Intro Post

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Introduction

Eurovision 1968 was hosted in London, England, in their iconic building, the Royal Albert Hall. It featured the same 17 countries as last year, which was all countries that had ever previously participated except Denmark. Although it was the first Eurovision broadcast in color, most viewers watched it on grayscale TV anyway. This isn’t a problem for people watching the contest half a century later, like me.

Once again, the contest started with an orchestration of “Puppet on a String”, the previous winner. It’s notable for the United Kingdom losing to Spain by only one point, which fans were very salty about. This was Spain’s first of two victories; their second would be part of the joint four-way win next year. Spain has had bad luck with almost winning, but let’s be real: as far as members of the Big Five go, they aren’t doing too bad.

I watched this contest with Norwegian commentary. Surprisingly for a contest hosted in the UK, the English commentary doesn’t seem to be archived anywhere. I found a YouTube upload of the Norwegian commentary with English subtitles, but the subtitles don’t actually translate the commentary and instead talk about the contestants’ careers in retrospect, which I can easily read about online elsewhere. I’ll just make do with what I have.

(This contest’s Swedish commentary has been archived too. Unlike most Eurovision commentary, it was done by a woman.)