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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 Gazes into Eurovision 1993 + KzM: Accommodating the Eager Newbies

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Intro Post

< 1992 Review | 1993 Review | 1994 Review >

Just warning you: this is by far my longest Eurovision review so far. It would still be my longest if I didn’t review Preselection for Millstreet. Read at your own risk!

Introduction

Eurovision 1993 was an unusual year for two major reasons. First off, it was the first year to have a semifinal, but it wasn’t the kind of semifinal we know today. The EBU had raised the maximum number of Eurovision participants to 25, and since Yugoslavia was banned from the competition, three slots were open for newcoming countries. Seven countries, all former communist regimes or parts of one, were interested in joining the contest, so a semifinal was hosted in Ljubljana, Slovenia to narrow them down to three. That event was called Preselection for Millstreet (known in Slovenian as Kvalifikacija za Millstreet, KzM for short). When you think about it, it’s a bit like Eurovision 1956: seven countries participated in it and the competition had an unconventional format by today’s standards.

Three countries made it through the preselection: Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The other four got to debut in 1994. As the semifinal’s name suggests, the contest would not be held in Dublin like all other times Ireland got to host, but in the miniscule 1,500-person village of Millstreet. It’s all thanks to an entrepreneur who offered to host Eurovision in the Green Glens Arena for free. He believed that the contest would boost tourism in Millstreet, and he was right! Because Millstreet is so tiny, the nearby cities of Killarney and Cork hosted additional events promoting Eurovision. This means that in a sense, Eurovision 1993 took place in four cities: three in Ireland, one in Slovenia.

The 1993 contest was once again dominated by Anglophones, with Ireland on top and the UK second. In third place was Switzerland, with the last entry in French to reach the top three until 2021. It was also the last time Luxembourg participated until 2024—the longest Eurovision hiatus a country has ever taken.

I watched the semifinal with Slovenian commentary. Even though I can’t understand a word of it (barring loanwords), Slovenia’s last two Eurovision entries (Disko, Carpe Diem) have given me a soft spot for their language. The semifinal was broadcast in all seven participating countries plus five others, but most of their commentary is nowhere to be found. As for the final, I went for German commentary by Jan Hofer—I figured I’d give his commentary a chance.

I’ll start by reviewing the entries eliminated in KzM, then give overall thoughts on the semifinal, and finally review the 25 songs from the contest proper. This should be an interesting year, so let’s begin!

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Cookie Fonster’s Journey into Eurovision 1987: An 80’s Fever Dream

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Intro Post

< 1986 Review | 1987 Review | 1988 Review >

Introduction

Hosted in Belgium for the first and only time, Eurovision 1987 had quite a lot of drama behind its production. Two broadcasters had agreed to organize Eurovision together in the event Belgium won: the Dutch-speaking BRT (now called VRT), and the French-speaking RTBF. However, when the time came for them to team up, they were as good at cooperation as a nerd and a jock assigned to do a high school chemistry project. When the French-speaking broadcaster chose Brussels as the host city, the Dutch-speaking broadcaster threw their hands up and left RTBF to organize it alone, while BRT chose the Belgian entry. If you want to see two broadcasters successfully collaborating, you’d have to wait until 2023.

This contest had the largest lineup of countries so far: Greece and Italy returned after skipping last year, making for 22 countries total. All countries that had ever participated in Eurovision were present this year, except Monaco, Malta, and Morocco. This is an intimidatingly long contest, almost as big as a Eurovision final in the current era. The winner was the first person to win Eurovision twice: Johnny Logan, representing Ireland. The postcards are themed upon what comes to most people’s minds when they think of Belgium: Belgian comic strips.

Annoyingly, this is another year where due to one particular song (glares intensively at Spain), you can’t find many commentary uploads on YouTube, and most of them are of terrible quality. So, um, I guess I’m watching it with Swedish commentary this time. The video description contains a link to the full unabridged Swedish commentary in good quality, so I’ll use that. I won’t be able to understand the commentary, but I’ve at least picked up on a few words from Scandinavian languages by reading translations of their Eurovision entries.

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Cookie Fonster’s Thoughts on Eurovision 1980: Oddball Year, Normalball Winner

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Intro Post

< 1979 Review | 1980 Review | 1981 Review >

Introduction

Before I begin, I’m obligated to say that “normalball” is totally a real word. If you think it isn’t, there’s probably something wrong with you.

In many ways, Eurovision 1980 was the opposite of a normalball. First off, it’s the only contest since 1958 hosted neither in the previous winner nor the United Kingdom. Israel wasn’t willing to host after winning, and neither was Spain (the runner-up) nor the UK (the usual fallback). So instead, the Netherlands stepped in and hosted a low-budget show in The Hague, in the same building as 1976. This was the last time until 2023 that the previous winner didn’t host the contest, and the last contest hosted in the Netherlands until 2021. Unlike the last two years, this contest had only one presenter, and she almost entirely spoke Dutch.

Another oddity that this was the only Eurovision with an Arab country participating, and the only one with an African country. The country is Morocco, which participated for the first and only time due to Israel’s absence, which was itself due to Israel’s Remembrance Day. Turkey returned after skipping last year, and Monaco withdrew, only to return in 2004 to 2006.

In terms of the winner, this contest was the opposite of the opposite of a normalball, or more concisely, a normalball. Johnny Logan won for Ireland with “What’s Another Year”, the first of many Irish ballads to win in the 80’s and 90’s. It was the second of Ireland’s seven victories, and first of Johnny Logan’s two victories—three, if you count the song he composed in 1992.

This contest didn’t have proper postcards, but in their place is something I found super cool. Before each song, a presenter went on stage to introduce it in its country’s native language, accompanied by a slideshow of photos in the corner. Now I wish Eurovision did that every year. I watched the contest with German commentary.

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Cookie Fonster Dives into Eurovision 1970: A Decade’s Shaky Beginning

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Intro Post

< 1969 Review | 1970 Review | 1971 Review >

Introduction

Let me preface this post by saying 1970’s music is the fucking best and you don’t get anything like it these days. It was when people put heart and soul into composing popular music and cared about making those songs good and not totally dull and repetitive. As I go through this decade, be prepared for me to pop off about songs you probably think are boring, especially if you grew up during the 70’s and took this amazing style of music for granted.

Eurovision 1970 was hosted in Amsterdam, the second host city in the Netherlands, because they were the winning country that hadn’t hosted in the longest. Unfortunately, the four-way victory last year meant that Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Finland skipped out due to protest, and Austria and Denmark continued to skip out. This brought the contest to a new low of 12 countries, the fewest since 1959, with no returning artists from prior years. There’s a silver lining to this decrease in participants: to increase the contest’s runtime, every song was preceded by a charming little postcard video, a Eurovision tradition to this day.

With Ireland’s first of seven victories, this contest began a streak from 1970 to 1977 where every winning song was in English or French, which included the four years without the language rule. The 80’s varied the winners’ languages more, but the 90’s had so much bias towards English that the language rule ended entirely. Some countries still voluntarily uphold the language rule, and I get sad whenever I remember Germany doesn’t.

This contest began with a four-minute video showcasing streets and buildings in the Netherlands, then a hilariously short introduction from the presenter. She basically just said “good evening and welcome to Eurovision 1970” in French, English, and Dutch. It was so brief that it felt jarring.

I watched this contest with Ireland’s commentary in English, done by Valerie McGovern. As far as I know, Eurovision has never been commentated in Irish.

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