Intro Post

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Just a warning: This post turned out a lot longer than I expected! It’s the most detail I’ve gone into about a Eurovision contest to date, and it’ll only get wilder from there.

Introduction

Eurovision 1966 was hosted in Luxembourg in the same building as 1962, the last time Luxembourg hosted. It had the same 18 participating countries as last time. Now that Ireland joined the contest, the interest in new countries had simmered down. Until the explosion of new participants in 1993, only seven more countries would debut; all either island countries or outside of Europe,* except Greece. There may not have been any new countries, but the list of countries it was broadcast in continued to grow. According to the contest’s Luxembourgish presenter, it was shown in the same Eastern Bloc countries as last year, plus Morocco and Romania. This makes it the first Eurovision to be broadcast outside of Europe.

The TV airing of this contest started with a lovely orchestrated arrangement of “Poupée de cire, poupée de son”, the winner last year, which began a common pattern of revisiting the contest’s prior hits at the start. It also began the controversial pattern of bloc voting—countries giving maximum points to their closest cultural neighbors. I’ll have lots to say about this topic when I analyze the voting results over the years. Lastly, it was the first year where the language rule was enforced. Aside from Sweden’s song in English last year, there had been a few songs with verses in English or French, but for the next seven years, non-native languages were limited to brief phrases.

I watched the contest with French commentary this time.

* Yes, I know a small part of Turkey is in Europe.