Category Archives: Eurovision Posts

Cookie Fonster Uncovers Eurovision 1967 Again: The Year Where the Host Spoke Russian

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Intro Post

< 1966 Review | 1967 Review | 1968 Review >

Only ten days left till I go to Basel for Eurovision 2025! The trip is pretty much all I can think about right now. I’ll try to get at least one more round 2 review done before I leave.

Introduction

The host didn’t do the whole show in Russian of course—she spoke other languages too. I’ll get to that in a moment.

After Udo Jürgens gave Austria their first victory, Eurovision 1967 came to Vienna in the Großer Festsaal der Wiener Hofburg, a hall in the palace that was once the summer residence of the Habsburg dynasty, and is now the residency of the president of Austria. Austria went all out showcasing their culture in the show, as much as they could in a grayscale broadcast. We begin with the theme song “Te Deum” arranged in the style of a Johann Strauss waltz, then a piece composed by Strauss himself. Following that, Udo Jürgens conducts an orchestral arrangement of “Merci, Chérie”, and I love how happy he looks.

The contest featured a lineup of seventeen countries, one less than the last year because Denmark began an eleven-year break from Eurovision. That’s because the director of TV entertainment in their broadcaster thought Eurovision was a waste of money, sadly. The voting system was changed back to how it was from 1957 to 1961: each country’s jury gets ten votes to distribute across various countries. The top three were all power players of 20th century Eurovision: France went back to their usual high results with a third place, Ireland scored their first ever second place, and the UK won for the first time with a Europe-wide hit, “Puppet on a String”. The only nul-pointer this year was Switzerland, and they deserved it because their song is fucking awful.

As a presenter, we have the Austrian actress Erica Vaal, and she was pretty awesome. She opened the show with a friendly yet professional speech in German, which was neither too long nor too short. She continued with the same speech in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. I give hats off to her for that speech, especially because of the Russian part because she didn’t need to do so but did it anyway, and made viewers in the Soviet Union feel welcome as a result. Then she finished with a sweet addendum: “Ladies and gentlemen of Sweden, Netherland, Norway, Finland, Portugal, and Yugoslavia: I would have also liked to welcome you in your native tongue, but time was too short for me to learn them. But should there be another contest in the near future in Vienna, I shall do my best to also please you.” Also, her voice is quite pleasant to listen to—I went off in my last post about how much I love the sound of deep female voices, and we get even more of that here. Once she finishes her multilingual speech, the pleasantries are done and the songs begin.

I can only find two countries’ commentary on Eurovision 1967 on YouTube: the Austrian commentary and the French commentary. I’ll watch with Emil Kollpacher’s Austrian commentary once again, because I can understand the host and don’t need to hear her being talked over. Also, here’s a good point to promote my German-language commentary spreadsheet! It contains all the Eurovision commentary from the DACH countries that I could possibly find, and I’ll be sure to update it after Eurovision 2025.

I already ranked this year a few months ago when deciding what song to 8-bit cover for 1967, so the rankings for this post should be easy. I don’t expect them to change much.

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Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966: The First Woman Not to Wear a Dress

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Intro Post

< 1965 Review | 1966 Review | 1967 Review >

Introduction

My original review of 1966 was titled “Cookie Fonster Revisits Eurovision 1966”, which wasn’t entirely accurate because I was watching the year for the first time. Now that I am watching it for the second time, the old title is accurate, hence the title “Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966”.

We’re back in Luxembourg City, once again in the tiny Villa Louvigny, but this time the place is decorated much better. There’s a cute spiral staircase to the right of the stage and an elaborate chandelier behind the stage that looks nice in black and white. The presenter is different too: this time, her name is Josiane Shen, and she seemed to have a slightly bigger career than the last Luxembourgish host.

The lineup of countries was exactly the same as 1965, so once again we have 18 participant countries. Only two got zero points, and both are surprising ones: Monaco and Italy. In third place came a beautiful guitar tune from Norway, in second came a fun but bizarro jazzy waltz from Sweden, and in first place came Austria with an Udo Jürgens ballad. For him, third time was the charm! I should also mention that this was the first year where the EBU enforced a language rule, so it’s rather amusing that the winner had a few phrases in a different language thrown in.

I can’t find British commentary for this year, so I’ll watch with French commentary. François Deguelt commentated for France this year—he’s the singer of the wonderful “Ce soir-là”. He said at the start that he had to fill in for Pierre Tchernia who was unavailable and that he hoped he could comment the show in the same fashion.

I absolutely love the orchestral reprise of “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” at the start of the show and I’m pissed that rearranging the winner at the start of the show wasn’t done every year. Josiane gives us a short, no-nonsense introduction, then the first song begins.

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Cookie Fonster Reevaluates Eurovision 1965: The Year That Gave Me a Headache

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Intro Post

< 1964 Review | 1965 Review | 1966 Review >

Introduction

Since Gigliola Cinquetti won 1964 with her smash hit “Non ho l’età”, the next destination for Eurovision was Italy, who hosted the 1965 contest in the concert hall of their broadcaster RAI, located in Naples. After having seen the catastrophically bad hosting of Eurovision 1991, it gives me whiplash to see RAI put on a professional (if not particularly inspired) show with a host who’s fluent in three languages. Renata Mauro did most of the show in Italian, but as with the Danish host last year, she also gave a speech in French and English at the start, and had no trouble using those two languages in the voting. Her French sounds fluent with only a slight Italian accent, and her English is a surprisingly good imitation of Received Pronunciation.

While Eurovision 1991 makes up for the shit production by having an amazing lineup of songs, 1965 has the opposite problem: every song but one is a total piece of crap. Well OK, I’m exaggerating here, but it really is insane how much better the winner—“Poupée de cire, poupée de son” by France Gall—is than everything else. She was a French singer who competed for Luxembourg in Eurovision with a song I absolutely love, then went on to have a stellar career. In second place came the United Kingdom with “I Belong”, and in third came France with a song I hate with a passion, “N’avoue jamais”. I’m warning you now: if you like any song this year other than the winner, you probably won’t like my review of it.

The lineup of countries had two additions from 1964, making for 18 in total: Sweden returned with a controversial entry after skipping last year, and Ireland (who would soon become a 20th century powerhouse) made their debut. Crazy enough, this was the fourth year in a row with four zero-pointers. The good thing about ranking this year is, I already did it a few months back (which was a pretty miserable experience) so my job this time is easier. That’s assuming none of my rankings change.

I watched the contest with British commentary last time and I’ll do the same again, even though the French commentary is archived too. That’s because the video quality on the French-commentated uploads is pretty bad and I tend to enjoy British commentators more, even though I can understand both. Our old friend David Jacobs is back for the second last year, though it doesn’t look like his 1966 commentary has been archived, so for our purposes it’s our last time seeing him.

One more fact: this is the first Eurovision contest broadcast outside the EBU. As I said in round 1, it was also broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Viewers in those countries would gradually long for the day they could join the Eurovision family.

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Cookie Fonster Reassesses Eurovision 1964: A Winner I’ve Turned Around On

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Intro Post

< 1963 Review | 1964 Review | 1965 Review >

Introduction

As of this writing, Eurovision 1964 is the oldest Eurovision to take place in a city I’ve been to: Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. The show took place in the Tivoli Concert Hall, known in Danish as Tivolis Koncertsal. It’s hard to visit Malmö without also visiting Copenhagen, especially if you’re playing from abroad, and it’s a real beauty of a city. This couldn’t have been reflected much in the broadcast because it was in black and white, and fans aren’t able to see it today because nobody has been able to find the full video broadcast of Eurovision 1964. The reason why is that Denmark’s DR is one of few host brodacsters in the early years that didn’t save a copy of the show. At some point, DR wiped their video tape of Eurovision 1964 to make way for a different recording. The missing video broadcast is what the contest is best known for today. Well, that and the smash hit from Italy that won by a landslide, “Non ho l’età”.

Sixteen countries competed once again, but the lineup was different from the last three years: Sweden dropped out due to a strike and Portugal made their debut. Italy got first place as I said, the UK got a distant second, and Monaco scored third. Strangely enough, for the third year in a row, four countries got zero points, one of which was the newcomer Portugal. The voting system was changed from each jury awarding 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 points to just 5, 3, and 1 points, and the headcount of each jury was reduced from 20 back to 10. The scoreboard was redesigned too: now it showed only country names without song titles, and had a horizontal bar graph to the right showing how many points each entry had.

Now back to the video footage problem: the only parts of the show that have surviving footage are the winner’s reprise and a few other snippets from the beginning and end of the show. Some of those snippets came from Denmark’s broadcaster DR, others from Finland’s Yle. This means we have small portions of the commentary from both countries, as well as audio of the French commentary. Over the past few years, fans have been making video reconstructions of the 1964 contest assembled from these snippets, as well as footage of contestants performing their songs in other shows. You can look at these YouTube uploads (1, 2, 3, 4) to see how the reconstruction has evolved over the years. Italy is lucky enough to have the winner’s reprise recorded. Portugal’s song has their national final performance archived, since RTP has preserved every single year of Festival da Canção. Not too surprising because FdC is Portugal’s pride and joy. Most other songs use a later video recording of the artist performing their song, but a few use footage of the artist performing a completely different song, which I don’t like because the lip movements don’t match the song.* For those songs I’d have preferred to just have photos, but I admire fans’ efforts to reconstruct the show regardless.

The show opens with a military march of some sort, which if the reconstruction is to be believed is interspersed with a video montage of Copenhagen. Then comes the presenter, Danish actress and TV presenter Lotte Wæver. She did most of the show in Danish (which I can understand much more of than last time), but graciously gave short speeches in English and French at the start. Fitting the increase in internationality of the hosting, the scoreboard had all the country names in English this time, instead of the local language. The reconstruction has the screen captions feature each country’s name in Danish, but I’m not sure if the show itself did that or not. I’ll watch the latest reconstruction I linked for this blog post. It’ll feel a lot like watching the music videos and national final performances of Eurovision 2020.

* As of this writing, those are the Netherlands, part of Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Spain. 11.5 out of 16 songs have a recording of the artist performing them, which is pretty damn good!

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Cookie Fonster Re-Examines Eurovision 1963: The Danish Couple Saves the Show

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Intro Post

< 1962 Review | 1963 Review | 1964 Review >

Note: I’ve decided I will only rewrite my Eurovision reviews up to 2019. For 2020 onwards, I’ll just post ranking images with annotations. The reason why is because my posts for 2020 onwards are already extensively detailed and I don’t feel a need to remake them.

Introduction

After having hosted Eurovision 1959 and 1961 and won 1962, France declined to host 1963 and passed the duties to the United Kingdom, who ended up hosting one of the strangest Eurovision years. Eurovision 1963 took place in the BBC Television Centre in London and had an unusual format in several ways. For one thing, the audience didn’t see the performances live, but rather on a TV screen that showcased special effects. The host, audience, and scoreboard were in the studio TC3, whereas the singers and orchestra were in TC4 which had an elaborate stage full of props. I get that Eurovision has always loved to showcase technology, but not letting the audience see the live performances in person was just ridiculous. At least it was fun for TV viewers though.

The producers put quite a few special effects into the performances, which wowed some viewers but caused others to suspect the performances were all pre-recorded, which it turned out they weren’t. If that wasn’t controversial enough, the voting sequence had an infamous mishap that had to be corrected, which caused many viewers to suspect the winner was illegitimate. I find that a real shame, because the winner (“Dansevise” from Denmark) is by far the best song of the show. The second and third places (Switzerland and Italy) are alright enough, but nowhere near as interesting.

For the second time of four, the BBC hired Katie Boyle to host, who is a dignified and confident presenter as always. She opens the show with a parade of sorts to introduce each country set to comfy orchestral music, and I like how she says something different for every contestant, such as “Austria’s entry tonight will be sung by Carmela Corren” or “The first of our Scandinavian guests: from Norway, Anita Thallaug”. It’s a heartwarming and welcoming introduction and just makes me sad that Eurovision 2024 was such a horrible shitshow. Ah well, we have another Eurovision to look forward to in just a month and everyone is praying it goes better.

The voting system was changed from last year: now each jury had 20 members and they awarded five to one points to each of their top five songs. Even though each country could now award points to five others, we still ended up with four zero-pointers. This time, each song is preceded by a map with a flashing light at the capital of whichever country is up next, which is great because I love maps. The map also has an overlay in a nice bold sans serif font, showing the country name in English, the song name in all caps, and the singer name. What hasn’t changed is the lineup of countries: it’s the same sixteen as last year.

In round 1, I watched this contest with Dutch commentary, and it looks like I tried my hardest to understand it. This time I’ll watch with British commentary, which is linguistically easier for me. The BBC once again hired David Jacobs to commentate, who has a dry sense of wit in a distinctly British way.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Dissects Eurovision 1962: The First Ever Zero Points

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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.

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Cookie Fonster Explores Eurovision 1961 Again: An Undercover Gay Anthem and a Few Other Gems

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Intro Post

< 1960 Review | 1961 Review | 1962 Review >

Introduction

Although the Netherlands didn’t want to host again two years after their last time hosting, France was willing to do so just two years after hosting in 1959. The now defunct broadcaster RTF brought Eurovision to the same location as two years ago, the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, and brought back Jacqueline Joubert as the presenter.

Three countries made their Eurovision debuts this year: Spain, Finland, and Yugoslavia. This gave the contest a nice, even 16 countries, so it was the first Eurovision year with more entries than 1956. Spain would start a perfect attendance streak that continues to this day, beaten only by the UK who has participated every year since 1959. Luxembourg earned their first victory with a song that we now know is about a gay relationship, the UK came second with a joyful duet, and Switzerland came third with an old-timey waltz.

The intro makes it clear this show is something of a rehash of the 1959 contest: once again we get an outdoor look at the Palais with flags on top, this time sixteen of them from l’Allemagne to la Yougoslavie. And once again we have Jacqueline introducing all the contests, but this time they start off positioned on a little building on stage, then they exit the stage one by one. Jacqueline says the name of each country, then each contestant says their own name into the microphone, presumably so that the host would avoid any pronunciation mistakes. The Allisons from the UK are the only duo here; they start off on opposite sides of the stage, then they approach the microphone together. John says “The Allisons”, then the two of them say their own names.

The scoreboard design is pretty similar to 1959, except it uses a cute handwriting font this time, and there are more countries so the scoreboard is way too tall to fit in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This means I have to brace myself for lots of annoying scoreboard zoom-ins.

This contest has been archived with French, Dutch, and British commentary. I watched with British commentary last time, so this time I’ll watch with French commentary. That way, the host won’t be talked over so much. The commentator Robert Beauvais said he served as the commentator for all of French-speaking Europe—not just France, but also Luxembourg, Monaco, and the francophone parts of Belgium and Switzerland, which is unusual and seems unique to this year.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Discusses Eurovision 1960: Storytelling Songs at the Start and End

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Intro Post

< 1959 Review | 1960 Review | 1961 Review >

Introduction

This is where the grayscale years start getting repetitive, but since I’m still unemployed and have way too much free time, I’ll prod on. Though it’s possible that if I get a new job soon, I’ll pause round 2 of my Eurovision blog.

Although the Netherlands won Eurovision 1959, their broadcaster NTS declined to host 1960, probably because they were short on money. So instead, the runner-up nation the United Kingdom had the honor of hosting. The BBC hosted Eurovision for the first of nine times, in London for the first of four times, and presented by Catherine “Katie” Boyle for the first of four times. She holds the record of presenting the most Eurovision contests, followed by Petra Mede three times and Jacqueline Joubert twice. Katie Boyle speaks in perfect Received Pronunciation, an accent that comes off as laughably posh today, but back then was seen as prestigious and educated.

Luxembourg returned to Eurovision this year after skipping 1959, and Norway made their debut, so this contest has a total of 13 participating countries.

To open the show, Katie Boyle introduces every contestant by saying “good evening, (country)” in English and each country’s national language, then “welcome, (contestant)”. The introduction isn’t quite as glamorous as what France did last year, but I like watching each contestant introduced one by one anyway. It’s a shame Eurovision didn’t start doing that consistently until 2013.

This contest has two countries’ commentary archived: the Norwegian commentary by Erik Diesen, and the British commentary by David Jacobs. Last time I watched the NRK commentary because that was the only archive I was aware of; this time I’ll watch the BBC commentary. David Jacobs is a confident, entertaining commentator whose commentating style is extremely British, and I mean that in a good way. He said the stage is “a blaze of blue, red, and gold”, which sounds absolutely lovely and makes me wish we could’ve seen this contest in color.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Critiques Eurovision 1959: The First Winner I Agree With

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Intro Post

< 1958 Review | 1959 Review | 1960 Review >

Introduction

Since France won Eurovision 1958, they were given the first choice to host the 1959 contest, which they did in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in the southern coastal city of Cannes. RTF, a broadcaster that hasn’t existed since 1964, put on the most ambitious Eurovision show to this point, and the first one that truly manages to wow me. It’s also the first to feature an opening film: we see guests entering the Palais, then the camera pans up to show the flags of all 11 participant countries in French alphabetical order, starting with l’Allemagne and ending with la Suisse. The UK came back to the contest after skipping 1958 and hasn’t missed a year since. Monaco made their debut as well, but Luxembourg for whatever reason skipped this year.

The show starts with an orchestra playing the Eurovision theme song “Te Deum”, then through a revolving door enters the fabulous host, Jacqueline Joubert. She’s a very charming presenter with excellent diction, so much better than the last two. There are so many nice touches in France’s hosting, like the glamorous orchestral music that plays when Jacqueline shows us the scoreboard, or her saying “good evening, [country]” in each country’s language when the contestants are introduced. The part where all the contestants are introduced is pretty awesome because they’re each revealed on one of three rotating platforms. This introduction scene was long before my birth, yet it amazes me even 66 years later. The intro of the contest was neither too long nor too short—seven minutes was a perfect length.

As with 1958, the only commentary of this show that’s ever been archived is that of the host nation, this time the French commentary. Luckily I’m pretty good at understanding French, so long as it’s not spoken with too much slang.

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Cookie Fonster Reanalyzes Eurovision 1958: The First Song to Stand the Test of Time

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Intro Post

< 1957 Review | 1958 Review | 1959 Review >

Introduction

The third Eurovision Song Contest was originally going to be hosted in the United Kingdom, but since the BBC apparently failed to reach an agreement with artistic unions, the EBU had to find another broadcaster to host, and after other broaddcasters declined to host, the Netherlands’ NTS was given the hosting duties. As a nice coincidence, the Netherlands happened to be the winner of the last contest, so in all following years, the EBU gave the most recent winner the first choice of hosting. It’s good that the pattern of the previous winner hosting was established so early, because it gives countries an incentive to send competitive entries. The Netherlands chose to host the show in AVRO Studios in Hilversum. In the old days, it was common for the contest to be hosted in the headquarters of broadcasters.

The United Kingdom dropped out of Eurovision this year, while Sweden made its debut, meaning that Eurovision 1958 has ten entries just like last year. Out of these, the Italian entry became an enormous international hit that even charted in the United States and Canada, but for some reason it only scored third place behind Switzerland and the oft-forgotten winning entry from France.

One more odd fact about this contest: this is the only Eurovision year where the host doesn’t appear at the beginning. Instead, we see a camera shot of the scoreboard set to an orchestral opening act, while the commentators introduced the show. This is the first year of the contest where any country’s commentary has been archived, specifically the Dutch commentary. In fact, Eurovision 1958 has never been archived without commentary as far as I know. The Dutch commentator has very good diction and I find him relatively easy to understand, even though I can’t speak Dutch.

Update: A few weeks after this post, the French commentary of this contest has been archived! However, it starts in the midst of Italy’s entry.

After only a minute and a half, the opening entry begins! The orchestra was very much put front and center in this contest—they even have orchestral transitions between each of the competing entries, a detail I absolutely love.

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