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.