Intro Post

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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.