Intro Post

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Introduction

Eurovision 1968 was hosted in London, England, in their iconic building, the Royal Albert Hall. It featured the same 17 countries as last year, which was all countries that had ever previously participated except Denmark. Although it was the first Eurovision broadcast in color, most viewers watched it on grayscale TV anyway. This isn’t a problem for people watching the contest half a century later, like me.

Once again, the contest started with an orchestration of “Puppet on a String”, the previous winner. It’s notable for the United Kingdom losing to Spain by only one point, which fans were very salty about. This was Spain’s first of two victories; their second would be part of the joint four-way win next year. Spain has had bad luck with almost winning, but let’s be real: as far as members of the Big Five go, they aren’t doing too bad.

I watched this contest with Norwegian commentary. Surprisingly for a contest hosted in the UK, the English commentary doesn’t seem to be archived anywhere. I found a YouTube upload of the Norwegian commentary with English subtitles, but the subtitles don’t actually translate the commentary and instead talk about the contestants’ careers in retrospect, which I can easily read about online elsewhere. I’ll just make do with what I have.

(This contest’s Swedish commentary has been archived too. Unlike most Eurovision commentary, it was done by a woman.)

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Portugal: Verão

Artist: Carlos Mendes

Language: Portuguese

Key: E♭ major

Random fact: This is the first Eurovision song in Portuguese where the R at start of words is not rolled, but guttural like in French and standard German.

Eurovision 1968 kicks off with a breath of modernity. It’s a short little pop song (just over two minutes) in swing rhythm about the sadness of summer ending. It’s the first Eurovision entry to feature an electric organ, specifically in the bridge section. The singer is dancing vividly and seems to be enjoying himself, but I have to admit, the “aa-aa-aa” singing distracts from the lyrics. It’s a nice little song, but it doesn’t feel super fleshed out.

Netherlands: Morgen

Artist: Ronnie Tober

Language: Dutch

Key: D major, E major, F major

Tied with Finland as the lowest scorer of the contest (1 point), I struggle to say much about this song. It’s not particularly wowing, it’s not at all bad, the lyrics aren’t anything gripping. It’s just kind of a nothing song, begging for me to say nothing about it.

And yet, I feel obligated to say something about it. I think this song fails to be sticky because instead of having a strong verse and chorus structure, it pretty much repeats one motif in different keys and slightly different instrumentation. Also, Ronnie’s singing is very quiet at the start. It probably wasn’t rehearsed that much.

Belgium: Quand tu reviendras

Artist: Claude Lombard

Language: French

Key: D minor

Belgium has gone cinematic this year! This song feels like it belongs in the gloomy, reflective part of a musical, especially since the title means “when you return”. The instrumentation is rather simple, consisting only of strings and guitars. I wish it musically progressed beyond the gloomy mood though. It sounds like the intro to a dramatic minor-key love song, except the intro is stretched to take up the whole song. So far, all three songs I’ve reviewed feel a little unfinished.

Austria: Tausend Fenster

Artist: Karel Gott, surprisingly a Czech

Language: German

Key: E♭ minor, F minor

It almost feels like Belgium’s song could have been the intro to this one, if they were in the same key. I can tell Karel natively spoke a Slavic language from his accent, but it’s a fun dramatic tune anyway. Unlike the first three songs, it has a strong vision for what it wants to be, which is a haunting opera-style piece. The title means “a thousand windows”, and its theme is still topical today: if you feel alone in this world, there are thousands of people behind windows in your town who are surely as lonely as you, and one of them just might be a right match for you. It feels a bit like a response to Belgium’s song.

Udo Jürgens (the winner in 1966) covered this song, and I listened to it out of curiosity. His cover is an improvement over the original song, with a much more confident voice.

Luxembourg: Nous vivrons d’amour

Artist: Chris Baldo and Sophie Garel

Language: French

Key: F major, F♯ major

As far as romantic couple songs go, this one is unintentionally funny because it’s very imbalanced. I’d go as far to describe it as so bad, it’s good. The man and woman don’t get equal time to sing; instead, it alternates between verses sung by Chris and choruses sung by both. Sophie doesn’t get any verses to herself. Chris sounds happy and enthusiastic throughout, but Sophie sounds totally bored. Chris’s singing isn’t perfect either; he sings in swing rhythm throughout, even though the verses are in straight rhythm. It gets even funnier when you realize these two were never actually married, and Sophie was never actually a singer; she was just a radio host who Chris hired for this song for some reason. Throughout, Sophie looks like she’s thinking “when will this be over?”

Of course this song has a fucking key change that repeats the last chorus with nothing else. It’s such a cliché in love songs, and I find it hilarious that this song does it. If you thought only 21st century Eurovision had hilariously bad songs, then you’re wrong! At the end, Chris kisses Sophie on the cheek and proudly bows, then Sophie reluctantly bows. I think the song is unintentionally about a lopsided romantic relationship.

Switzerland: Guardando il sole

Artist: Gianni Mascolo

Language: Italian

Key: F major, F♯ major

This is a mix of “old-timey Eurovision ballad” and “kids’ movie sounding song”; the movie sound mostly comes from the incorporation of glockenspiels and harps. It’s a little more distinct from other Eurovision ballads, but not too much.

Also, have the singers’ outfits always been this colorful? The commentator’s remarks in the past two years suggest that they at least were back then. I wonder this because he’s wearing an orange suit, which is quite an unusual color. Maybe it was meant to show off the powers of color TV. His red glasses make him look like either a businessman or the host of a science TV show. I’m pretty sure he’s neither of those things.

Monaco: À chacun sa chanson

Artist: Line and Willy (Line van Menen and Claude Boillod)

Language: French

Key: D major, E♭ major, F♯ major

Everything Luxembourg’s entry did wrong, this song did right. It’s a genuine romantic couple duet whose singers both look happy to be there. The singers get equal amounts of vocal time, they alternate between singing individually and together, and their hand gestures and vocals harmonize well. The man plays some nice guitar parts too. I’m a massive sucker for vocal harmonies—they’re part of why I love so many 70’s Eurovision songs. That era of Eurovision was when multi-singer songs became more common, and that was an excellent change.

With that said, this song is kind of lovey-dovey, but in a more pleasant way than Luxembourg. Also, if you can speak French, you’ll find the title is quite a tongue twister.

Sweden: Det börjar verka kärlek, banne mig

Artist: Claes-Göran Hederström

Language: Swedish

Key: D♭ major, D major, E♭ major. Two three-key songs in a row!

The title is quite a mouthful, and it means “It’s beginning to look a lot like love, I’ll be damned”. Why didn’t they cut it down to everything before the comma, or everything after? It would’ve been more friendly to people who don’t speak Swedish, since it’d give them a phrase to look out for in the lyrics.

Anyway, Sweden went full-out jazzy this year, and sent a singer whose dancing style is ridiculously similar to Carlos Mendes from Portugal. The song is about a man who’s faced with circumstances that feel like impending love and questions whether these are all just clichéd tropes. I really enjoy what this song does with the organ in the second verse. Somehow, the song’s progression using key changes works well here—perhaps for similar reasons to the glorious “Ring-dinge-ding” from last year. It’s a fun song all around.

Finland: Kun kello käy

Artist: Kristina Hautala

Language: Finnish

Key: A minor in the verses, D major in the chorus (feel free to disagree)

Now THIS song truly takes me to another world. It throws curveballs throughout its progression, alternates between swing in its verses and straight rhythm in its choruses, and ties everything together with a large amount of yummy major seventh chords. It’s just so musically interesting! The rather young singer (19 years old) goes all out with a dramatic voice. Sadly, it got only one point just like the Netherlands’ song. The fucking NETHERLANDS! SERIOUSLY?! My guess is that the song sounded too exotic to appeal to the juries, both in composition and language. I find this nothing short of tragic.

I’m obligated to mention the title means “As time goes by” and the lyrics connect this to the topic of love, but I can perfectly enjoy this song without feeling a need to understand the lyrics. In a language as exotic as Finnish, this is a great sign. Due to the song’s low performance, a version in Swedish (Vänta och se) was released in an attempt to boost its popularity, but it remained obscure. Quite a shame, because I find that the melody works well with both Finnish and Swedish. Impressive considering how different they are! I do know that the two languages have influenced each other.

France: La source

Artist: Isabelle Aubret, the winner of 1962

Language: French

Key: G major, A♭ major

Considering the results of this year, it’s easy to forget that most previous Eurovision winners don’t win again. Though this song did pretty well, reaching third place behind Spain and the UK. While many winning singers have competed in Eurovision a second time, only two have won twice: Johnny Logan (Ireland 1980, 1987) and Loreen (Sweden 2012, 2023). I fully respect the winner this year, but I think after this point, bringing back prior winners will be a little more contentious.

This is a very calm and peaceful tune whose lyrics aren’t at all what you’d expect. For some reason, it’s about a woman who was attacked in a forest by three werewolves and was found unconscious the next morning. Maybe there’s artistic merit in this contrast between lyrics and instrumental, but it’s so much nicer when the lyrics and composition match each other. I could resolve this dissonance by remembering she surrounds the story with a disclaimer that means “if one should believe it”, but that only helps things slightly. I wish I could say more about this song, but the strange, unfitting lyrics leave me stumped. I’ll just say that Isabelle Aubret is a charismatic performer here, as previous winners tend to be.

Italy: Marianne

Artist: Sergio Endrigo

Language: Italian

Key: F♯ major, G major

This is one of the least orchestral sounding songs so far, because it has a prominent guitar and piano, but it gets more orchestral in the instrumental break. The lyrics are about a woman named Marianne who the singer loves dearly but barely seems to care about him. It’s a nice little romantic tune, but it doesn’t do much for me. Maybe it would have benefitted from sounding more dramatic, or looking more dramatic on stage.

United Kingdom: Congratulations

Artist: Cliff Richard

Language: English

Key: A major, B♭ major in the last chorus

We’ve now reached the iconic song that almost won. When Cliff Richard came on stage, I could hear a lot of girls squealing in excitement. If you think it’s only “kids these days” who fawn over handsome male pop singers, this scene should prove you wrong. Kids those days did it too. I’m sure a lot of the audience members had Cliff Richard posters in their bedrooms and obsessively collected all his records. He may not have won this contest, but he became a much more successful musician than the winner. As with “Volare” a decade prior, this case should make you feel better about whichever year your favorite song barely didn’t win.

Another thing that never changes is British fans’ extreme confidence in their own entries. British newspapers were so sure this would win that they asked which song would come second to “Congratulations”. However, Spain won instead, and that’s another thing about Eurovision that never changes. If the winner isn’t what fans expected, they’ll make conspiracy theories about it. This time, the theories were that Francisco Franco’s regime rigged the contest.

Uh, anyway. About the song itself. It’s an upbeat rock-sounding tune about the joy of knowing his love interest loves him, with a trio of women backing him up in the chorus. Since it has the same writers and a similar topic, I consider it a male counterpart to “Puppet on a String” from last year. Both songs’ lyrics portray women as loyally obeying men, and although you could technically interpret both songs to be about gay relationships, that was obviously not the intention. It’s an easygoing and singable song, and the last chorus does something interesting: instead of a simple key change, it starts out slow then speeds up to add extra hype. Clearly, this song was designed to win. It just barely didn’t.

Norway: Stress

Artist: Odd Børre

Language: Norwegian

Key: E♭ major predominantly, I think, probably. This is hard.

Very few Eurovision songs are truer to their titles than this one. It does everything it can to seem like a song about stress. It heavily uses repeated words, alternating key changes, and tense instrumentation to convey this topic regardless of language. Continuing the Nordic pattern of storytelling songs, the lyrics are about having to hurry to catch a bus, and I’m not sure his outfit is the best fit for that. He’s wearing a suit, bowtie, and thick glasses, so… maybe the song is supposed to portray him as scrambling to get back home from his job? I think a more fitting costume would strike a balance between formal and casual. I don’t know, I’m not a fashion expert.

It’s a creative song, but I would have liked it a little more if it stuck more closely to one genre. This song feels like it’s halfway between a pop song and a tense film score, and compositionally it’s all over the place. Surely it could have been simplified a little while keeping the frantic tone.

Ireland: Chance of a Lifetime

Artist: Pat McGeegan

Language: English

Key: E♭ major, F major

All of Ireland’s first four Eurovision entries are a major key ballad in 6/8 time sung by a man in a suit with a reasonably smooth voice. The first one has no key change, the second and third change key up a half step, and this one changes it up a whole step. I’m super thankful that next year, Ireland seems to have changed the formula, because if they kept following the current pattern, their 2023 entry would be a major key ballad with a key change up two and a half octaves.

(Pro tip: If you can’t think of something interesting to say about a song, just write a joke.)

Spain: La la la (the winner)

Artist: Massiel (María de los Ángeles Felisa Santamaría Espinosa)

Language: Spanish, despite original intentions

Key: C major and C minor in alternation; D♭ major at the end

This song was originally going to be sung in Catalan, by Joan Manuel Serrat. However, Francisco Franco’s regime intended to exterminate all non-Spanish languages from Spain, and Serrat refused to sing it in Spanish, so he was replaced. I could make out the words “Franco regime” and “controversy” from the Norwegian commentator, so it seems he talked about it too. Changing a national language to a more widely spoken language (like Latvian to Russian, or Swedish to English, both of which have been done in Eurovision before) is one thing, but changing a minority language to the national language is upsetting to me. If I was a Catalan speaker back then, I would’ve been royally pissed.

Language controversy aside, this is quite a nice song. As showy as the British entry for this contest was, I’m glad this contest got a first-time winner instead. The alternation between minor and major key works very nicely in this song, since both sections are interesting and flashy. The melody of the “la la la” section, in the major key part, is ridiculously easy to sing along to, which was probably the tipping point that made the song win. Something about the chord progressions in those parts feels forward-thinking, akin to what we’d get in 70’s Eurovision.

Back on the previous topic, I wonder if anyone has listed all Eurovision songs whose languages were changed between selection and performance? The latest example I know of is “Heart of Steel”, Ukraine’s entry from this year. It was originally all in English, but a section in Ukrainian was added for the performance.

Germany: Ein Hoch der Liebe

Artist: Wencke Myrhe, a Norwegian

Language: German, plus repeated phrases in French, English, and Italian

Key: F♯ major, G major, A♭ major

In early Eurovision, Germany and Austria sent quite a few people from external countries who were willing to sing in German. Even one of Germany’s representatives in 1956, Freddy Quinn, was Austrian. Wencke Myrhe is an especially odd case. She participated in Norway’s national selection in 1964, 1966, 1983 (as a backup singer),* 1992, and 2009, but the only time she made it to the contest, she represented Germany. This is a little-discussed side effect of the language rule: sometimes, countries sent singers from elsewhere to sing in their language.

Wencke Myrhe was lively and charismatic on stage. She danced a lot and wore a spunky yellow dress. The song itself is super fun and bouncy too, with a slight jazzy edge. The title means “here’s to love” and it’s basically about how awesome it is to successfully be in love. The foreign phrases are “vive l’amour”, “three cheers for love”, and “viva l’amor” respectively, and they’re sung sequentially after the song’s title, which means “here’s to love”. This combination of four languages works super well as a hook, and a hook is integral to making a memorable Eurovision song.

* She also competed in Germany’s selection that year, with her son.

Yugoslavia: Jedan dan (Један дан)

Artist: Luci Capurso and Hamo Hajdarhodžić

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Croatian)

Key: D major, E major

Most of Yugoslavia’s entries have fallen to the sidelines for me, but this one is different. It’s sung by a charming duet of men in Rennaisance style costumes, and it sounds like a cross between a folk song and a sports chant. One of the singers plays the flute in it too, but it suffers from the dual problem of being quiet compared to the orchestra and playing the same melody as the orchestra. If you’re just going to play the same melody as the orchestra, that defeats the point of a flute solo. Otherwise, this song is easily the best Yugoslav entry so far.

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Who’s my favorite?

The four biggest standouts to me were Sweden, Finland, Spain, and Germany, but I’ll eliminate Sweden since their song is the hardest to remember how it sounds. Spain’s song was catchy but heavily carried by the “la la la” hook. This leaves me in a battle between Finland and Germany. Germany had a more appealing performance, but Finland was more gripping as a composition. So I asked myself: what if both songs had the same singer making the same gestures? Imagining both songs with Finland’s singer and both songs with Germany’s singer, Finland would have appealed to me more either way. This means my winner for 1968 is Finland, Kun kello käy.

• Denmark, 1
• Finland, 1
• Germany, 2
• Luxembourg, 2
• Netherlands, 4
• Norway, 1
• Sweden, 2
• (5 winners)

If you want to stretch things, you could say this list is still entirely Germanic countries, since Swedish is official in Finland. However, both of Luxembourg’s songs that I picked as winners were in French anyway.

General thoughts:

Something slightly interesting: During the interval act, for the first time in Eurovision history (aside from contest openings), the camera shifted away from the arena and showed us around the iconic landmarks of London. This feels like a predecessor to postcard sequences, which are focused on getting to know the host country.

Other than that, this year was a joy to review! It featured the right mix of genuine bangers, boring songs, and the downright bizarre, which is the peak Eurovision experience. If some songs are boring, that makes the good songs and bizarre songs shine brighter. This is when Eurovision massively increased its quality, and it’ll soar high for the next few decades—at least, from the songs I’ve heard of these contests. The presenter was confident and charming, with a subtle British sense of humor.

The final voting results of this competition were really funny, unfortunately biased towards late entries. At first it seemed like France would win, then the UK, but thanks to the German juries, Spain snatched the prize and conspiracy theories arose. Cliff Richard became more successful anyway. If I was a Eurovision fan back then, I’d probably have been happy about the results, because I like when underdog countries get the chance to win. During the voting, the audience has gotten more enthusiastic every year, especially about the British entry. They’ve stopped restraining their emotional investment in who wins.

One more random fact: Massiel sang her song’s reprise partly in English, which was the first of several times the reprise changed up the languages. I know that also happened in 1982.

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If you thought the victory this time was controversial, wait till you see the four-way tie that happened in 1969. That’ll be in my next post!

>> 1969: The Notorious Quadruple Tie