Eurovision Rants

Retro Eurovision

(Many new europals seem to avoid or don't seem to care at all about this side of Eurovision Song Contest. Of course, as mentioned a few pages behind, there's been a few notorious acts during this era, but even so many new europals I knew are only knowing ABBA & Celine Dion.
This page is entirely dedicated to the Retro Eurovision era and why is it just as important and as cool as the Modern Eurovision era.)
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If you really want to get fully into Eurovision but you don't really know where to start, just simply take it slowly. Don't overwhelm yourself trying to find everything new in one day.

As I mentioned in the very first page, the introduction page about what's Eurovision in itself, Eurovision isn't a recent event. In fact, it's been going over 60 years and still continues to stand strong. However, many Eurovision fans start their journey very late and they could barely pass over 10 years of Eurovision if they would look back.

Eh, maybe some would do by curiosity and others would do because they found a cute guy or cute girl on some ranking which represented at some point his/her country in the respective year and they check only that song/artist. (*cough* Alexander Rybak & Lena Meyer-Landrut hi *cough*)

However, this is more on the modern day era.

But what people actually do know of the Retro Eurovision era outside the obvious famous artists or Dschinghis Khan, which was pretty much among the very first joke acts which gained notoriety? Not really much, isn't it?

Well, this is a topic we should elaborate a bit and shine a light through this period of time as well. Because, my dear europals, be aware that Eurovision hadn't began in 2004 or 2005.

The so-called Retro Eurovision era is usually attributed to the very beggining untill somewhere around 20 years ago. Precisely, if we'd estimate a period of time in years, it would be around 1956-1999. It includes pretty much the very first years of Eurovision and it's gradual evolution by year in terms of rules, voting system, and even tie-break, as mentioned a few pages ago.

To say it on the very least, if you want to know how Eurovision got so big and so extra, you need to go back in time to discoveer from where that idea or that concept all began. It's like history: you need to go back to square one untill present in order to understand absolutely everything.

So, if we go back in time, in 1956 to be precise, Eurovision was very different from the one which we know now. Only seven countries participated during that time and each country participated with 2 songs by the same artist.

Back in the day, there existed an orchestra which accompanied each performer, lead by a maestro. The orchestra in Eurovision was pretty common during those days, it only went away around 1998.

Switzerland won the very first edition, however the results aside "Refrain" remain still unknown. Why? Because the tapes were lost. The only thing which remained intact was Lys Assia's winning performance.

In 1957, a rule was made in order to let the duos participate in Eurovision, Denmark sending the very first duo ever. Also, the artists eventually kissed in the end of the song, exchanging the longest kiss in the contest's history.

Furthermore, each country sent one artist/duo with one song. Additionally to that, it was the first year the jury was called by telephone and the national juries weren't allowed anymore to vote for their own country (rule which still applies even today).

In 1968, it all began to take shape, the rules being in full form and the technology advancement brought on the colours. That's right, 1968 is the first edition which was broadcasted in colours and not in black and white as used to. And of course, in 1970, there was implemented after the mess in 1969 a tie-breaker, which was useful on deciding the winner in 1991.

Around that time, there was an on again-off again rule regarding national language songs. You see, if you look back to some editions of Retro Eurovision, you notice that in some years there's mainly predominant songs in English and in other years there are mainly predominant the native language. That's the effect of this rule.

Of course, the very first winner which managed to score two victories at once, Johnny Logan, won for Ireland in 1980 (What's Another Year?) & 1987 (Hold Me Now), being the first and only one to date to achieve such thing.

~Kebab