Category Archives: Eurovision Posts

Cookie Fonster Assesses Eurovision 1964: The Second of Three Lost Years

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Intro Post

< 1963 Review | 1964 Review | 1965 Review >

Introduction

1956, 1964, and 2020 are the “lost years” of Eurovision because you can’t watch a full video recording of any of these contests. The first two because most of the video footage is lost media; the third because COVID-19 forced the contest’s cancellation. Fortunately, the audio of this contest is preserved entirely, and we know exactly who voted for who. This time, countries gave five, three, and one points to their top three songs. This led Italy to beat its nearest rival by almost three times, the most crushing victory in Eurovision history.

Sweden skipped this contest due to student protests, while Portugal made its debut, which kept the number of countries at 16. Since 2017, Portugal has been the most recent first-time winner of Eurovision. Many fans weren’t happy about including Portugal, since back then it was a dictatorship like Spain. Protests against these countries’ inclusion caused the first ever stage invasion in Eurovision history.

Anyway, this contest was hosted in Copenhagen, Denmark, the northernmost and easternmost host city thus far. The presenter spoke mostly in her own language, as was the norm back then. I understand Danish less than Dutch, but more than the other North Germanic languages.

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Cookie Fonster Examines Eurovision 1963: A Narrow Nordic Victory

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Intro Post

< 1962 Review | 1963 Review | 1964 Review >

Introduction

If you thought the whole point of music concerts was to see the singer in person, Eurovision 1963 would beg to differ. For some reason, the singers performed in one room, while the audience watched the shows on a screen in a different room. This apparently caused rumors that the performances were pre-recorded, even though with the technology of that time, that sounded like more trouble than just broadcasting them live.

For the second time, the United Kingdom substituted for a multi-time Eurovision winner: France, which had just celebrated its third victory and didn’t want to host again. Once again, the contest took place in London, specifically the BBC Television Centre. After the bare bones staging in the last two years, Eurovision 1963 returned to fanciful stage shenanigans. This is clear as soon as the singers are all introduced, where they’re backed by recursive mirrors. Too bad the audience didn’t get to see them in color!

The voting system of 1963 was adjusted from last year. This time, countries sent five to one points for their top five songs, which decreased bias towards the second half.

Oh yeah, I guess I’m watching with Dutch commentary again! I can’t speak Dutch, but it’s close enough to German that I can understand some of it. We’re now 60 years till we’ve caught up with the present, which means my grandparents were roughly as old back then as I am today. (I know their years of birth, and one was slightly older than me, the other three slightly younger.)

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Eurovision 1962: A Jury with the Memory of a Goldfish

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Intro Post

< 1961 Review | 1962 Review | 1963 Review >

Introduction

Hosted in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, this edition of Eurovision was remarkably similar to the last one. It had the same 16 countries, marking the first Eurovision with the exact same country lineup as last year, and the votes were again skewed towards late entries. The biggest difference is that the voting system was simplified. This time, the juries gave three, two, and one points to their top three favorite songs respectively. If I was a Eurovision fan back then, I would’ve been a little peeved at this change, but I would understand that it was probably done to speed up the process of tallying votes.

This contest had three singers return from 1960, one of whom also performed in 1958 and 1956. One singer returned from 1959 but for a different country. It looks like this contest will be a similar experience to 1961, except I’ll be listening to Dutch commentary this time.

One more amusing observation: The French-speaking presenter said early on, “Luxembourg, la cœur de l’Europe, va battre ce soir.” (Luxembourg, the heart of Europe, will beat this evening.) Poland’s national selection since 2022 would object to this designation, since its name claims that they’re the heart of Europe. The only explanation is that Europe had a disastrous heart transplant last year.

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Cookie Fonster Explores Eurovision 1961: Big Guys Join, the Little Guy Wins

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Intro Post

< 1960 Review | 1961 Review | 1962 Review >

Introduction

Eurovision 1961 was hosted in Cannes, France, in the exact same building as 1959. This time, I watched a recording from the Dutch channel NOS with its post-2005 logo, but the commentary was in English. I couldn’t make out every word of the commentary, which makes me feel better about my skills in other languages. This Eurovision was hosted during a massive rainstorm, and the commentator says it’s fitting for the tension each country is facing—exactly the sort of humor that British commentary is famed for. We get a little tour of the building before starting the contest, which would become the norm in modern Eurovision.

Sixteen countries participated in this contest, making it the first one with more songs than 1956’s fourteen. It had all countries from 1960, plus three new ones: Finland, Spain, and Yugoslavia. Spain is the biggest mainstay of these; they’re one of the big guys, always eager to showcase their musical identity. They haven’t tasted victory since the four-way win in 1969, a year after their only solo win, but they’ve come close many times. Finland had terrible luck when the language rule was enforced, and they only won in 2006 with the perfect combo of absurd costumes and banger music. However, they earned second place in 2023 with their own language, which I think is awesome.

Yugoslavia is the only country that has won Eurovision (in 1989) but no longer exists. They’re also the only Slavic country to participate during the Cold War. Though Yugoslavia is no more, its successor states (especially Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia) have a knack for embracing their own culture and sense of humor, unlike some countries in Eurovision. Not all former Yugoslav countries have been as successful—Bosnia and Herzegovina is clogged by financial problems, and Montenegro is best known for their infamous 2012 entry, “Euro Neuro”.

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Cookie Fonster Discusses Eurovision 1960: New Decade, Same Old-Timey Spirit

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Intro Post

< 1959 Review | 1960 Review | 1961 Review >

So far, I’ve published a Eurovision review every other day, but the next one might break the pattern. This is because I’ve started having more to say about every song, and the number of songs has increased. And because I’m soon to start a piano teaching side job at a music store.

Introduction

If a country wins Eurovision multiple times in short succession, they often get hesitant to host it again. This happened with Eurovision 1960: the Netherlands declined hosting again due to expense, so the good old dependable BBC filled in, hosting in London, England. In all but one case, the UK swooped in to host an unwilling or unable country. In fact, of the nine times the UK has hosted Eurovision, five were in place of a different winner.

Luxembourg rejoined this Eurovision, and Norway joined for the first time, making a total of 13 countries. To this day, Norway is a Eurovision mainstay that has only missed two Eurovisions, and they have a respectable three victories. However, Luxembourg was a bigger Eurovision powerhouse in the 60’s to 80’s, with an impressive five wins. The winner of this contest repeated history: just like two years ago, France won a year after the Netherlands. By then, a lot of fans must have wished other countries could get a chance. They’d get their wish soon enough.

This was the first Eurovision where jury members got to hear songs in advance, specifically in the rehearsals. I presume it made them more set on winners once it was voting time.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Eurovision 1959: A Step Up in Stage Design

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Intro Post

< 1958 Review | 1959 Review | 1960 Review >

Introduction

Eurovision 1959 was hosted in Cannes, France, at the time the southernmost host city. I find it weird that France has only hosted three Eurovisions, the next in 1961 and the last in 1978. France has won Eurovision five times, but one was a four-way tie where the Netherlands hosted next year, and one was after they had hosted last year and three years ago, so the UK hosted next time instead. The UK has filled in as a host country five times, the Netherlands once, but never France. That feels odd for a big-name country, doesn’t it?

In the last contest of the 1950’s, eleven countries competed for the throne. The United Kingdom returned, beginning its ongoing streak of perfect attendance, while Luxembourg skipped. Monaco, another country that usually didn’t send its own residents, was the only newcomer. At the time, my oldest grandparent was 20 years old, and I believe he got married that year. They’re still married today.

The stage of 1959 had revolving doors to show backdrops representing each country, which is a step up in flashiness, or should I say Eurovisioniness, from previous years. These backdrops were used to introduce every contestant and their country, like a predecessor to the flag parades we know today, and every singer performed in front of their backdrop. It was also the only contest where the top three winners all performed at the end.

One more fun fact: 8 out of 11 songs this year are in Germanic languages, and three are in German—more than any other language. Even though I can speak French too, German is a cooler language and more personal to me. Ich hoffe ganz arg, dass die nächste Eurovision wieder Musik auf Deutsch hat.

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Cookie Fonster Analyzes Eurovision 1958: The First “Wait, That Was Eurovision?”

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Intro Post

< 1957 Review | 1958 Review | 1959 Review >

Introduction

The third Eurovision Song Contest set a number of firsts. For one, it’s the first Eurovision hosted in the country that won last time (Hilversum, Netherlands). This tradition would be followed about 75% of the time from 1958 to 1980, continuously from 1981 to 2022, and broken again in 2023. It’s the first Eurovision to feature Sweden, one of the contest’s power players. Since the UK skipped out that year, Sweden’s presence kept the number of countries at ten, and the number of songs in English at zero. It was the first Eurovision where the song length rule was enforced, specifically 3:30 minutes. And finally, it’s the first Eurovision to produce a song more famous than the contest itself—a song that makes people narrow their eyes and say “wait… that was from Eurovision?!”

When reading about Eurovision 1958, I constantly encounter Italy’s iconic entry, but I want to give every song from this contest a chance. Does this Eurovision have some gems hidden in Italy’s shadow? We’ll find out together.

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Cookie Fonster Judges Eurovision 1957: Say Hi to Three New Guys

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Intro Post

< 1956 Review | 1957 Review | 1958 Review >

Introduction

Hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, the second Eurovision Song Contest had a few differences from the first. Each country sent only one song, duets were now allowed, the video footage was successfully preserved, and three new countries joined: Austria, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. The first two had stretches of absence due to poor results, but the UK has had perfect attendance since 1959—for better and for worse.

During the first few years of Eurovision, one of the biggest points of excitement must have been finding out which countries would join next. Indeed, at least one country joined every year from 1957 to 1961. This era is long over; since 2008, almost every country under the most generous definition of “European” has participated at least once. The only ones that haven’t are disputed regions, microstates, dependent territories, and Kazakhstan.

One more odd fact about Eurovision 1957 is that people didn’t need to wait a year after the last one; only about nine months, since it was held on March 3. However, the contest’s date would gradually shift until it was in May once more.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Eurovision 1956: Humble Beginnings Shrouded in Mystery

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< Intro Post | 1956 Review | 1957 Review >

Note: I wrote this post after finishing my review of the season 6 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. That will come out Friday morning!

Introduction

The first ever Eurovision Song Contest, then known as the Grand Prix of the Eurovision Song Competition (French: Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne), was held exactly 67 years before the day I am writing these words—on May 24, 1956. It boggles my mind how long Eurovision has existed. The contest is 44 years older than me, and it was first held when my grandparents were teenagers. Two grandparents who lived in Germany and might have known of the contest; two grandparents who lived in the United States and probably had no way to know it existed.

There are innumerable ways the Eurovision of then differed from the Eurovision of today. Imagine if you could tell a European in 1956 that people all over the world can watch the contest using telephones, or that the contest has so many countries that it now spans five days, or that Australia is now a competitor. But what I find most striking is how much of the first contest is lost to the sands of time. We don’t know any rankings besides the winner, we don’t know who most of the commentators are, we don’t know if some contestants are still alive*… but most importantly, we don’t even have video footage of the contest, except the winning song’s reprise. I wonder if anyone in 1956 was a huge enough Eurovision nerd to keep track of all information on the contest they could, then preserved the papers they wrote it on when the Internet age began? If anyone like that is alive today, their claims would be hard to prove.

Putting aside the incredible evolution of technology, here are some basic facts about Eurovision 1956. It was broadcast on radio and TV, though most people consumed it via radio. It was hosted near the center of the seven participating countries in Lugano, Switzerland, and in an excellent example of early installment weirdness, each country sent two songs. It’s one of two Eurovision Song Contests with no songs in English; half the songs were in French, and the others were in German, Dutch, and Italian.

Now what are we waiting for? Eurovision 1956 review, let’s begin! I’ll list the songs in order of broadcast.

* French Wikipedia claims Mony Marc is dead, while Spanish Wikipedia claims she’s alive. Perhaps because little is known about her, she has no English Wikipedia article.

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Introducing my Eurovision blog post series!

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After having finished a huge blog post series analyzing Homestuck, and soon to finish season 6 in a blog post series reviewing My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, I’m going to start my third large-scale blog post series: reviews of every song in the Eurovision Song Contest, year by year. Basically, it’s an annual contest where a variety of mostly European countries each send a song to perform live, hosted in whichever country won last year—2023 is an exception due to the war in Ukraine. The contest is filled with controversy and drama, but it has an enthusiastic fandom that embraces all the absurdity.

But why would I, an American who barely even heard of Eurovision until last year, do such a thing?

Because I think it’ll be fun. Every Eurovision fan outside of Europe, kind-of-maybe-European countries, Israel, and Australia has a different story for how they got into it, and I got interested through music mashups. After a certain YouTube channel released a lot of mashups on the day of Eurovision finals last year, I went on tons of Wikipedia and later YouTube spirals about the contest because I have heard so many crazy things about it. It turns out this song contest, dating back to 1956, is an absolute rabbit hole! It has everything from spectacularly creative bangers to the dullest pop music of the time period. Everything from serious, heartfelt ballads to indescribably goofy dance songs that you’ll only hear in Eurovision. I also find it super interesting how the languages used have evolved over time and per country, so the contest perks up my inner language nerd.

In addition, despite living in the United States all my life, the contest has a mainstay country that I can call mine: Germany. It’s where my mother was born and raised, I can speak their language well, and I even own a German passport. In the contest, Germany has had an extremely mixed track record and only two victories, but they’ve loyally participated since the beginning. (Also, why haven’t they sung in German since 2007?! It’s the most spoken native language in Europe behind Russian, for crying out loud.)

After we find out the winner of the 2023 contest next week—my top picks are Finland, Slovenia, and Germany, but my honest prediction is Sweden—I’ll get right to it and review each song in the 1956 contest! I won’t have a consistent schedule, but the posts should come quickly at first. Knowing how my prior post series have gone, it’s safe to say my Eurovision posts will start off short and simple but gradually get overwhelmingly detailed, and I’ll eventually wish my early posts were more thorough and resist the urge to remake them. I also predict that my Eurovision post series will go through lots of pauses and take a year at least. Once I’m caught up with the present, I’m not sure if I want to review every contest annually from here on out. We’ll see what happens!

Here are two other Eurovision blog post series worth checking out: one by Erica Dakin, which is focused on the songs like mine, and one sadly deleted called Eurovision Scoreboards, which is focused more on the contests’ presentation and history.

And here are some archives of Eurovision contests commentated: a series of Google Slides by Ivan Alexander for 2000 onwards, and a spreadsheet by me with all German-language commentary I could find.

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