Intro Post

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Introduction

The 1973 edition of Eurovision was hosted once more in Luxembourg City, this time in the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg. Unlike other Eurovision contests, the orchestra performers surrounded the singers this year, seated in vertical rows. That, together with the bold 1970’s style font, gave this contest a uniquely charming presentation. This contest had 17 participating countries, since Austria and Malta left from last year and a new country joined. It was the first Eurovision participant outside of Europe (but inside the European Broadcasting Union): Israel.

There’s no two ways about it—Israel is a highly controversial country. I don’t consider myself qualified to talk about political issues, but there are several instances of Israel-related drama in Eurovision that it’ll be hard to avoid discussing. In all my blog posts, I try to keep a neutral tone when discussing controversial topics, and the same will hold for Eurovision drama. Still, with four victories and many other iconic entries, Israel has become an integral part of the contest’s history.

The most notable change from prior contests is that for the first time, the language rule was lifted. Countries could sing in any language they chose for the next four years. Sweden and Finland jumped at the opportunity to sing in English, but Norway went the extra mile and sent a song using almost every participating country’s language. I feel like this change was made for the sake of the Nordic countries, which had a strong English-language music scene. When more non-Nordic countries started singing in English in 1976, the rule was reinstated the next year.

It’s unusually hard to find commentary on this contest because Belgium’s performance is blocked on YouTube everywhere except Belgium. With a VPN, the best I could find was an upload with British commentary, marred with lots of white noise. I watched that in alternation with an uncommentated archive on Mega. This was the first of many Eurovisions commentated on TV by Terry Wogan, who was famous for his deadpan humor. That’s why I wanted to access this contest’s British commentary so badly. I had never even used a VPN before writing this post!

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Finland: Tom Tom Tom

Artist: Marion Rung, returning from 1962

Language: English. I initially typed “Finnish” by instinct.

Key: D♭ major, D major

This song was performed in Finnish at the national selection, but English at Eurovision. This reminds me of the several times a song won Melodifestivalen in Swedish, but then was changed to English for the contest; unsurprisingly, it’s caused fan discourse every time. I think “Cha Cha Cha”, Finland’s entry from this year, finally cured the mindset that Finnish is an undesirable language at Eurovision. It remains to be seen whether the same could someday be done for German, because I really want it to happen.

I listened to both the Finnish and English versions, and I’m not sure the song needed to be localized. It’s an uplifting song about the joy of music either way, perhaps the kind you’d hear at the start of a movie. Plus, it sounds like the singer doesn’t have that much experience with English. Still, this is a fun upbeat song and a great choice to open up the contest.

Belgium: Baby, Baby

Artist: Nicole and Hugo (Nicole van Pamel and Hugo Sigal)

Language: Dutch, plus phrases in English, Spanish, and French

Key: D minor

This duo was originally going to perform at Eurovision 1971 before they fell ill, so this contest was their second chance. Unfortunately, this song is also why commentary is so hard to come by, at least on YouTube. As far as I know, no other entries from the Flemish part of Belgium cause this annoying problem.

Anyway, this song proves the concept has gone full out 70’s pop, with their purple outfits and extravagant dancing and alternating voices. It’s a goofy love song that doesn’t take itself too seriously, so it’s right at home in Eurovision. The singers looked into each other’s eyes as the song ended, and I thought for a second they’d kiss. Thankfully they didn’t.

Portugal: Tourada

Artist: Fernando Tordo

Language: Portuguese

Key: D minor

Unlike many other Eurovision countries, Portugal has hardly ever broken away from using their own language, no matter how poorly it performed. I suspect this is because Portuguese-language music has quite a large market, just more in other Portuguese-speaking countries than in Europe. Portugal’s early entries tend to celebrate their own culture and traditions, not worrying whether other countries can understand it. They’re kind of like the Albania of early Eurovision.

If you remember my review of “Desfolhada portuguesa” from four years prior, I said it was part one of how Eurovision helped end the Portuguese dictatorship. This song is part two. It seems to be about bullfighting on the surface, but it’s actually used as a metaphor to criticize the country’s regime. This song’s inclusion was controversial, but it was allowed because of a little something called the Streisand effect: trying to censor something will make it more widely known. More than that, it would only delay the inevitable collapse of the Estado Novo regime.

Musically, this song proves the contest will be dominantly 70’s pop, not that I’m complaining. It has a distinctly scornful tone with slight Amy Winehouse vibes, particularly in the bassline and funky guitar chords. Then it has a slow section and speeds up towards the end, common in 70’s Eurovision songs. The tone and structure perfectly match the message of “my country is fucked up, but maybe it doesn’t have to be this way”.

Germany: Junger Tag

Artist: Gitte Hænning

Language: German

Key: C major and C minor in alternation, then D♭ major

As her name might suggest, Gitte Hænning is from Denmark and was disqualified from her own country’s national final in 1962. Then in 1973, she competed for Germany’s national final and won it. Remember, Denmark was still in a Eurovision hiatus. She didn’t have to represent Germany with a song in German—she could have used English, or Danish if she really wanted to—but she fortunately did so anyway. I’ve ranted enough about the severe Anglicization of Germany in Eurovision.

This is a pop song alternating between minor key piano sections and major key big band sections. The minor key sections sound a little too gloomy and the big band sections sound a little too poppy, so there’s not much cohesion between them. It would’ve helped to make the sections’ moods closer to each other. Something in between these moods would have suited the song’s message of hoping today brings something good.

Norway: It’s Just a Game

Artist: Bendik Singers, another group of two men and two women

Language: Mainly English and French; two lines in German; phrases in Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Irish; one word repeated twice in Hebrew; one word each in Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, and Norwegian

Key: C major

I’ve been waiting to get to this song, because I think it’s super cool and awesome!!! I want to pick it apart so badly, but first we need to talk about digital pianos.

If you’ve ever owned a Casio digital piano, chances are it came with at least one flashy, upbeat, brassy 70’s-sounding song as a demo tune. My family had a digital piano when I was about six years old—I believe it was Casio, but I could be wrong—where I would often play a built-in song of exactly that type. I called it “The Family Song”. My dad absolutely hated that song and kept asking me to turn it off, but for me, it was my jam. I cycled between several other digital pianos after that, including a Casio CTK-720, and when I was 11, I got for Christmas one of two pianos that I own today: a CTK-4000 digital piano which has 570 built-in sounds, 152 built-in songs, but tragically only 61 keys (instead of the full 88). One of the two demo tunes has an extremely similar vibe to what I remember of The Family Song, so much that I think of it as The Family Song too. Again, it’s a song that I find absolutely delightful, whereas my parents think it’s completely tacky.

“It’s Just a Game” has exactly the same vibe to me as The Family Song. It’s just as brassy and upbeat and varied in structure and full of delicious chords. It could have only been made with full sincerity in the 1970’s—a song like this released today would be perceived as cheesy. Compositionally, it’s a work of pure genius. It makes so much mileage out of the eccentric 5/4 time signature with the most common way to divide five beats: 1.5, 1.5, 1, 1. Quickly count “1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2” to get a feel for this rhythm. This song builds from these rhythms with an immaculate balance between repetition and variety, between familiarity and curveballs.

And that’s only the first half of why I think this song is so wonderful. The other half is the languages! The singers switch between English and French many times. In the first verse, the men sing slow lyrics in English while the women sing fast lyrics in French, then they trade parts, then they swap which languages have slow and fast lyrics in the second verse. The choruses (if you can call them that) have more of an alternation between English and French, plus a rich smattering of other languages thrown in. The second chorus has two lines in German, which are interspersed by the fastest storm of languages yet. Where else are you going to hear words in Hebrew, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, French, and German all in the same 10 seconds?

This entire song was originally in Norwegian, but the translators saw an opportunity to make it multilingual, and it worked super well! The lyrics are about how to win a girl’s heart, with analogies involving a cat and mouse or building a castle, and advice in English and French not to make drama out of it. Together with the phrases in other languages, this gives the song a uniquely playful vibe. The song’s original language was kept only in its final word, which doubles as representing Swedish. Every participating country had a national language represented in this song… except for arguably Portugal. Fortunately, you can patch up this problem by saying the Spanish phrase “caro querido” also represents Portuguese.

One little problem remains with this absolute delight of a song: it’s in the same year as “Eres tú”, another one of my all-time favorite Eurovision songs. I can only choose one of them as my winner for this year, which breaks my heart. You could argue “it’s your blog, you can do what you want”, but if you’ve read my other blog posts, you’ll know I don’t like to break my own rules.

Here’s a little footnote. If you’re curious, the other digital piano I own is a Yamaha P-45B with the full 88 keys. Nowhere near as many sounds or built-in songs, but a lot of nifty customizability if you look hard enough, plus some wonderful demo tunes for each sound. I bought it for my current house with my Christmas money from the end of last year, because life goes full circle.

Holy fuck, I practically wrote a graduate thesis about this song that didn’t even land in the top three. Only seventh place, but hey. Top half is still pretty good!

Monaco: Un train qui part

Artist: Marie-France Dufour

Language: French

Key: G major

Is it just the camera’s perspective, or did Marie almost kiss the microphone near the start? Either way, this is just an OK pop song without that much to it, except for a voice that’s a bit too sharp. The instrumental breaks between the singing are annoyingly repetitive, considering the whole point of instrumental breaks is to even the pace between singing.

Also, there are so many songs with a twangy electric guitar. The guitarist in the orchestra plays it so much in this song, he almost seems like someone who got his hands on it for the first time and can’t stop playing it. Unfortunately, this is sandwiched between two of my favorite Eurovision songs ever.

Spain: Eres tú

Artist: Mocedades

Language: Spanish

Key: D major, E♭ major

This song is simply beautiful, from start to finish. It has the perfect balance between repeated hooks and an interesting, varied composition, all sung with some of the most heartfelt Spanish lyrics I’ve ever seen. It’s got a good lead singer with a strong voice, plus five backing singers who participate throughout. It’s one of the most famous songs to ever come out of Eurovision, and a major “wait, that was from Eurovision?!” song for Spanish speakers. It came second place to Luxembourg and lost by only four points.

Unlike “It’s Just a Game”, my longest review of any Eurovision song so far, I struggle to express my thoughts about why this song is so good. I’ve heard some of its alternate language versions already, but I don’t want to review them because it was obviously meant to be in Spanish (though the Basque version is pretty cool, since they’re from Basque Country). I’ve already brought up the far-fetched theory that it plagiarized “Brez besed”. I’ve already discussed the pattern that some non-winning Eurovision songs become more famous than the winners. I’ve already talked about how much I love the abundance of vocal harmonies in 1970’s Eurovision. What more can I say about this song?

I think I’ll just have to accept that any review I give “Eres tú” won’t do it justice. While “It’s Just a Game” is like a complex, mouthwatering dessert made from dozens of ingredients around the world, “Eres tú” is like a cup of the most delicious vanilla ice cream I’ve ever tasted. That’s why it’s so damn hard to decide which I like better.

Switzerland: Je vais me marier, Marie

Artist: Patrick Juvet

Language: French

Key: C minor and C major in alternation

Another song alternating between minor and major key. I think most songs here have felt more like “70’s pop” than prior contests because the orchestra has more brass and less strings, plus more focus on piano. It’s a welcome change that helps modernize this contest’s sound.

Anyway, this tune is about a man about to get married who doesn’t want his friends to cry or mock him about it. He drops a lot of names of people in the song, even using them for rhymes. I feel like this song is more lighthearted than a song about the importance of marriage should be, so it’s another instance of tonal clash.

EDIT: Nine months later, I learned the real reason the orchestra sounds so different this year is because the microphones for the strings and woodwinds broke. One fan took it in his own hands to add string parts to the songs this year: I implore you to check out what he did to “Tu te reconnaîtras”.

Yugoslavia: Gori vatra (Гори ватра)

Artist: Zdravo Čolić

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian)

Key: D minor

For some reason, this contest has alternated between songs that pique my interest and songs that don’t. This is a super fun rock song unlike almost anything else we’ve heard before, which makes me annoyed that I can’t think of much to say about it. It’s got a prominent funky bassline and lots of brass instrumentation, but the pace is smoothed with a few softer piano sections. I may as well say the lyrics are about a fiery romance that he can hardly believe is real.

Italy: Chi sarà con te

Artist: Massimo Ranieri, returning from 1971

Language: Italian

Key: C major, D♭ major, D major

I view this song as an exercise in minimalism. It’s an Italian romantic ballad with elegantly simple instrumentation. The bass is easily most prominent, followed by the drums and strings, and somehow the song doesn’t sound like it’s lacking anything. The composition only gets more complex for a few measures after the key change. It’s good because if the instrumental was more like a standard ballad of the time, I’d find it super boring.

Luxembourg: Tu te reconnaîtras (the winner)

Artist: Anne-Marie David

Language: French

Key: F♯ major, with an asterisk

Oops, I almost skipped this song and went straight to Sweden.

If you don’t count the 1969 tie, Luxembourg is both the first country to win Eurovision twice in a row, and the first host country to win. When I listen to this song, I think “yep, this has winner energy”. The lyrics mean “you will recognize yourself”, and they basically mean “in my love for you, you’ll recognize yourself”. This theme is much like the song’s closest competitor, “Eres tú”, another song with winner energy.

My thoughts on this song are similar to Luxembourg’s prior winner. A singer with a strong voice, powerful melodies, and a varied composition. The seventh chords do a great job spicing up the chorus’s simple progression. This song uses the trope of “major key verse, minor key chorus”, but not in the most common form in this era of Eurovision. It’s not in F♯ minor and F♯ major, but in D♯/E♭ minor and F♯/G♭ major respectively.* This is a smart choice because both keys have the same key signature, meaning they transition between each other well.

As with most Eurovision winners around this time, this song had a lot of alternate language versions, but with a twist. Aside from the obvious English, German, and Spanish versions, it got two Italian localizations: “Il letto del re” (The king’s bed) and “Non si vive di paura” (You can’t live by fear). The Spanish lyrics are almost identical to the French ones, so I expected one of the Italian versions to be similar, but I couldn’t be more wrong. “Il letto del re” adapts the lyrics to be like a fairytale, whereas “Non si vive di paura” is over-the-top melodramatic. I’m very confused that this happened. You’d think if there was a debate over which Italian version to release, it would be between an extremely faithful translation and a complete rewrite, not two complete rewrites.

* You might ask the question, “are F♯ and G♭ the same note?” The answer is “yes, but there are technicalities”. I view them akin to synonymous words—they mean the same thing, but you’d use a different one depending on the context.

Sweden: You’re Summer

Artist: The Nova (a duo) and the Dolls (a backing trio)

Language: English

Key: D minor, D major, B major, then the cycle repeats.

Considering Sweden gave us the most famous Eurovision song of all time in 1974, it’s surprising that just one year before, they sent one of the weirdest, most forgotten Swedish entries. As I said in my 1966 review, to find the strangest songs Sweden has sent, you need to go way back in the past. Before I dissect the song, here’s an amusing fact: The group “The Nova” was originally called “Malta”. It’s obvious why the name was changed for Eurovision, but it would’ve been way funnier if this was a year when Malta the country participated.

Alright, now let’s begin with the song’s title: NO ONE FUCKING SAYS “YOU’RE SUMMER” TO THEIR LOVE INTEREST. Not even “you are summer” or “you’re the summer” which are said in the lyrics. People might say “you’re like the summer” or “you’re a warm summer day”, not “you’re summer”. That’s what you’d say when assigning parts to a roleplay scenario, like characters named after seasons. “You’re Summer, I’m Spring, he’s Fall, and she’s Winter”, for instance. The song was in Swedish when it competed in Melodifestivalen, then it was translated to English faithfully… a little too faithfully. The lyrics came out rather janky, most notably with the infamous line “your breasts are like swallows a-nesting”. I can’t claim to know whether the Swedish equivalent, “Dina bröst är som svalor som häckar”, sounds any less creepy.

Musically it’s pretty nice—a relaxed pop song with lots of guitar and piano. But the tone of the main singers does sound sexually obsessed. The weird thing is, localizing the lyrics to English actually worked. The song got sixth place out of 17. In fact, all fully English songs got sixth place or higher, except Ireland’s entry. I say “fully English” because Norway scored right below at seventh place.

Somehow, this weird song won Melodifestivalen 1973 with 37 points while ABBA (known by the members’ names at the time) got third place with only 9 points. Is the moral that you shouldn’t give up after your first try, or that you should make sure your band has a catchy name before entering a competition?

One more obligatory fact: This is the first song in Eurovision with a female conductor, and one of two in this contest. The other is Israel.

Netherlands: De oude muzikant

Artist: Ben Cramer

Language: Dutch

Key: E major, F major

I think this song is the first time in Eurovision history where the lights were turned off for a performance. This seems like an early precursor to the ultra-flashy stage shenanigans that Eurovision is today known for. In this song, it seems like the lights were shut just to draw attention to the singer and accordion player.

This is a traditional waltz about an elderly musician in Paris who no longer gets attention but still loves to play music. It uses an accordion in the verses, but in the choruses, the accordion is done away with in favor of circus-sounding music. Sadly, the instruments can’t save it from being a regular old-timey waltz that doesn’t catch my interest. For some reason, it doesn’t have a proper dramatic ending, but a quiet fade into an accordion solo. Is it supposed to symbolize the old man’s death?

Ireland: Do I Dream

Artist: Maxi (Irene McCoubrey)

Language: English

Key: A major, B♭ major

The British commentator joked that Maxi’s stage name may be because she’s five foot nine inches tall. I think entirely in imperial units due to my American upbringing, so it took me a second to remember most countries would call her height 175 centimeters. The UK is one of those countries that clumsily mixes imperial and metric units.

This is an OK brassy pop song about a romance so good it seems like a dream. It went through some drama as Maxi disagreed with the staff about the arrangement, and she almost refused to sing the song. Her exasperation at all this drama unfortunately shows in her performance. It was the lowest-scoring song in English, at tenth place.

The problem with Ireland is that when Eurovision allows everyone to sing in English, their entry struggles to stand out. The UK and Malta have this problem too, but the contrast between years with and without the language rule is strongest with Ireland. I don’t see a solution to this predicament, other than giving it their all in the national final. Some fans would be thrilled to hear a song in Welsh or Irish or Maltese, but I fear it wouldn’t appeal as much to mass audiences. Actually, Welsh (or any of the UK’s other languages) has never been in Eurovision even once, so that would at least be a major historic moment.

United Kingdom: Power to All Our Friends

Artist: Cliff Richard, returning from 1968 with vengeance

Language: English

Key: E major, F♯ major

Despite being a highly successful musician, Cliff Richard didn’t quite win Eurovision either time. He got second place in 1968 by one point, and third place this year by six points (two less than second place). The British commentator was exactly as excited and confident about this entry as I expected him to be.

This is another song clearly designed to win. It has a flashy intro with solely harmonized singing and a drum, then goes full-out British pop with electric guitar. Of the four backing singers, three also have guitars, while one taps on a drum. It’s well composed and well staged, but for me it falls short of two other songs too. You know, the two which I only get to choose one of to be my winner because life is unfair.

France: Sans toi

Artist: Martine Clémenceau

Language: French

Key: F♯ major

The title means “without you”, and the lyrics say that when the singer’s lover disappears, her life vanishes in the shadows, and her life returns when her lover reappears.

During the verses, Martine sings super quietly with the microphone too close to her mouth. This is a shame because the backing singers harmonize with her voice beautifully and do NOT whisper right next to the microphone. In the chorus, Martine sings way too loud and almost sounds like she’s wailing. Why are the backing singers so much better in this song than the lead? This weighs down the whole song for me.

Israel: Ey Sham (אי שם)

Artist: Ilanit (Hanna Dresder-Tzakh)

Language: Hebrew

Key: G major

Israel proved itself as a power player right at their Eurovision debut, with a song by one of their biggest pop singers that earned fourth place. I wonder whether it was intentionally put at the end, to give the new guy some attention?

This song has an intro with a blues piano plus voice, then the brassy pop music prevalent throughout this contest comes in. The lyrics are about a supposed garden of love found somewhere at the end of a rainbow, where she wants to go with her lover. It’s easily one of the most showy songs of the contest, and a strong debut for this oddball country.

Fun fact: This song technically isn’t the first appearance of Hebrew in Eurovision. That honor goes to “It’s Just a Game”, from the same contest. Compared to other non-Indo-European languages, songs in Hebrew tend to score quite well. I can point to three potential reasons: (1) Hebrew is a popular foreign language (especially among Jews), (2) it has somewhat similar phonology to French and German, and (3) Israel gave it their all when sending songs to Eurovision.

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Who’s my favorite?

I’ve thought about this question long before writing this blog post, and my mind has gone back and forth between Norway and Spain. I love “Eres tú” with all my heart, but after pondering the debate at length, I’ve chosen a song that makes my face light up slightly more: Norway, It’s Just a Game. The benefit is that I get to highlight a less talked-about song to whoever might be reading my posts. The drawback is that it breaks my heart to not choose Spain.

• Austria, 1
• Denmark, 1
• Finland, 1
• Germany, 2
• Ireland, 1
• Luxembourg, 2
• Netherlands, 5
• Norway, 2
• Portugal, 1
• Sweden, 2
• (7 winners)

Spain’s absence from this list hurts me so hard, but I’ve made up my mind. God dammit, this reads almost like a breakup. Please tell me I will never have to make a choice this difficult in my blog again.

General thoughts:

This review was a lot of fun to write! I concentrated hard on it and barely did anything else, because I was deep in the zone. The zone, if you don’t know, is a state of mind where time rushes by while you work on a project, and everything else fades into the background. If you have entered the zone while working on a project, that’s how you know it’ll turn out to be something special. Aside from “Eres tú” and “It’s Just a Game”, two masterful songs I had to choose only one of to be my winner, there were a lot of fun 70’s pop songs with rich instrumentation and vocals. This includes the lovely winner of the contest, “Tu te reconnaîtras”.

This contest was set apart from prior years with the prominence of brass instrumentation. That caused a big leap forward in the songs’ modernity. It is exactly the style of Eurovision music that I was so excited to review when starting this post series! The results had a tight competition between the top three—Luxembourg, Spain, and the United Kingdom—which says all you need to know about how varied the songs have become.

Unlike the past few years, the interval act reverted to being directly on stage. It was a skit with a drag performer dressed as a clown, which only got a mild amount of laughter from the audience. It’s clear that back then, the interval acts were a vessel for Eurovision to go full-out bizarro. Eventually in the 2000’s, the bizarrity would move into the songs themselves.

One last random fact: The reprise of the winning song was moved back to the start for this contest. I like random facts.

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See you next time as some random Swedish band you’ve probably never heard of participates in Eurovision. I think their name was BABBA or something?

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