption arc. Like how the UK scored high last year with the phenomenal “Space Man”.
Ireland’s first entry in Eurovision follows a familiar formula: a 6/8 ballad about losing a love interest with lots of strings and piano. It’s a simple but heartfelt song with a relatively modern composition style, and I know Ireland would later become famous for its winning ballads. Their debut entry scored quite well for this voting system, at 11 points (6th place).
Germany: Paradies, wo bist du?
Artist: Ulla Wiesner
Language: German
Key: F major
Dammit British commentator. You keep pointing out that the next song is also about young love when I keep wanting to say that. Unfortunately, I can see why this got zero points. It has cool composition, but the singer sounds much too cold and dry to suit the instrumental, like she doesn’t really want to be here. She looks like she’s kind of bored and waiting for it to be over. While a good enough song can stand on its own, charisma on stage is important too, and she lacked it.
Austria: Sag ihr, ich lass sie grüßen
Artist: Udo Jürgens in an Udo Jürgens sandwich (he performed the previous and next years)
Language: German, twice in a row!
Key: B♭ major
Yay for singing while playing piano! Why was this not done in any Eurovision until now? I have to admire that Udo Jürgens tried as hard as he could to win, three years in a row, until he finally did. It’s another ballad, but the piano put at the center really makes it stand out. I feel like Udo thought “why has no one else tried this before?” The title means “tell her I send my love”, and the theme of the song is “tell her I love her but don’t tell her how much my heart hurts”.
Norway: Karusell
Artist: Kirsti Sparboe
Language: Norwegian, because Norway wasn’t a mischievous bastard this year unlike its neighbor
Key: C major, E♭ major, back to C major
This song is pretty fun. It’s about a girl (singer was 18 years old) who wants to choose between two men to ride the merry-go-round with, first picks both, then settles on one. She keeps her mom informed at first, but addresses her mom less when she makes her own decisions. This isn’t the first time a Nordic entry told an elaborate story in their own language in just three minutes—”Sol och vår” a few years back did the same. It’s very upbeat, and the long instrumental break doesn’t distract from the vocals.
Kirsti Sparboe sounds like quite a Eurovision fan herself. She participated in Norway’s national selection every year from 1965 to 1969, and won the first, third, and last of those years. She almost represented Norway in 1968, but accusations of plagiarism prevented her. She even covered the winners from 1968, 1970, and 1971 in Norwegian. Even if she didn’t score the best, it seems like this girl loved being a Eurovision participant!
Belgium: Als het weer lente is
Artist: Lize Marke
Language: Dutch
Key: D major
The title means “when springtime comes”, and it’s about a woman who wants to believe her love interest will return in the springtime and will do everything to prepare. It has a nice little percussive section with some finger snapping, but otherwise, this is yet another Belgian entry that blends in with the rest. I think the problem with early Belgian entries is that they never evolved in style from the 1956 contest. They’ve pretty much stayed in the romantic ballad style with a slow string section thrown in.
Monaco: Va dire à l’amour
Artist: Marjorie Noël
Language: French
Key: B♭ major
It gets weird analyzing Monaco and Luxembourg’s entries, because they’re mostly just used for France to bypass the “one song per country” rule. This was great for French viewers, since they could root for two other French singers if they didn’t like their own entry, but for other viewers, it probably felt like France had an unfair perk. It’s much like how today, fans debate whether a country being in the Big Five is a benefit or a drawback (answer: a MASSIVE drawback that I wish wasn’t a thing).
Knowing that the singer of this song released a few songs starting 1964 and disappeared from public life after 1967, I worried that this song would be forgettable, and I was right. Her voice sticks out for its youthful sound, but otherwise, it’s just another simple slow romantic song.
Sweden: Absent Friend
Artist: Ingvar Wixell
Language: English, from a non-Anglophone country for the first time
Key: E minor
This song is another case of Eurovision adjusting rules due to a controversy. Ingvar Wixell realized there was no rule saying he had to sing in Swedish, and thus sent a song in English. The next year, Eurovision made the language rule official, so this would not happen again until 1973 to 1976, then not again until 1999.
Anyway, this song is very different from what I expected! It’s a mischievous waltz in minor key with lots of clarinet and oboe, and it gradually becomes faster as it progresses. His voice sounds like an opera singer with lyrics harder to understand than most songs in English, which makes sense because he was an opera singer. With lyrics like “and I wish you’re missing me too”, I can tell the songwriters aren’t native English speakers, but I kind of dig it anyway. It stands out among the rest for its opera style. I find it really funny that Sweden’s first Eurovision song in English was a dramatic opera tune, not a flashy pop song like they’re today known for.
France: N’avoue jamais
Artist: Guy Mardel
Language: French
Key: B♭ major
I’m trying to understand how this song got third place. This singer’s voice sounds unprofessional and a little grating, especially with the repeated “jamais”, and the lyrics are often considered misogynistic. The theme is basically “don’t admit that you love her, but wait for her to tell you, that’s how you find true love”. It feels like the singer is obliquely complaining about his own romantic troubles.
Portugal: Sol de inverno
Artist: Simone de Oliveria
Language: Portuguese
Key: E♭ major
This is somewhere between the “standard love ballad” and “nostalgic kids’ movie theme” genre of Eurovision songs. I tend to like a Eurovision song better if it fully commits to one genre, but this is still one of the better songs of this contest. The lyrics are about wishing she had no heart because she has no one’s love, and she has a good resonant voice. Sadly, it looks like Portugal’s entries will fall to the sidelines for the next few decades. Maybe there will be some lucky exceptions?
Italy: Se piangi, se ridi
Artist: Bobby Solo
Language: Italian
Key: A major
A charming little ballad whose title means “if you cry, if you laugh”, and the theme is that the singer will laugh if his lover laughs and cry if his lover cries. It almost sounds like a country or folk song, thanks to the use of guitar and background choir. Unlike France’s song, this is a case where a big-name country’s high score (15 points, 5th place) makes sense.
Denmark: For din skyld
Artist: Birgit Brüel
Language: Danish
Key: C major
Contrasting against France’s song, this one is about a woman standing up for herself and demanding she’s treated like a human, not a doll. I heard the British commentator describe the lyrics this way, so when I heard the song itself, I was rather underwhelmed. The instrumental consists of just strings and piano with no percussion, so it sounds kind of dainty despite the lyrics. It makes it feel like the singer is just starting to realize her love interest isn’t treating her well, rather than the grand moment where she stands up. These lyrics would fit much better over a more dramatic instrumental.
Luxembourg: Poupée de cire, poupée de son (the winner)
Artist: France Gall, but it makes more sense to think of it as Serge Gainsbourg’s work
Language: French
Key: F minor
Now this is the song I’ve been waiting to get to!!! It’s the first Eurovision song that I am truly excited to review, because there’s so much to unpack.
First, the story behind this song. It was composed and written by Serge Gainsbourg, a French songwriter famous for his wordplay, double meanings, and daring themes. Even the title has two different meanings: “wax doll, straw doll” or “wax doll, singing doll”. French is a suitable language for puns because the silent letters give it tons of homophones. For example, the words “sans”, “cent”, “sang”, and “sens” are all pronounced the same but mean “without”, “hundred”, “blood”, and “sense” respectively.
Gainsburg hired France Gall, 17 years old at the time of this contest, to sing many of his songs. He kept Gall unaware of the hidden meanings, and they became huge hits as a result. This song is especially self-referential: France Gall sings about being a puppet who doesn’t fully understand her own song. I can’t ignore that when she got older, France Gall felt uncomfortable when realizing how much her songwriters used her as a puppet. She quit publicly discussing her role in Eurovision and no longer performed her winning song. Plus, I find it harder to imagine a teenage boy in the 60’s being hired to sing pop songs with sexual undertones. As far as songs with double meanings go, this one is pretty tame, mostly about Gall’s obliviousness to her role in the music industry, or at least that’s how I interpret it. This song is a massively intriguing work of art, but the skeevy history behind it can’t be denied.
Now with all that said… as a piece of music, I absolutely love this song! It has an infectiously catchy chorus, a lot of memorable hooks, and an energetic instrumental whose string riffs perfectly complement the vocals. It’s the first Eurovision song that I would call a banger. Gall sang a few notes a little off key, which unsurprisingly caused some controversy. However, I think the imperfections in her singing, plus her eager, teenager-like tone, suit this song perfectly. It’s hard to intentionally sound like an enthusiastic teenager who doesn’t fully get what she’s singing, much like it’s hard to compose an intentionally bad piece of music. This song was made possible by hiring an actual enthusiastic teenager who doesn’t fully get what she’s singing, for better or for worse.
It’s hard to exaggerate the mark this song made on Eurovision history. It has a huge amount of covers in tons of different languages, it was an important step in French pop music, and it steered the direction of Eurovision towards lighter, more playful pop songs. “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” may have stirred controversy when it first happened, but it hit the perfect balance between intrigue and accessibility to become one of the contest’s biggest shining stars to this day.
Finland: Aurinko laskee länteen
Artist: Viktor Klimenko, a Russian by descent
Language: Finnish
Key: C minor
I look at this song’s placement in the running order right after the winner, and the first thing I think is “ouch”. I watch the song’s performance, and the first thing I think is “holy shit, he looks like Abraham Lincoln”. It’s a nice little ballad about sunsets as a metaphor for a lack of love, and the descending chord progression matches the lyrics about a sunset. Its melody suits the Finnish language well, and if it wasn’t right after the winner, it might have gotten more than zero points.
EDIT: A week later, I discovered an actually good song from the Finnish national final that year: “Minne tuuli kuljettaa” by Katri Helena, who would later go to Eurovision twice. It is unmistakably Finnish-sounding, I’ll put it that way. I think it’s a song full of international appeal and could’ve done really well with the juries. In this interview, longtime conductor Ossi Runne said he thought it could’ve won Eurovision 1965.
Yugoslavia: Čežnja (Чежња)
Artist: Vice Vukov, returning from 1963
Language: Serbo-Croatian (Croatian)
Key: C minor
Vice Vukov’s last entry used ships as possibly a metaphor for love; this song uses waves in the sea as a metaphor for love. Both songs are dreary ballads, because I guess that was Yugoslavia’s main Eurovision genre back then. Maybe I’m not as used to hearing songs in Slavic languages, but my brain again screams at me that this Yugoslav entry should be in a different language. This time, Italian. I hope Yugoslavia’s Eurovision songs get more varied later on, and I think they will. I already know that in modern Eurovision, former Yugoslav countries send some of the most creative entries.
Switzerland: Non, à jamais sans toi
Artist: Yovanna (Ioanna Fassou Kalpaxi)
Language: French
Key: A major, B♭ major
The title means “No, without you forever”. The lyrics are about a woman telling her love to go away forever and that she’ll find a new one, but the composition sounds like the total opposite. The lyrics are a breakup song, but it doesn’t sound like a breakup song. I find it very forgettable, but it got a decent 8 points anyway, perhaps due to bias towards songs in French.
Who’s my favorite?
I know it’s boring when I choose a winner immediately, like I did last time, but let’s face it. Sometimes in a competition, one entry shines so far beyond the rest, it’s absurd to root for any other. This is the case for Luxembourg, Poupée de cire, poupée de son. Once again, my list is 50% actual winners:
- Denmark, 1
- Germany, 2
- Luxembourg, 2
- Netherlands, 3
- Norway, 1
- Sweden, 1
- (5 winners)
If Luxembourg hadn’t sent such a memorable song, I would have probably chosen Norway. If not that, Sweden.
General thoughts:
Out of every Eurovision year I’ve reviewed so far, this one holds the prize for most obvious winner. As iconic as “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” is, I ask that you spare a thought for Norway’s playful storytelling song and Sweden’s ultra opera song. The rest of this contest’s songs completely blend together, and they probably would even if it weren’t for the winner.
Now for a few additional facts about the winner. First off, many French fans were displeased that their winner didn’t represent France, which I find hilarious. If a French singer represented Luxembourg with a song that French fans didn’t like, they’d say that singer wasn’t worthy of representing France anyway. Second, the British commentator said before the reprise performance that France Gall was “now wearing a very pretty pink dress”. Does this imply that her dress in the initial performance wasn’t pink? Either way, I never thought of it before, but it makes sense knowing this song’s history that they’d dress her in pink. France Gall’s reprise was my first time going through old Eurovision contests where I hummed along to the music! That should let you know how good it is. I recognize the complicated history behind this song, and I enjoy it as a piece of music anyway.
See you next time as a song in German wins for the first time.
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