Monthly Archives: December 2023

Bonus Eurovision Post: My favorite entry from each country 1956 to 1998

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Introduction

For quite a while, I wanted to do a special bonus post once I reached a cutoff point in my Eurovision blog post series. That is to choose my favorite entry from every participating country so far. I’d say there is no better cutoff point than 1998, since that was the year after which two rules were abolished: the orchestra and the language rule. It’s where I mentally draw the line between classic Eurovision and modern Eurovision.

Quick disclaimer: I’ll only choose favorite entries from countries that competed with at least three songs from 1956 to 1998. That means I won’t include Morocco, Lithuania, Romania, or North Macedonia. I’ll go through all these countries in alphabetical order and I’ll list my favorite entry of theirs in bold. Since I obviously can’t remember how all 1,600+ songs in Eurovision history sound, for countries where my favorite isn’t immediately obvious, I’ll consult the wonderful recap videos by SchlagerLucas to refresh my memory.

There’s no particular reason I wanted to publish this post on Christmas, other than that I don’t have much to do today. I went to see family yesterday and I’ll see more of them tomorrow, but I’m not doing much on the day itself.

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Cookie Fonster’s Eurovision 1998 Reflections: Dana, Guildo, and Other Such Icons

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Intro Post

< 1997 Review | 1998 Review | 1999 Review >

Please enjoy my last Eurovision review of 2023! I will review Eurovision 1999 after the new year. For the rest of this year, I’ll focus on getting other projects done and finding jobs, since I was recently fired from my latest one. Luckily I already paid for my Eurovision trip, including flights, tickets, and a place to stay.

Introduction

In many ways, Eurovision 1998 was the end of an era for the contest. It was the last year where countries had to sing in their own languages, the last year with an orchestra, and until 2023, the last contest to take place in the United Kingdom. Fifteen different British cities applied to host the contest, and the winner was the second largest city in the UK: Birmingham. But it was also the start of an era for the contest: it was the first where most results came from televoting and it kickstarted a trend of LGBT visibility. More trivially, it was the first year where the names of countries appeared on screen during the songs.

Five countries were relegated from this contest (Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Denmark, Iceland, Russia) and five returned from 1996 (Belgium, Finland, Israel, Romania, Slovakia). Italy willfully skipped and North Macedonia made their proper debut, after not qualifying in 1996. Israel famously sent Dana International, the first transgender person to ever compete in Eurovision, and she won the contest.

As with the last two years, the female presenter handled the voting while the male presenter had a different job. In 1996 it was watching over the green room, in 1997 it was the interval act, and in 1998 it was commentary. That’s right: this year, Terry Wogan both hosted and commentated on this contest!* I’m glad he got to host before he became bitter about the contest. Even if I could understand every language in Europe, I would still think the only acceptable way to watch the contest was with British commentary, so that’s what I did.

Interestingly, neither of this contest’s hosts are native to the UK: Terry Wogan is Irish and Ulrika Jonsson is Swedish. However, both had been working for years as BBC presenters. The contest featured four other Eurovision hosts as a special guest. Their, or should I say her name is Katie Boyle, whose hair had gone gray but looked sharp and confident as ever. It’s weird to think she outlived Terry Wogan by two years.

* As far as I know, the only other people who did that were Léon Zitrone (1978) and Graham Norton (2023).

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Cookie Fonster Learns About Eurovision 1997: Foreshadowing the Bonkers Era

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Intro Post

< 1996 Review | 1997 Review | 1998 Review >

Today, Slovenia confirmed that their Eurovision entry in 2024 will be sung in Slovenian for the third year in the row. France already released their entry, which is entirely in French, and I’d be very surprised if Marina Satti doesn’t sing in Greek. Why, in the name of all things holy, can’t Germany be like this???

Right after I published this post, the full list of participating countries for 2024 was released, even though Romania is still up in the air. I suppose the EBU decided that once they reached 37 participants, the same number as 2023, they’d go “screw it, let’s release the list already”.

Introduction

“The Irish pretend they don’t want to win this. Ahh, it’s too expensive! Ahh, we’re fed up with it! I’m Irish too, and don’t believe a word of it. The Irish love winning this, they love having it here.” As shown by the dramatic opening film, Terry Wogan’s words ring truer than ever.

Eurovision 1997 took place in Dublin, Ireland at the Point Theatre for one last time. This time, they went for a smaller stage, presumably so it wouldn’t seem like the same building. The contest featured two major changes to the rules. First, entries were now allowed to be sung entirely over a backing track without needing mimed instruments on stage, which was the biggest and last blow to the orchestra before it was abolished entirely. Second, five countries got their points from televoting for the first time: Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. This was a trial round before almost all countries adopted televoting in 1998.

This time, the relegation system worked a bit differently: countries were allowed in based on their average scores from 1993 to 1996, which is still kind of a dumb system. It would take until 2004 for Eurovision to stop punishing countries for their previous low scores. Fortunately, the number of participants was bumped up to 25, which meant five countries returned (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia) and only three were relegated (Belgium, Finland, Slovakia). This was Italy’s first appearance in Eurovision since 1993, and their last until 2011.

Fun fact: This was the first year where Peter Urban commentated for Germany, which he did up to 2023 (except in 2009). Unfortunately, I don’t like his commentary style. He sounds very monotone, like he’s reading from a script. So instead, I watched it with British commentary—fitting because the UK won for the most recent time. Buckle up, my dear readers: we’re almost done with the native language era of Eurovision.

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