Eurovision 1969
Date: 29 March 1969
Venue: Teatro Real, Madrid
Winning countries: Spain (2nd win) / United Kingdom (2nd win) / Netherlands (3rd win) / France (4th win)
Winning entries: Salomé, “Vivo cantando” / Lulu, “Boom Bang-a-Bang” / Lenny Kuhr, “De troubadour” / Frida Boccara, “Un jour, un enfant”
Unfortunately for you and for me, there’s no escaping it. We have finally reached the year of the infamous four-way tie, a hilarious slipup of such monumental proportions that it led to 25% of the countries boycotting the following year’s Contest. I originally had some hugely ambitious plans for this instalment of my reviews: a short script, set the morning after the Contest, where the winners mingled with each other before coming together to slag off the UK entry. I got about four lines in before realising that my laziness (and writer’s block) would prevent this piece from getting published before 2027, so you’re getting the following reviews instead. Sorry if I disappointed you or anything, but ESC ’69 just isn’t something I’m that interested in. (Behave.) And now, on with the reviews, which for the purposes of readerly sanity have been condensed into 400-word pieces each.
Spain
In some ways this is a lot like the winner from last year: racing intro, slow and ominous start, then a hopeful ascent into the chorus, which is then repeated ad nauseam. Given that I didn’t really LIKE last year’s winner though, this is not a plus — if anything, it’s an even worse fit, because the verses (the only thing “La, la, la” had going for it) are clunky and awkward, the beats are off (the disconnect with the orchestra is obvious and unpleasant) and it’s slow to the point of being boring. Perhaps it’s meant to convey how dull and hopeless the singer’s life was before the lover arrived (“How many nights did I wander/ Through a thousand endless paths?”, which is just cliched as hell), but they go too overboard in the contrast and it’s NOT good.
But then a weird thing happens: Salome swings into the chorus, and it’s a monster of a chorus. Not lyrically, of course: all of the things she sings are pretty rote and there ain’t much going on (though points added for at least having more than one word in the chorus). But that’s not what we listen to Spain for, is it? We like Spain for their fiery passion, for their verve and spirit that shines on even through the saddest of songs. And so it is that Salome manages to undercut our previous pessimism about this song, little by little, adding just enough force that by the time she has finished with it, we are conscious of nothing more than the little dance she does and the “HEY”s of her backing singers.
Of course, it all falls apart if you take too much of a look at it. There is no need to repeat the (first two lines of) the chorus five times in a song that barely lasts two minutes, and there is something in Salome’s expression that seems a little too manic, that seems like she’s trying to hypnotise us into the ecstatic happiness that she has right now. That Spanish spirit is a little TOO chaotic at times, and it comes across as suffocating rather than enjoyable; I confess to being unnerved by her performance, and whenever I finish listening to this song I never want to hear it again — there are just so many more OTHER songs, especially from this year, to listen to. But I can’t deny that that chorus slaps in the heat of the moment, and for a victory lap, it works pretty well.
Rating: 4/10
United Kingdom
If this song could be described in one word, it would be “cheeky”. From beginning to end, the expression on Lulu’s face is one of cheekiness: her eyes darting left and right, clutching the microphone to her chest like a precocious teenager. This is something that the British do quite a lot in their own culture, and indeed it worked for Sandie Shaw: her little show of demureness, of infatuation, that worked well last time and they were obviously trying for a similar vein with this one. The difference between “Puppet on a String” and this, however, is that this one dials up the cheekiness to eleven, and replaces winsomeness and exhilaration with unadulterated sleaze.
Consider: “Come closer and hold me tonight/ That’s right, come closer and cuddle me tight”. It feels like a come-on — who even uses the word “cuddle” in a non-sexual way these days? Or consider the brassy “wah-wah” that slots right in between those two lines, a trademark sound of music hall culture. The problem with this approach (as mentioned back when I discussed the 1967 winner) is that music hall culture is, with very little exception, very, VERY annoying — it shows you something tacky, and then repeatedly shoves it in your face, convinced of its cleverness yet too cowardly to come out and say that in any way except “ironically”. So it is with “Boom Bang-a-Bang”, which tries to appear innocent, to appear naïve in its naughtiness, even though Lulu was already twenty years old and had been an established singer for five of those — she already had a Billboard number one, for God’s sake. There is therefore something Lolita-esque about the whole performance: we are watching a young woman playacting at being a girl, and obviously failing at it.
My least favourite thing about this song, however, has nothing to do with all the cosplaying Lulu does. Instead, it’s her abrupt swing into the chorus that truly irritates me, a burst of sound which the orchestra feels obligated to herald with a corresponding burst in volume. As Lulu’s excitement about being in love swells louder, the orchestra goes louder still to meet her, until it sounds like they are wrestling for dominance, screaming at each other in an attempt to make themselves heard. Maybe the writers and the producer thought that it passed for euphoria; but all of it together — the volume, the sleaze, the general obnoxiousness — merely feels like a recipe for cardiac arrest to me.
Rating: 2/10
Netherlands
A funny thing happened in late-60s Eurovision: mediaeval tropes became popular again. In 1968, Yugoslavia had sent the Dubrovnik Troubadours to represent them with the pleasant-but-forgettable “Jedan dan”, which didn’t do all that well at the time but has amassed a nice little cult following in subsequent years. A year after that, we had Lenny Kuhr’s “De troubadour”, sung by a woman in vaguely mediaeval dress and accompanied by a guy strumming a guitar like a mandolin. I have no proof that the first song was an influence on the other, but it certainly is a strange thing to see.
Influenced or not, “De troubadour” is still better than its Yugoslav forebear: for one thing, the troubadour is more than just an aesthetic choice in Kuhr’s song. It’s a whole story, and what a story it is: he lives, he roams the lands, and moves everybody he meets with his song. “He was bursting with music/ He sang for publics large and small”, says Kuhr, and later we hear how this troubadour was a man for all seasons, who could entertain both noblemen and novices, and left a mark on everybody he came across — I rarely get moved by Eurovision tunes, and yet this one DID strike a chord with me. What’s even more interesting is that it does all this without once resorting to romance, that stock topic of Eurovision; even France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg had previously felt the need to clarify the source of their protagonist’s loneliness, but Lenny Kuhr resolutely abandons this theme, and instead we get a tune that stands on its own two feet, that tugs at your heartstrings in a completely new and refreshing way.
But of course Kuhr’s performance also looms large in one’s enjoyment of the song: in fact it’s fair to say that she herself perfectly embodies the troubadour’s spirit of “changing happiness to melancholy”. This may be an ordinary story, about an ordinary man, yet through Kuhr’s strong, unwavering performance we are entranced and made aware of his extraordinary skill. This is one of those occasions where the glurge of emotions and detail feel justified; granted, it falls apart slightly towards the end — the orchestration gets a little too busy, her pained howls feel a little like overegging the mixture — but there’s no real damage done here. She is a modern-day troubadour, and to slightly misquote the Dutch entry: “those who were comforted by her song/ Forget her not”.
Rating: 8/10
France
The simplest way to talk about this song would be to say “it’s France being France, what more do you expect?” By this point Radio-Television France’s ability to ignore the prevailing winds of pop music was reaching frankly amusing heights, and so it is easy to dismiss “Un jour, un enfant” as yet another example of French pomposity.
Of course, it’s not that simple — it may be just another French ballad, but there’s still enough here to make Frida Boccara’s song the second-best winner from France we’ve had (and yes, for those of you versed in Eurovision history, I’ve just spoiled my 1977 piece). The French were still obstinately sticking to their view of a Francophonic, highbrow continent, but in other ways they had a much better grasp of what drew an audience in: Europeans no longer favoured ponderous, hypnotic tunes. So here we have a compromise: it’s still a ballad, but the expectation is ramped up with care, with a view to dramatic flair. Witness the way Boccara starts off slow and quiet, and then in the second verse starts letting some of that energy out; when she arrives at her first peak, shouting “he will give the sky its first sun!”, it feels like the sun peeking over the mountaintops at dawn, and it is glorious.
That line also illustrates a second strength of “Un jour, un enfant”: its ability to inspire actual wonder. It’s not that the French don’t do good songwriting; two of their entries have made my top three, at least. But when your fellow competitors are all talking about love and loss, standing out takes a lot more than just elaborate orchestrations and dramatic voices. This is one of those rare instances where France understood the assignment — lyricist Eddy Marnay does a wonderful job of imitating a child’s POV: “By drawing the bird, he will invent the flower/ By looking for the sound of water, he will hear the cry of the heart”. This is indeed how children explore the world, suss out its wonderful intricacies, and both Marnay and Boccara do a lovely job of teasing out that process and letting it sink in. This is no “Non ho l’età”, that’s for sure.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that France had suddenly and dramatically improved: I still checked the progress bar every thirty seconds or so, and breathed a sigh of relief when Boccara got off the stage. But I found myself unable to scoff at the simple pleasures of “Un jour, un enfant” — for once, France wasn’t aiming too high in their entry. Just the sun, the moon, and stars; and that was beautiful enough.
Rating: 6/10
And Finally…
Longtime readers of this series will know that at the heart of every piece lies the question: “why this song, at this moment in time?” Every time something wins based on popularity, there is a HUGE amount of context to unpack — social movements, cultural shifts, an historical event or two. Yet this year the question is slightly more complex: “why these four songs? Why did a four-way tie happen this year?”
Ties are a rarity in the Contest: with the number of points flying about these days, it’s numerically difficult for any two songs to have the exact same score — it’s only happened once since 1969. And even though it was statistically easier to achieve back then, a four-way tie is still quite something: that’s a quarter of the participants, receiving the same number of points. No wonder some of the countries thought the whole thing had been rigged.
And yet what I find much more interesting is how diverse the winners of Madrid 1969 were (well, diverse for Eurovision, that is). A glance at their musical genres shows astonishing range: we have the classic French ballad, we have the Dutch going mock mediaeval, and we have the British doing their sleazy music hall shtick. This isn’t a case where every country had something unique to bring to the table: if you ask me, not a lot separates the Swiss entry from the German, or the Irish entry from the British one (though don’t tell the Irish that). But the four songs that DID get picked form a collage of Europe’s distinctive offerings: passionate, traditional, and — albeit to different extents — remarkable.
Yet it is also in this heterogeneity that ESC 1969’s winners reveal just how fragmented Europe’s musical landscape — and therefore its cultural tastes — were getting as the tumultuous 60s drew to a close. Much in Europe and the world had changed in the 51 weeks since Massiel’s win, with the clash of opposing values becoming more evident than ever before; with that in mind, it can hardly be a surprise that the winners all seem to be doing their own thing, seem to be so wildly different from each other. This was the year where all those clashes managed to hold each other into a Mexican standoff; where the diversity of the juries managed to bleed into the results, and give us a glimpse of a continent caught between differing ideals.
It would not last: with the introduction of a tie-break rule the following year, Eurovision would ensure that there would always be one single, dominant ideal to rule them all. A victory for clarity, certainly — but also a loss, perhaps, for those of us who find the world a more intriguing place for all the chaos it engenders.
Average rating: 5/10
Best song
Thanks to the four-way tie there’s no such thing as an official second place (or third, or fourth) for this Contest; this means that Switzerland’s “Bonjour, bonjour”, which got the next highest score, is sadly relegated to fifth; a lovely ditty about meeting someone and spending the whole day with them, this song deserves much more than a measly second, er sorry fifth. Behind the Swiss entry was Monaco, who (in their latest move of obvious desperation) sent the thirteen-year-old Jean Jacques to sing “Maman, maman”. I’ve already made my dislike of overly cutesy songs quite clear, but there’s something about this French boy that feels especially grating — and as we shall see, he wasn’t the last teenager to gain high scores with a simpering tune.
Having given us back-to-back excellent contests in previous years, the 1969 Contest sees the quality subside a bit — yes there are some good songs, but as the UK and Luxembourg illustrate, the shot in the arm that pop’s intrusion into the ESC had precipitated was drying up fast. It’s interesting, therefore, how the songs I like in this Contest look backward somewhat. Third is the aforementioned Swiss entry: it may shamelessly ripoff “Congratulations”, final-verse slowdown and all, but Paola del Medico’s song still intrigues me, with its gimmicks nicely balancing out the detailed lyrics and the singer’s performance. Second place is even more of a throwback: Siw Malmkvist had represented her native Sweden way back in 1960, but this Contest sees her return for Germany with “Primaballerina”, a wonderful melancholic schlager tune about loneliness, heartbreak and mortality — heavy fare for Eurovision, but musically stunning nonetheless and well-sung to boot. But neither of these are as good as “De troubadour” — it’s difficult to overstate just how refreshing the Netherlands’ entry is, and such deft songwriting don’t come easy in Eurovision. A tour de force from Lenny Kuhr, and still being rightfully celebrated after all these years.
| PLACE | ACTUAL RESULTS | MY PICKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Spain, “Vivo cantando” United Kingdom, “Boom Bang-a-Bang” Netherlands, “De troubadour” France, “Un jour, un enfant” | Netherlands, “De troubadour” |
| (2nd) | Switzerland, “Bonjour, bonjour” | Germany, “Primaballerina“ |
| (3rd) | Monaco, “Maman, manan“ | Switzerland, “Bonjour, bonjour” |
Next time
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