Tag Archives: storytelling songs

Cookie Fonster Reevaluates Eurovision 1965: The Year That Gave Me a Headache

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Intro Post

< 1964 Review | 1965 Review | 1966 Review >

Introduction

Since Gigliola Cinquetti won 1964 with her smash hit “Non ho l’età”, the next destination for Eurovision was Italy, who hosted the 1965 contest in the concert hall of their broadcaster RAI, located in Naples. After having seen the catastrophically bad hosting of Eurovision 1991, it gives me whiplash to see RAI put on a professional (if not particularly inspired) show with a host who’s fluent in three languages. Renata Mauro did most of the show in Italian, but as with the Danish host last year, she also gave a speech in French and English at the start, and had no trouble using those two languages in the voting. Her French sounds fluent with only a slight Italian accent, and her English is a surprisingly good imitation of Received Pronunciation.

While Eurovision 1991 makes up for the shit production by having an amazing lineup of songs, 1965 has the opposite problem: every song but one is a total piece of crap. Well OK, I’m exaggerating here, but it really is insane how much better the winner—“Poupée de cire, poupée de son” by France Gall—is than everything else. She was a French singer who competed for Luxembourg in Eurovision with a song I absolutely love, then went on to have a stellar career. In second place came the United Kingdom with “I Belong”, and in third came France with a song I hate with a passion, “N’avoue jamais”. I’m warning you now: if you like any song this year other than the winner, you probably won’t like my review of it.

The lineup of countries had two additions from 1964, making for 18 in total: Sweden returned with a controversial entry after skipping last year, and Ireland (who would soon become a 20th century powerhouse) made their debut. Crazy enough, this was the fourth year in a row with four zero-pointers. The good thing about ranking this year is, I already did it a few months back (which was a pretty miserable experience) so my job this time is easier. That’s assuming none of my rankings change.

I watched the contest with British commentary last time and I’ll do the same again, even though the French commentary is archived too. That’s because the video quality on the French-commentated uploads is pretty bad and I tend to enjoy British commentators more, even though I can understand both. Our old friend David Jacobs is back for the second last year, though it doesn’t look like his 1966 commentary has been archived, so for our purposes it’s our last time seeing him.

One more fact: this is the first Eurovision contest broadcast outside the EBU. As I said in round 1, it was also broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Viewers in those countries would gradually long for the day they could join the Eurovision family.

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Cookie Fonster Re-Dissects Eurovision 1962: The First Ever Zero Points

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Intro Post

< 1961 Review | 1962 Review | 1963 Review >

I should mention that four days ago, I got a ticket to semifinal 2 of Eurovision 2025 in Basel! I chose that because it’s the show Germany will be performing in, and because it has most of my other favorites. I haven’t heard most entries in full just yet, so my opinions could shift. I didn’t choose the final because I already have a cheaper ticket to the public viewing.

Introduction

I’m honestly tempted to skip this year, because I already know it has no songs I love and I’ve reviewed all of them before, so why should I listen to them again? Well OK, I’ve reviewed all Eurovision songs up to 2024, but I haven’t ranked 1962 yet, so I guess I should get that out of the way real quick.

Luxembourg hosted Eurovision for the first of four times (1962, 1966, 1973, 1984), in a ridiculously tiny building called the Villa Louvigny which was the headquarters of their broadcaster CLT. In Luxembourg’s defense, the country didn’t really have any better options back then. They didn’t have a proper theater building until the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg was opened in 1964, which hosted the third and fourth Luxembourgish contests. For whatever reason, the Grand Théâtre wasn’t chosen to host 1966.

This year is most notable for being the first where a country scored zero points—in fact, four songs got no points this year. It’s no coincidence that this happened the same year the voting system got revamped. Now instead of dividing ten points across different songs, each national jury awarded three, two, and one points to their top three entries. The juries consisted of ten people back then, so I’m not sure how this system handled tiebreakers between the jurors. In any case, this was a really boring voting system, so it’s no wonder the EBU changed it the next year.

All the same sixteen countries as last year competed in 1962, which is a nice number because their flags can be arranged in a square. All of the top three this year were Francophone countries: France first, Monaco second, Luxembourg third. The host is a French TV presenter named Mireille Delannoy, although not much is known about her aside from hosting Eurovision. She did the entire show in French except a few parts of the voting in English.

For the first time, the opening act is an orchestral arrangement of last year’s winner, which is “Nous les amoureux”. I’m salty that Eurovision eventually dropped those reprises in favor the previous winner either rehashing their last song unedited, or singing a weird rearrangement into a new genre.

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Cookie Fonster Comes to Terms with Eurovision 2024 (Semifinals): The Best and Worst Year Simultaneously

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Intro Post

< 2023 Final | 2024 Semifinals | 2024 Final >

I’m almost done with this blog post series! I just have the 2024 grand final and then a few bonus posts in mind. Then I don’t know what the hell I’ll do with my time.

Introduction

(The best year of Eurovision was actually 2021, but shh. Let me be dramatic for the sake of this title.)

And so, we’ve finally arrived at the most recent Eurovision contest as of this writing. It was filled with exorbitant amounts of drama, the most drama in… who the hell knows how long? Is it comparable to all the ruckus Italy caused when hosting 1991? The controversies Russia caused hosting 2009, or Azerbaijan in 2012? Or going back further, the quadruple tie of 1969 hosted in Francoist Spain? I’ll save most of my drama ranting for “Hurricane”, the controversial Israeli entry of this year, and try my best to be positive otherwise. Even though one of the biggest fan favorites of the year, “Europapa” from the Netherlands, was disqualified after qualifying from the second semifinal. This didn’t just piss off fans; it also angered the broadcaster AVROTROS who was very excited to share their Eurovision entry and insisted it was unjust to disqualify Joost Klein. And even though Israel insisted on sending a song that they knew would be controversial with zero regard for how other broadcasters or viewers would feel, which caused massive protests and the EBU to bend backwards… I’ll try to be positive anyway.

The usual big three Swedish cities bidded to host Eurovision 2024, plus an outsider: the subarctic city of Örnskoldsvik, which happens to have a nice big arena that has hosted Melodifestivalen heats. The Malmö Arena was the only viable option due to scheduling issues in the other venues, so that’s what SVT went with. It turns out that Malmö was a fitting city to host this year, considering the contest went to the very same arena after the last time Loreen won. It’s also a very modern and polished city that saw tons of growth after the bridge to Copenhagen opened in 1999, and it’s got a really nice network of trains and buses, so it’s well-suited to host Eurovision. But for Israeli fans, Malmö was an unfortunate city to host due to the amount of immigrants who protested against the country’s participation in Eurovision, or for some people, even the country’s existence. This meant that most fans from Israel had to hide all signs of their nationality, including speaking Hebrew, and it’s really sad that they had to do this in the 21st century.

This was the first Eurovision year that I visited in person. It was my first time in Scandinavia and my first time visiting both Denmark and Sweden; lovely countries that I’d be glad to visit again. I wrote a blog post about the trip months ago, but honestly I sugar coated the description a little bit. Not only was I stressed out from all the Eurovision drama, I also got into some really bad personal drama that I won’t elaborate on in public. But… despite everything, I am extremely glad I got to go on this trip. And I promise you this won’t be my last time visiting Eurovision.

Aside from all the drama, Luxembourg came back to Eurovision after last participating in 1993! Romania skipped out, which means this contest had 37 competing countries just like last year. And the semifinals have an exciting change: the Big Five and host country now each perform in the semifinal they can vote in, but still automatically qualify. This is a long overdue change that greatly offsets these countries’ disadvantage, and I’m really happy about it. And after the success of worldwide voting last year, the rest of the world’s voting period was extended to begin 24 hours before each show. I think Australia should have this luxury too.

To twist things up, I will watch the first semifinal with Luxembourgish commentary, then the second with German commentary by Thorsten Schorn, who has a picture of the old commentator in his booth. This will be my first time watching the semis’ TV broadcasts in full, since I watched the first as a rehearsal from the arena, and the second as a live show from the arena. And I will include “Europapa” in this post, not the grand final post.

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Cookie Fonster Gushes About Eurovision 2009 (Final): A Spectacular Year Hard to Surpass

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Intro Post

< 2009 Semifinals | 2009 Final | 2010 Semifinals >

Eurovision season is really shaping up. We’ve now heard almost all the participating songs—only Azerbaijan is left, and their song will be out tomorrow. And an exciting change is coming to the semifinals: now the Big Five and host country will each perform in the semifinal they vote in, interspersed amidst the competitors. That should alleviate the disadvantage that the audience only hears their songs once.

Introduction

“Good evening and welcome to the Eurovision Song Contest 2009, coming to you live from Moscow. I’m Graham Norton… I, I miss Terry too. I’m sorry, he’s not here.” These are the first ever words from our new friend, the legendary Graham Norton. Well, not the first words he spoke after coming out of his mom’s belly, but the first words he spoke as a British Eurovision commentator. Like Terry Wogan, he’s originally from Ireland and has a famously snarky sense of humor. He makes an active effort to replicate Terry Wogan’s humor, but while Terry always had a love-hate relationship with Eurovision, beneath Graham Norton’s sarcastic jokes lies a genuine love for the contest.

The opening act blew my mind in so many ways: first a grandiose performance from Cirque de Soleil, then a reprise of “Believe” (the winner of 2008) with zipline stunts and crashing through walls. It continues to amaze me that Russia went all out with hosting Eurovision.

I’m not sure why Russia saved the actually good hosts for the final though. They’re so much more competent than the previous hosts and are much better with their English and French. One of the hosts is Ivan Urgant, a Russian TV host who ran a talk show that was canceled in 2022 because he spoke out against the war in Ukraine. The other host is Alsou, who sang for Russia in 2000 when she was only 16 years old and scored second place. She’s such a confident presenter, oh my god! These two should have hosted the entire show, not just the semifinal.

In third place came Azerbaijan, who debuted only a year prior and frequently sent songs intended to win, very much like Russia. Iceland scored second place for the second and latest time with a ballad that I have a surprising amount of thoughts on. Neither of those countries stood the slightest chance against Alexander Rybak from Norway, who won with a whopping 387 points. He broke the eight-year streak of countries winning for the first time; the only other first-time winners after this year have been Azerbaijan (2011) and Portugal (2017). I don’t know about you, but I think it’s about time someone new takes the crown.

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Cookie Fonster Revisits Eurovision 1966: Lightening the Overall Mood

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Intro Post

< 1965 Review | 1966 Review | 1967 Review >

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.

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