Intro Post

< 1961 Review | 1962 Review | 1963 Review >

I should mention that four days ago, I got a ticket to semifinal 2 of Eurovision 2025 in Basel! I chose that because it’s the show Germany will be performing in, and because it has most of my other favorites. I haven’t heard most entries in full just yet, so my opinions could shift. I didn’t choose the final because I already have a cheaper ticket to the public viewing.

---

Introduction

I’m honestly tempted to skip this year, because I already know it has no songs I love and I’ve reviewed all of them before, so why should I listen to them again? Well OK, I’ve reviewed all Eurovision songs up to 2024, but I haven’t ranked 1962 yet, so I guess I should get that out of the way real quick.

Luxembourg hosted Eurovision for the first of four times (1962, 1966, 1973, 1984), in a ridiculously tiny building called the Villa Louvigny which was the headquarters of their broadcaster CLT. In Luxembourg’s defense, the country didn’t really have any better options back then. They didn’t have a proper theater building until the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg was opened in 1964, which hosted the third and fourth Luxembourgish contests. For whatever reason, the Grand Théâtre wasn’t chosen to host 1966.

This year is most notable for being the first where a country scored zero points—in fact, four songs got no points this year. It’s no coincidence that this happened the same year the voting system got revamped. Now instead of dividing ten points across different songs, each national jury awarded three, two, and one points to their top three entries. The juries consisted of ten people back then, so I’m not sure how this system handled tiebreakers between the jurors. In any case, this was a really boring voting system, so it’s no wonder the EBU changed it the next year.

All the same sixteen countries as last year competed in 1962, which is a nice number because their flags can be arranged in a square. All of the top three this year were Francophone countries: France first, Monaco second, Luxembourg third. The host is a French TV presenter named Mireille Delannoy, although not much is known about her aside from hosting Eurovision. She did the entire show in French except a few parts of the voting in English.

For the first time, the opening act is an orchestral arrangement of last year’s winner, which is “Nous les amoureux”. I’m salty that Eurovision eventually dropped those reprises in favor the previous winner either rehashing their last song unedited, or singing a weird rearrangement into a new genre.

---

Finland: Tipi-tii

Artist: Marion Rung

Language: Finnish

Key: G major

My ranking: 3rd

This song probably should’ve been Finland’s debut instead of the ballad they sent last year. It’s an upbeat tune about spring with a “tipi-tii, tipi-tipi-tii” hook that anyone can sing along to and clearly sounds like a bird chirping. The lyrics aren’t solely about spring though: they also contain metaphors for romance, since she sings about building a nest together and singing birdsongs, so lyrically it’s more interesting than other springtime tunes.

I like listening to the song well enough: it does fun things with the instruments, especially with the call and response section in the middle, and it’s full of catchy melodies. But it suffers the same problem as pretty much all the non-ballads this year: it is absolutely twee. I don’t know about you, but I can only take so much of cheerful sugary music unless it’s really good. I learned this after listening to so many of my original winners in order, like the German entry that we’ll encounter later on.

This song landed seventh place with four points, which for a year filled with null-pointers isn’t too bad. I’m sure someone out there absolutely loves this song, so if you do, you’ll be pleased to know I made an 8-bit cover of it. But only because I didn’t want to skip any years in my 8-bit cover project.

Belgium: Ton nom

Artist: Fud Leclerc, for the fourth and last time

Language: French

Key: F major

My ranking: 9th. It’s the most entertaining of the five 4/10’s.

Now we have Fud Leclerc’s final effort in Eurovision, which sadly landed him with zero points. I’m sure you’ve all grown to love him by now—at least, by this point I have. This is a fairly boring jazzy ballad mostly in 6/8 time except for the bridge, but it’s made more entertaining by his goofy stage persona. He seems to have fun singing about his lover playing with his heart, so the song suits him well. I find this song forgettable, but at least it doesn’t make me want to sleep.

Spain: Llámame

Artist: Victor Balaguer

Language: Spanish

Key: B♭ major

My ranking: 8th

Why does this song have to have such a slow, drawn-out opera intro? The rest of the song is actually decent enough and very Spanish-sounding, especially with those trumpet riffs. His singing is still too dramatic for me, but that’s Spain for you I guess. I’m not sure why this got zero points, but I also don’t really care because this year is boring.

Austria: Nur in der Wiener Luft

Artist: Eleonore Schwarz

Language: German

Key: D major

My ranking: 16th (last)

Congratulations Austria, you’ve just given me the first ever 1/10! In the rating scale I use, 1/10 is the lowest score a song can get, no exceptions. I wasn’t expecting to hate this song that much on a relisten, but now that I’ve heard it in full again, I can officially say I hate it just as much as Erica does. Apparently I didn’t mind this song in round 1, but since then my hate boner for opera has grown stronger and stronger. I was scared of opera as a kid, so it looks like that fear never went away.

This song starts off harmless enough, if way too old-timey for 1962: a classical waltz full of tempo changes about how great of a city Vienna is. Her opera singing isn’t even too bad at first, she’s clearly trained in this genre. But then her singing just has to increase in pitch, and the higher she sings, the more she makes me wince. It’s like she’s taking joy in torturing my ears. And the worst part is, we don’t even get an instrumental break to cleanse our ears. The song starts an interlude after the second time she sings “Zauberer von Wien, Walzer aus Wien”, and it almost seems like that’ll be an instrumental break. But nooo, Eleonore decides to sing ultra-high opera notes over that too because she has no respect for my ears. That eventually leads to some truly hideous “ah ah ah” in pitches no human should be allowed to sing in, and no human should be forced to listen to. And then she finishes the song with one of the most hateful long notes I’ve ever heard. At the end I’m left pissed off that I had to suffer through this piece of crap. I listened to it twice to make sure this song would get the rant that it deserved, much like with recent atrocities like “Chains on You” or “The Moon Is Rising”.

Oh yeah, this is the third zero-pointer and the most deserved one this year. I wish this was the only one that got zero points, because it would’ve been hilarious and well-deserved. But it just isn’t the same when three other entries share this negligible score.

Denmark: Vuggevise

Artist: Ellen Winther

Language: Danish

Key: E♭ major, E major

My ranking: 10th

Austria’s song was so hideously awful that this song seems lovely in comparison. Key word: in comparison. It’s still too slow and full of drawn-out notes, not to mention too high-pitched, but I somewhat like the jazzy and nostalgic kids’ movie sound as I described it last time, as is common of early Danish entries. Basically, this is one of the less bad entries of this year.

Sweden: Sol och vår

Artist: Inger Berggren

Language: Swedish

Key: E major, F major

My ranking: 2nd

Now here’s the second of the upbeat songs that are fun but overly twee. I mean, I’ll take these over sleep-inducing ballads any day, but as I keep saying, I can only take so much of happy twee songs before I start getting annoyed. Still, I like this song overall and it’ll go above Finland for several reasons. The song tells a good story and she gives expressive performance, not to mention all the satisfying rhymes that I can appreciate despite only knowing a little Swedish.

I already wrote a long analysis of this in round 1, so I suggest you read that. But to recap, she sings about a romance scammer who tricked her into getting her coat stolen. It’s a lighthearted story and Inger’s performance shows that she’s sharing a laugh with the audience about her past mishaps. As I said back then: She’s smiling throughout, and her energetic tone gives an additional message to this song: if you made a terrible mistake, you should treat it as a learning experience, and it’s OK to laugh about your mistakes.

Germany: Zwei kleine Italiener

Artist: Cornelia Froboess

Language: German. I begged Germany to bring back the language in 2024, but I had to wait one more year.

Key: B♭ major (verses), E♭ major (chorus)

My ranking: 5th

Give me a T! Give me a W! Give me an E! Give me an E! Just to be clear, I’m not translating the song’s title into Dutch. I’m just calling it what it is, which is twee.

I originally chose this as my winner of 1962, but now it’s dropped down to my fifth place, because by this point I’ve grown tired of it. Maybe it’s because I exposed myself to this more than the others, but this is more sugary than any of my top four and thus I had to rank it below all of them. I do still think it’s a good composition and I still find the story the lyrics tell to be interesting, because it’s about two Italian guest workers who miss their homeland and want to reunite with their girlfriends, named Tina and Marina respectively. Last time I described the song as having a mix of playfulness and scorn, and I still agree with that. And yes, it’s very German-sounding, but in a kitschy schlagery way.

Netherlands: Katinka

Artist: De Spelbrekers (Theo Rekkers, Huug Kok)

Language: Dutch

Key: G major in the first verse, A♭ major in the rest

My ranking: 4th

Wow, it feels weird to see two guys at the microphone this year. It almost feels like one singer has been cloned, because they both have similar faces and voices.

Anyway, this is the last zero pointer and the only one I think is truly undeserved. The plus side is, at least it became a big hit in the Netherlands, so it’s seen as a golden oldie there much like “Een beetje”. It’s a male/male duet full of harmonies, so it sort of reminds me of “Are You Sure?” from last year, although not quite as good. It’s almost like this took place chronologically before “Are You Sure”, since this is about the two guys (or one person) meeting a hot lady named Katinka at work, and “Are You Sure” could be about one of the guys trying to convince Katinka not to break up with him.

I think the reason I don’t like this as much as the Allisons’ duet is because the voices sound harsher, in contrast to the smooth voices of the British boys. Still, this is a fun enough song and I like that it includes an instrumental break playing the song’s melody; I like it in general when songs do that.

France: Un premier amour (the winner)

Artist: Isabelle Aubret

Language: French

Key: D minor

My ranking: 7th

And so, the winner of this year is France for the third even-numbered year in a row. It’s not too bad for an old-timey chanson: it sounds moody instead of boring and has a nice piano part. But it’s missing that spark of greatness to click with me, and it’s hard to say why. I think the two main reasons are that the song keeps one level of energy instead of building up to something grandiose, and because the repeated phrases “un premier amour” and “s’oublie jamais” bother me a little bit.

That said, I can understand why this won: this year has no real standouts, so the standard formulaic song ended up winning. It was quite a runaway winner, having scored 26 points, which is twice as much as the runner-up.

Norway: Kom sol, kom regn

Artist: Inger Jacobsen

Language: Norwegian

Key: B♭ major

My ranking: 15th

And now we’re back to old timey movie music, as if we’re stuck in an eternal time loop of the 1950’s. It’s not too bad as far as old ballads go, and I slightly like the old kids’ movie sound. Unfortunately, the song has a freeform section in the middle and I really dislike that part. The freeform part means this is going near the bottom.

Switzerland: Le Retour

Artist: Jean Philippe, who represented France in 1959

Language: French

Key: D minor

My ranking: 13th

Hi again, Cédric Dumont! He conducted the orchestra once again. Anyway, Jean Philippe is a good singer as returning contestants tend to be, but this is a generic chanson with too many repeated brassy notes in the background. It’s not bad or anything, but it just does nothing for me.

Yugoslavia: Ne pali svetla u sumrak (Не пали светла у сумрак)

Artist: Lola Novaković

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Serbian)

Key: D♭ major, D major

My ranking: 6th. This may come as a surprise, so hear me out.

“Wait, Mr. Cookiefonster,” I hear you say. “You normally hate old-timey Yugoslav ballads, so why do you have this sixth?” Ah, you see, this really started to grow on me the more times I listened to it. It’s still a slow 1950’s film music song, but as far as this genre goes, this is actually quite pleasant to listen to. The biggest reason is because the instrumental is dominated by soft, smooth strings instead of unfittingly aggressive brass like the last song. It also helps that the song has a slight bossa nova rhythm and bongo beat, much like “Ce soir-là”. She has a decently melodious voice, not the most remarkable one we’ve ever heard, but it serves this song well enough.

All that said, this still isn’t a song I’d go out of my way to listen to. It’s just more respectable than most grayscale era ballads, because when I listen to this, I’m not waiting for it to be over. Therefore, I’ve ranked it the highest of the non-upbeat songs.

A nice thing about doing this post series all over again is that I can correct mistakes I made in round 1. For instance, I had incorrectly referred to Ellen Winther as the winner of 1963, and I forgot to list this song as having a key change to D major. I edited my original review of 1962 to fix those mistakes.

United Kingdom: Ring-a-Ding Girl

Artist: Ronnie Carroll

Language: English

Key: F major, F♯ major

My ranking: 1st

Fun fact: to my knowledge, the conductor of this song is the first ever transgender person to be involved in Eurovision, if you count those that hadn’t yet transitioned. This song was conducted (and orchestrated) by a pre-transition Angela Morley.

So yeah, I guess this is my first place of the year. I had retconned my winner from Germany to this a while back, and after thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided to keep it this. Out of all the upbeat songs this year, this one is the least twee (probably because of his smooth voice) and therefore the most pleasant to listen to. It has a similar composition style to “Sing, Little Birdie” or “Looking High, High, High” and the verses are quite lovely, although the chorus has too many ring-dinga-dinga-dings. It tells a fun little story about how a man met the love of his life, starting with their first encounter and ending in marriage.

I’m surprised this didn’t continue the UK’s streak of second places; rather, it tied with Yugoslavia for fourth place.

Luxembourg: Petit bonhomme

Artist: Camillo Felgen, returning from 1960

Language: French, unlike his last song

Key: C major

My ranking: 14th

Last time he was in Eurovision, Camillo sang in Luxembourgish, but this time he opted for French. And unfortunately, neither of his songs do much for me.

Karina’s review points out that the lyrics are from a man addressed to his son about to face the challenges of life, which is a pretty interesting topic for a song. The fact that I can speak French but never noticed those lyrics before is a bad sign. It proves that Camillo doesn’t sing it with any emotion. He’s a decent enough chanson-style singer (when he actually sings, that is; I hate the spoken word parts), but his delivery is completely stiff and comes off like he’s reciting words. Also, the instrumental is a boring 6/8 ballad.

Italy: Addio, addio

Artist: Claudio Villa

Language: Italian

Key: F major, though it gradually becomes more minor and ends on a D minor chord

My ranking: 12th

This is the third of four entries composed by our good friend Domenico Modugno, and the only one to be sung by someone else. In typical Domenico Modugno fashion, the lyrics are super-dramatic and about the pain of saying goodbye. I think I would’ve preferred if Mr. Volare himself performed it, because he has a unique style of charisma and pleading drama when he performs, whereas Claudio comes off as just your usual Italian drama singer. He gets increasingly loud as he progresses, as if he thinks more volume means more quality. The instrumental seems like a well thought-out composition, but it’s too much of a drama ballad to really be my thing.

Monaco: Dis rien

Artist: François Deguelt, returning from 1960

Language: French

Key: A major

My ranking: 11th

And to close off the contest we have my boy François Deguelt, who sang my winner of 1960 “Ce soir-là”. He’s an excellent singer like last time, and he especially does a great job belting out the last few lyrics, but this doesn’t live up to his last entry otherwise. It’s too much of an average 6/8 ballad with the same drum beat and repeating piano chords we hear in most such ballads. I wish I could rank this higher, but I can’t put it higher than 11th. Props to him for getting second place, I guess?

---

My full ranking

This was a tough year to rank, but upon extensive relistening I came up with this list:

As you can see, the five upbeat songs are on top, and the rest are all the slow songs, except for Spain which is half and half. I was not at all expecting to rank Yugoslavia so high up, but it was impossible to ignore that it’s a respectable composition. You can also notice that most of the songs’ scores are fairly close to 5/10, except for that Austrian abomination. 7 is “yeah, this is a good song” and 3 is “that wasn’t very good”.

Rest of the show:

As an interval act, we have a weird little skit with a French clown named Achille Zavatta, who pretended to be the 17th contestant with a song (not actually a song) called “Zavattaland”. We’ll get a much better circus-themed act next year, just you wait.

The voting sequence is almost disturbingly short, which I suppose was the intention because the EBU didn’t want the show to get too long back then. It feels so lifeless compared to the voting of the past few years, because of the new voting system, and it bugs me that countries are inconsistent whether to give their points in ascending or descending order. Some even gave their points in running order. It was also boring in terms of scores because France stayed in the lead through almost the entire voting.

Jean-Claude Pascal, the winner of 1961, gave a little bumbling speech just as he did last year and then passed the prize to the new winner Isabelle Aubret, who reprised her song as usual.

General thoughts:

Normally when I reach a particularly poor installment in a blog post series, whether that be a bad episode of a TV show or a weak Eurovision year, I’m reluctant to review it at first. But by the end I’m always glad I reviewed it, because I’m able to pin down why the installment is so underwhelming but also gain appreciation for the redeeming qualities. This softens my dread to review other years that I find notoriously weak, like 1992 for instance.

The reason this is such a weak year is that there are no standout songs to be found, at least in my opinion. The upbeat songs are nice enough but all a bit too sugary, while the ballads are as dull as ever. But I did manage to find something to appreciate about quite a few songs, like the joy of the UK and Sweden’s entries, and the surprisingly pleasant ballad from Yugoslavia.

In terms of presentation, this wasn’t a very impressive year either. The ultra-tiny venue makes it look almost as if the show was hosted in a bedroom, and the scoreboard design is pretty ugly too. It’s a little better than last year’s at fitting in a 4:3 aspect ratio, but the font really doesn’t need to be so narrow. It’s also unnecessary that the scores have three digits (starting at 000), because the maximum score a song can get was 48. Removing the first digit would’ve improved legibility.

So yeah, this was a dud year overall, but it was an interesting exercise to re-review and rank it. And if nothing else, the presenter was friendly and came off as honored to have this opportunity. Fortunately I know 1963 will be a more interesting year, both in songs and production.

---

See you next time as the BBC innovates the show a little too much and I gush about Denmark’s winner.

>> 1963: The Danish Couple Saves the Show