Eurovision 1974
full show (winner’s reprise here)
Date: 6 April 1974
Venue: The Brighton Dome
Winning country: Sweden (1st win)
Winning entry: ABBA, “Waterloo”
(a gentle reminder before we begin: the following review is based on the version as performed on the Eurovision stage and not on the studio version)
Here we are at last.
I’m writing these words in April 2024, fifty years to the month that Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad stepped onto the stage of the Brighton Dome and kick-started their journey towards stardom. Everybody knows that they are the ultimate success story of Eurovision: their dazzling display at the 1974 Contest would lead to stone-cold classics like “Mamma Mia”, “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me”, all of which you probably started humming the moment you read their titles. It was here that they began to earn their status as one of the biggest bands of all time, and to redefine 70s pop music as we knew it.
That, at least, is the conventional narrative. But I’m not sure it’s true: if Eurovision was as influential as the previous paragraph made it sound, then surely Herreys and Niamh Kavanagh and Sertab Erener would also be household names around the world. ABBA were actually in danger of being a one-hit wonder after their win; not until “SOS”, a whole year later, did success become a constant for them. You could argue that Eurovision helped Måneskin’s career much more than it did ABBA’s, at least initially, and you would probably be right.
Their impact was so minimal at the time that I wouldn’t credit them with changing Eurovision either. Sure, no winner had ever sounded like them before — but no winner would ever sound like them again, either. It wasn’t as if glam rock was new to Eurovision anyway; Cliff Richard had made a stab at it the previous year, and electric guitars had been prominently featured in the orchestra at Luxembourg City. Eurovision, before or after ABBA, remained staggeringly resistant to change, more interested in passing fads and a bloated sense of European self-worth than actual musical experimentation; the band’s role in Eurovision is more akin to that of a mascot, a platonic ideal for all those artists who (misguidedly) think the Contest is some sort of stepping stone to international renown.
And yet none of this contradicts the undeniable fact that ABBA were more-than-deserving winners of the 1974 Contest; that their song was the most attuned to popular culture and tastes; that not only were the band one of the best acts to have appeared at Eurovision, but they were also one of the most intriguing and discussable. Fifty years on, ABBA remain one of the most fondly-remembered winners of the ESC, probably the quintessential winner (if not of all time, perhaps the 20th century) — of course we have to dig in a little more.
What I find interesting, first of all, is that we were very close to never knowing who ABBA were at all. In my piece on the 1963 Contest I noted the immense star-power of the contestants, but that edition is peanuts compared to 1974. The favourite to win was the Netherlands’ Mouth and Macneal, an established duo with a (crappy) Billboard top-10 hit to their name; meanwhile, Gigliola Cinquetti had returned for a second go-around, ten years after her first win. Also playing were Yugoslavia’s foremost supergroup, Israel’s answer to the Beatles, and a somewhat little-known Australian country-pop singer called Olivia Newton-John — talent all around. Any of them could have won, and a couple of them almost did: the unique scoring system of this contest meant that only six points separated first and second place, and had just a few people changed their minds, I would be writing about a second Italian win, and ABBA might have forever remained that funny little Swedish pop group that appeared at Eurovision once.
But thinking about it a bit more, I don’t think that these hypothetical swing voters would have voted any differently. I’ve never touched on this particular fact before, but back in the age of ABBA, the people selected for the ESC jury were just as likely to be normal people (students, lawyers, even plumbers) as people ensconced within the music industry. Crucially, however, it was the former group that held sway over the pop charts: they were the ones who bought records, they were the ones who dictated trends. And by 1974, those ordinary folk (who were usually young people in their twenties or thirties) would have been raised on rowdy Anglophone rock and roll, rather than the genteel crooning of their overenunciating countrymen. The demographics were finely-balanced, yes — as mentioned above, the tender Italian ballad still came a close second — but modern pop tastes were finally entering the jury composition, and with undue apologies to Mouth and Macneal, ABBA were the only group who really seem interested in catering to that.
By this I’m not just talking about the choice of song — of course that helped immensely, but we’ll get to that soon. There’s also ABBA’s act itself: it does not have the excess of Mouth and Macneal (their Swedish-tax-exempt gaudy costumes notwithstanding) but it is emphatically more polished and more earnest, more ready for worldwide recognition. Yes, the chemistry is a bit awkward in places (witness their confused revolving towards the end), but Agnetha and Frida look for the most part like they’re having fun onstage, and I really like how the former’s face glistens with happiness whenever she turns to face the audience. (Bjorn, meanwhile, looks exactly the same as he will in all subsequent ABBA concerts as well as the video for “Does Your Mother Know”.) This may not be a band that’s designed to take you on an emotional journey, but their conviction is infectious, and it seeps into the other side of the television screen.
But ABBA were mostly a studio band, and here’s where we get into the song itself. “Waterloo” shows a rather prototype version of the band: on its parent album it’s only the first in a litany of genre experiments; Benny and Bjorn dabbling in everything and seeing what works on their audiences (one imagines what might have happened had they gone through with submitting “Hasta Mañana” to Melodifestivalen instead). Their constant perfectionism is evident on a song like “Waterloo”, which feels like an assemblage of good pop flourishes — but here on the Brighton stage, those flourishes already feel unique, already feel quintessentially ABBA. Take the harmonies as an example: no stranger to Eurovision, of course, yet they were always inevitably deployed for the sake of beauty rather than excitement; but this band, even on live, make it sound like the angels themselves are celebrating your surrender on multitrack (see for instance “I was defeated! You won the war!”). Or the lyrics: nobody would accuse Benny and Bjorn of being Nordic Bob Dylans, and some of these lines read like definite clunkers. But fifteen years have passed since I first heard that opening couplet, and still it remains fresh in my mind.
But I save my most effusive praise for the music itself, which is crisp, confident and forever exuberant. How can I describe it? Whenever I think of “Waterloo”, I’m reminded of how the word in Chinese includes the characters for “slippery” and “metal”, and everytime I think of that I picture somebody falling down a shiny steel chute, the ground disappeared underneath their feet, the air whistling past their ears as they fall into the unknown. It’s not unlike how I feel when I hear the descent of the cascading piano on the bridge, Benny thumping down on the keys with gusto, while the ladies sing “the history book on the shelf/ Is always repeating itself”; and even in their voices you can hear the loss of control, the gleeful surrender; you can absolutely see why they did it. I love the moment just before that tumble down when Agnetha and Frida turn to face the audience, and with smirks on their faces sing “and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight!” The underlying message? “And you mortals should too.”
Which, considering the lyrics, is much more of an achievement than it sounds. As many people have pointed out, this ain’t necessarily a happy song: devoid of musical context “couldn’t escape if I wanted to” or “I tried to hold you back, but you were stronger” can seem vaguely weary and even threatening (and one remembers that the term “Stockholm syndrome” had been coined not six months ago). But even at this early stage, ABBA are already adept at sneaking that darkness past your ears: from the very first moment, when the electric guitar bursts in, it’s hard to think of this song as anything other than celebratory. They turn that exhaustion into energy, and the change happens so fast, you don’t even know you’ve been swept along.
And for me this is the thing that makes ABBA stand out from previous winners: a burst of dynamism whose unconscious, almost effortless nature belies a lot of hard work behind the scenes. It is true that they were only the latest in a series of acts who all brought something new to Eurovision; yet of all the game-changers heard so far, ABBA’s is the least deliberate, the least pretentious. Instead of making a big thing about their voice or the message they were conveying, they spent a lot of time honing their popcraft and figuring out what worked, what made people feel like sharing in surrender — and then went onstage and delivered, massively. The end result feels polished and rehearsed, yet is no less ecstatic for it; one could imagine the juries at Brighton listening to this, and breathing a sigh of relief. “Finally, someone in this Contest knows what I like.”
And I think that, at the end of the day, sums up the way you win Eurovision. Of course, it is hard to argue that how you win Eurovision in 1974 is comparable to how you win it five decades later; certainly you would need many more props and throw yourself much heavily into the social media game. But figuring out what vibes with the audience, figuring out what would endear your normal person-on-the-street to their tune, that still resonates today: whether it be deviating from the normal, overexposed schlager tunes, or appealing to a cause dear to the hearts of the public. In the 50 years since ABBA grabbed Sweden’s first win, so many contestants — including some of their compatriots — would try to emulate them, whether it be in musical style or in flair; yet few of them would figure out that pop craft, that energy, as well as they had.
So I cannot say that ABBA changed Eurovision, nor will I say they were the “exemplary ESC entry”: they are an outlier in song style, and honestly when I think of the Contest I think of much wilder, unrestrained songs than “Waterloo”. But this does not take away from the hard work the band put in, and at least their triumph at Brighton reminded everyone that there were poppier possibilities, possibilities that went beyond the same old schlager or ballads and touched the hearts of actual Europeans — and for that, at least, they are worth celebrating. Happy Eurovision, everybody!
Rating: 8/10
Best song
Surprisingly, it’s NOT ABBA, but we’ll get to that. As mentioned above, Italy’s Gigliola Cinquetti came back for a victory lap, and if not for those meddling Swedes she could very easily have made it a double whammy; although it drags on a bit, “Sì” is pretty enough that you’d need to be exceptionally hard-hearted to find fault with it. In third place was the also-aforementioned Mouth and Macneal, dealing out one of Eurovision’s hammiest performances (1974 standards, of course): “I See a Star” is an absolute rollercoaster that alternates between sweet, quiet intimacy and raucous joy, but never once does it lose its sense of fun. There were some wags who suggested that this Dutch song might be about love for something else (“you opened up my eyes to all the beauty/ The beauty we’re inhaling every day”, italics the singers’) — but with that wonderfully exaggerated performance, who really cares?
Although there were quite a few famous artists in the lineup this year, not all of them brought the goods: so many songs feel like a throwback to cabaret or sub-par experiments, and watching the show, you get the feeling that many singers were trying to get accustomed to new styles which they didn’t like (prime example: ONJ). My third place this year goes to Israel, who DID stick with what they were good at: Kaveret/Poogy’s “Natati La Khayay” is a yearning, slightly psychedelic tune that is also somehow about the two-state solution (“there’s enough air for a country or two/Maybe we’ll get along after all”); but regardless of whether this song is about the beauty of romantic or political affinity, their harmonies and melodies are just exquisite.
One step above them we have ABBA, whose excellence, I think, speaks for itself in “Waterloo”. But I will plump for the established hitmakers once more and go for the Netherlands: “I See a Star”, cannabis references or no, is just too gloriously giddy to deny, and that final key-change brings a smile to my face every time. And I know some people don’t like Mouth’s onstage theatrics, but for me it gives the song its heart: people in love do all sorts of silly things, and even when some of that is embarrassing, you still feel happy for them. The world might have gained amazing pop through Sweden’s win — but just think about all the fun we might have had with Mouth and Macneal.
| PLACE | ACTUAL RESULTS | MY PICKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Sweden, “Waterloo” | Netherlands, “I See a Star” |
| 2nd | Italy, “Sì“ | Sweden, “Waterloo” |
| 3rd | Netherlands, “I See a Star” | Israel, “Natati La Khayay“ |
Next time
So, er… where do we go from here?
Inkpot Shuffles in the Twilight 
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